NES Cdrom with Offical Nintendo Magazine

[iamlost_]

It's a pretty pants magazine but there is a Cdrom with it now with a set of NES games on i think i've seen an advert on the website

[Adam Stone]

Yeh? It has the original Zelda, Donkey Kong, Metroid and a few others. However the main one is of course the classic Mario.

I haven?t purchased it myself ? but have been fighting the urges to do so. The magazine itself is dire and I have already bought a couple of magazines this month so can?t splash out another ?4 on something i wont read.

A nice? very nice freebie. But due to the utterly poor content of the magazine itself, I would be paying the ?4 just for that freebie which ultimately means it isn?t free at all...

[mt50]

i thought it was just videos of a few games, so not really worth buying and it's a dvd btw

[James Harvey]

Yeah, it's just videos.

I'd just like to say I like Official Nintendo Magazine. It's a good magazine, written by a bunch of enthusiastic, funny and likeable Nintendo fanboys, yet isn't mindless propaganda like Nintendo Power. It's surprisingly unbiased for an official magazine- they will tell you when a game disappoints or sucks, even major releases like Mario Sunshine!

I have a soft spot for NOM UK. It's not stupidly pretensious like Edge, not plagued by inept writing like GamesTM, or full of woeful man-in-the-pub ranting like Cube magazine. It's just an informative, well produced and often very funny magazine that happens to have Pokemon on every single cover.

Plus: MARIO WORLD FRIDGE MAGNETS

[FelixofMars]

Seems a fair summary there mate, yes its a kids mag really but at least its not too biast and up its own...

[Adam Stone]

They are only videos? Really? Wow?

I used to have a soft spot for the Official Nintendo Mag (still have quite a few mags from the Snes days on my shelf) however compared to other magazines I see no reason whcih warrants a purchase and still feel they can be very biased ? which is a shame... Recently i bought an issue and it just re-confirmed this.

Ah well, they do provide some excellent free gifts though which sometimes are far too tempting to resist

*Goes and plays with his Mario Fridge Magnets*

[NOM is my BIBLE]

I usually make a point of not getting involved in discussions like this. But since this is the closest thing to an 'intelligent' games forum since the Edge one went pop, it might be worth a go.

The bias thing. What's that all about? All Official magazines are accused of it, but has anyone actually considered what this implies? You're suggesting we deliberately mark-up Nintedo games (and, presumably, mark down the third parties) because we have Nintendo on our masthead. But how does this benefit the readers of the magazine? Or us?

What people misunderstand is what 'official' means. It means we have an arrangement with Nintendo to use their lozenge on the cover. They help us get access to first party releases before the unofficial magazines. But they have have no influence or approval over review scores - we work exactly like any other games mag in that regard.

Nintendo Official Magazine is NOT produced at Nintendo by Nintendo employees like Nintendo Power is.

I'd be interested to hear which reviews you think were biased and for what reason. We get a lot of stick on our own forums for the scores given to Sonic Team games, but I really think that once-legendary developer has been stuck in a dry spell of late.

NOM is written by people who are passionate about Nintendo, and not 'fanboys' who'll blindly believe in anything with a red logo on the box.

I'll be honest: the fact that a lot of our readers think we 'are' Nintendo works brilliantly for us. We even get people slagging us off for giving a game a bad score and still allowing the 'Seal of Quality' to go on the game's box.

But I would have hoped that the change in NOM's editorial tone and attitude towards first-party games over the past 12 months would have been obvious to a clued-up reader. Criticism is always welcome, but "they're ****" doesn't really say enough. And slagging the current magazine off because the last one you read four years ago had a 30 page preview of Banjo Tooie isn't on.

We scored Metal Gear 85%. We gave Astro Boy GBA a glowing preview and lobbied for it's release in the UK. I'm guessing we'll be the only UK Nintendo magazine next month to write about Shiren Monsters Netsal and Pyuu to Fuku! Jogger Byuu to Deru! Megane-Kun. We gave Kirby Air Ride and Donkey Kong Country the kickings they deserved. Do you honestly think these come from anywhere other than the passions and whims of the writers? Nintendo certainly didn't command us to spend all of Friday afternoon playing linked-up Tetris on old school GBs.

We're not Edge, and we don't want to be. 'Games as art' is of no concern to us. We're just trying to get across the enthusiasm of a group of people who are as into Nintendo as the readers are. There's no dishonour in that.

[darkangel]

ROFL, dude, edge was never good as this forum.

Anyway, I stopped reading NOM a few years back, because I really think the way it is written and presented is how do I say this? "focused towards the younger market".

Thats all I have to say on this.

[John Beaulieu]

"focused towards the younger market"

You mean its aimed at the same demographic that most Nintendo products are 'allegedly' aimed at .........

Looks like NOM have it spot on then

ps welcome to the forum Mr NOM writer - nice to see another magazine writer willing to put themselves forward to answer the 'professional critics' that pop up in every magazine thread

[PeteJ]

Yep, welcome to the forum. It's always interesting to get an inside view of how a magazine is run, and you're clearly extremely enthusiastic about gaming and your magazine.

I hope you stay around

[Papercut]

You're suggesting we deliberately mark-up Nintedo games (and, presumably, mark down the third parties) because we have Nintendo on our masthead. But how does this benefit the readers of the magazine? Or us?

The benefits would be pretty obvious, wouldn't they? Keep your sponsors happy, sell more Nintendo games, get more Nintendo exclusives.

Although, as others have said, the Official Nintendo Magazine does seem the least biased of the 'official' magazines out there. Nice freebies too

The official Playstation and Playstation 2 mags are just blatant, no shame whatsoever.

cover-disk is vidoes only? boo.

We're not Edge, and we don't want to be. 'Games as art' is of no concern to us. We're just trying to get across the enthusiasm of a group of people who are as into Nintendo as the readers are. There's no dishonour in that.

I doubt you'd find many people who'd disagree with that here.

[James Harvey]

Yeah, I'm not sure what you're getting worked up about. I was saying how much I liked NOM.

In fact, don't know if it's a good idea to admit this around these parts, but I have a subscription to NOM and wear my free Mario t-shirt with pride...

By the way, shame you got rid of Bobby Tokyo, that was hiralious! What happened there, I assume it was because someone complained that it was racist?

[Mayhem]

To have the balls to respond on and appear on a third party internet forum to give some feedback gets the thumbs on from me

I too have noticed a change in direction in the last 12 months with the magazine. It seems less in your face and more relaxed, the writing style has improved, the news is better, the exclusives are pretty much exclusives a fair amount of the time, and the gifts are better

Sure it is still aimed at a lower age demographic than say NGC, but on the other hand, with the introduction of the Japanese sections and some of the design and general direction/layout, I see attempts to try and get more older players interested. That or educate and expand the minds of the younger players so that (for example in the case of all the NES love in the last 3 months) they know Nintendo has a history far greater than just the current generation of games.

[NOM is my BIBLE]

"The benefits would be pretty obvious, wouldn't they? Keep your sponsors happy, sell more Nintendo games, get more Nintendo exclusives."

But we aren't Nintendo. We work for Emap. We have to sell magazines, not Nintendo games. If we keep overscoring games, our credibility evaporates. And people don't read us anymore. Plus, there's the professional pride of the writers to factor in. Anyone that's took the time to review a game properly wouldn't want people changing the score or dropping in new chunks of text.

I'm the deputy editor, by the way. Dean Scott. Pleased to meet you all.

Re: Bobby Tokyo. Yes, we had complaints. From people who, no doubt, were happy to put on a Scouse or Irish accent as the mood suited them. We ALMOST had Bobby Tokyo reviewing Serious Sam this issue. We thought the clash if cultures might have worked pretty well. But at the last minute, that idea got canned. He was going to be complaining about how it's not fair that European games don't work on a Jap machine and how it's not fair that WE get all the good games first.

Anyway, back to that awesome GC exclusive Dodonpachi Daioujou...

[James Harvey]

For everyone who didn't see it, Bobby Tokyo was NOM-UK's fictional man in Tokyo who used to provide updates such as this:

'Me saw new Nintendo console in second hand shop. It called 'Mario Cement Factory'. This amazing! Also, the music was just bleep and electronic noises. Me think it by Pharrel and the Neptunes.'

I still think you could have got away with it if you just said that Bobby Tokyo was a white person who wanted to be Japanese, or 'wapanese'. This was Channel 4's get-out clause for Ali G, anyway- if anyone complained, they were going to say Ali G stood for Alistair Green.

...I should add that I'm not condoning racism here. When I say get-out clause, I don't mean 'excuse that lets them carry on laughing at muslim people'. Neither Ali G or Bobby Tokyo were racist. Thanks.

(Don't kill me)