Metroid Other M: I'm Authorizing Use Of The Gameplay Beam

(I'm sorry, kind of. Also this is your spoiler warning. There are spoilers for this video game. You hath been warned.)

I'm going to do it. I'm going to talk about Metroid: Other M. Not in the way you might expect, though. I have no titanic wall of words to take down every single facet of what I think the game did wrong. Someone's done that for me. I don't need to look at the story of the game and mock it without relent. Someone's done that for me, too. It's been almost five years. The thing's been torn apart in analysis, re-assembled, and then shredded again. There's almost nothing new to add, except this here post which is a preamble to a point I wanted to make. A point that I discovered only last week and now feel terribly clever about, enough so to bother writing about this video game that I played four and a half goddamned years ago and won't shut up about to my friends online. It's not my fault this time, someone else brought it up and told me about a video this other guy did. This dude called Moviebob defended the game, kind of. In two videos. One here and then a rebuttal here. I watched them because even though I keep harping on this game for all it did wrong, it's good to look at the other side of critical analysis sometimes. I don't think this fellow made a very good defense of Other M, though. He made a case for one or two points, but the problem with Other M is that it's flawed on just about every level. You can't just rebuke the claims about Samus Aran having no characterization and then go "okay I'm done, game's good, stop hating". There is so much more wrong with it, and those other things I linked delve very well into them. This? This is just a preamble to one of my bullshit mythical ideology clashes I write so much about.

All you folks out there who like Other M, who thought it was fine, who have to deal with their darling being hated on every day by assholes like me? I understand, okay? In the first place, I'm a critical booster of Zelda 2, a Nintendo game which gets its fair share of hate for being too different. Other M changes things up a lot from something like Super Metroid, and it can be seen as too different too. I think the best way to illustrate the clashing ideologies thesis this entire writeup is about is to just come out and say it; I liked Other M. I was having a general good time with it, up to a certain point. Then it just lost me, and then I read the critical analyses against it and the game really lost me. As I was playing it, I fell back on the usual defense for the game. The story, I felt, was a total miss in its presentation. You know all the usual beats. Monotone Samus. THE BABY. The blandness of Adam's squad, minus Anthony. I was ignoring that, for the most part, because of the usual defense. Hey, that gameplay sure is neat! Flippin' around, blastin' monsters, jumpin' on their heads and SHOOTIN' EM IN THE HEAD YEAH YEAH HOW COOL IS THAT? There were a few niggling issues, of course. The weird pointy thing you had to do for missiles. Those godawful "highlight the pixel" segments. It wasn't perfect, but it was kind of fun. If the game stayed on that level, I could have been fine with it.

The moment Other M's story actually got a positive reaction out of me came when the Deleter (yes, I'm groaning too) tried to kill Samus with a forklift. Ignoring the clunky name for a second... holy shit. I was stoked. Something interesting was happening. We had a traitor on board the Bottle Ship, and he was actively out for our blood! He was bumping off the bland squaddies too, but still! I was excited, do you understand? This was new and cool and I wanted to know who it was and have this amazing confrontation. The game let me down here, and it let me down in a way I almost didn't even realize until it was over. James Pierce, the Deleter, sent by the Galactic Federation to clean up the mess on the Bottle Ship fuss-free. This plot point I was so psyched up about, and the fucker dies offscreen. As it turns out, this became a trend in the endgame of Other M, and it's the point I want to make. Other M is a game about two clashing ideologies; Gameplay and Narrative. The reason why it fell flat for me, personally? Instead of the two complimenting each other, the endgame of Other M sees Narrative brutally beating the everloving shit out of Gameplay, and winning out at Gameplay's expense. In the name of Narrative, several parts of Gameplay are actively taken away from you, and in my opinion they sour the whole thing. Really, we should have seen it coming. The game already proved that Gameplay and Narrative don't play friendly in this world, and that was all thanks to the authorization mechanic.

Okay, look, it's been harped on so goddamned much already that I'm beating a dead horse when I criticize it at this point, but I'll say this; the authorization mechanic almost works. I get it. You want a reason for Samus to not start with all her cool toys, and earn them via progression as you go along. You come up with this in-universe thing where she willingly puts herself under Adam's command, and he advises her on when to use her weaponry. Hell, you even covered yourselves by adding in a line about how you shouldn't be firing off Power Bombs willy-nilly because there might be survivors and you could fucking atomize them, OKAY! That's good, that's justification. I can buy that, I really can. The problem is that you then restricted all of the movement and defense-based powers of Samus's Power Suit, but without coming up with any narrative explanation. Narrative just decks Gameplay in the face, takes away the Varia Suit and the Space Jump and who knows what else, and holds it over Gameplay's head. The main sticking point for many was that bit where Samus ran through the damaging fire area, burning alive until Adam was like "hey yo turn on that Varia Suit". That Moviebob fellow states that there's no difference between this sequence of events, and something like Super Metroid where you run through the burny area until you just find the magic heat-resistant suit. Bullshit! The difference is narrative! This is a game about narrative, and Samus just sort of runs in there for no explained reason! You could pull any justification out of your ass for this. The suit's malfunctioning because of the end of Super Metroid. The Deleter fucked with temperature control and you have to go in there and risk your life to turn it back before the station boils. I came up with those in two seconds, and Yoshio Sakamoto was making money off of this. There could have been a narrative reason that played nice with the gameplay. Instead it just happens, gameplay be damned.

That's nothing compared to the brutal assault the Narrative makes near the end of the game. It took away movement abilities for the sake of fiddling with the Gameplay. Now it just straight up takes away the Gameplay's potential. Any and every possible exciting climactic gameplay moment that Other M could have had in its third act is taken away from the player to serve the narrative. Let's start with Ridley. I'm not going to talk about the bit where Samus has a panic attack over seeing him again. After Anthony bites it, she gets to fight Ridley in a cool battle. She does not defeat him here, though. He flies off deeper into the space station. Keep that in mind. We already mentioned the Deleter, and how the exciting confrontation with him is removed by him dying offscreen to MB. The same thing happens to Ridley. He dies offscreen to the Metroid Queen. You are actively denied any revenge against him for killing Anthony, because the narrative takes him away from you before that can happen. There is no catharsis. How about Sector Zero? An entire section of gameplay, a part of the space station brimming with Metroids, possibly reminiscent of Tourian? The narrative strikes back in the cruelest way possible. Adam Malkovich, the poster boy for this game's story, literally shoots Samus Aran, the player avatar, in the back. Then, still in the narrative form of cutscene, he sacrifices himself. In doing so, the narrative takes away the climactic final area of the game from you. Samus, still stuck in her cutscene form, can do nothing but cry and thank Adam for this. The narrative fucking hates you, man. Next comes the Metroid Queen, and in a stroke of luck you actually get to fight the godforsaken thing. Even though it comes out of nowhere. What should be a cool fight gets all sorts of fucked up near the end, when you have to do the old Metroid 2 trick of morph balling into its mouth. Then you use a Power Bomb. You know. Those things that you haven't been allowed to use for the entire game, thanks to narrative. Those things that the narrative doesn't even tell you TO use, so you just die six times until you figure it out. Jesus Christ. After all of that, then is the confrontation with MB. You only get to point at her. The final enemy of the game is in your sights, you have her targeted, you're ready to fire, and WHAM! Narrative double-decker dropkicks you in the face and lets the cutscene take over! Game over, haha, thanks for the 50 bucks now go WATCH THE THEATER MODE YOU CLOD.

I have a hard time thinking of any other game where the plot actively hates you playing it this much. That's what it feels like. They developed the plot first, then fit the game around it as an afterthought. So much of what could have been an exciting game is just stolen from you by the narrative, for the sake of drama and monotone voice acting that most people don't give two shits about because they bought this game to shoot monsters. Here's something for all y'all to mull over; would Other M have been better if they developed it as a CG movie, like Advent Children or Resident Evil Degeneration? If they just used the time they would have spent coding a game on making more cutscenes to bridge the gaps between the ones we already have? Would there really be a difference? You wouldn't be able to play it, sure, but I've made the case that Sakamoto doesn't want you to play this. If he did, he wouldn't have compromised so much of the bloody gameplay in the name of story. This is why Other M flopped for me. It took a game that was kind of fun but had a dumb story, and then totally doubled down on that dumb story to the detriment of the game part. Which, you know, is why people plopped down their money for Other M in the first place. They wanted a game, a game that played hand in hand with narrative. Not something that goes and kicks the game part in the balls out of sheer spite.

Alright. I think I'm done harping on Other M. That is, until that goddamned madman makes good on his threat and gives me his copy in July. The very copy he lent me, the very copy I played to form these opinions. The Silver Nemesis returns, I suppose. For now, until some other nonsense comes along, I think I got out all my dirty laundry about Other M. If you liked it, I almost understand.

Book Review- The Very Soil: An Unauthorized Critical Study Of Puella Magi Madoka Magica

(And here it is, the very special thing! Many moons ago, a very nice person suggested that I do a collaboration with a fellow called Froborr. What became of that was some tandem waffling about Mega Pony, a My Little Pony/Mega Man fangame. It turned out very well, and you can read the second half here.  The first part of it is hosted on his blogspace, and you can hit that up as well. Anyway, while I must confess that I'm indifferent on the subject of ponies, what really grabbed my interest when it came to Froborr was his Very Soil series, which was a critical look at a favorite anime of mine; Puella Magi Madoka Magica. I love that show to death and I was super stoked to read about it. Which I did. Now Froborr, otherwise known as Jed Blue, has put out an entire book of his insights into the inner workings of Madoka Magica, and what follows is me talking about it for a bit. Thank you very much for the review copy, sir, and for anyone else interested in his work, check out his new and spiffy-looking webspace. He's currently just started a project that's going to look at the DC animated universe. All of it. It's good enough for me to be giving him two bucks a month for it on Patreon.

...If that ain't enough full disclosure for all y'all, I don't know what is. On with the show.)

If there ever were a poster child for brevity, Puella Magi Madoka Magica might be it. Twelve 22-minute episodes and three feature films, and yet the entire thing is packed with everything a growing anime fan could want out of a show. Colorful and imaginative imagery. Characters you give a crap about. Things spiraling out of control down into a deep and dark pit of despair. I watched this show in 2012 or so, and deliberately limited myself to only one episode a night. It's fantastic, and it's fantastic in ways I find difficult to describe with just broad strokes. More than that, however, is the fact that deeper meanings glimmer beneath the surface of the Madoka pond. There are madmen thematic divers who delve into these depths, searching for the lost treasure of the postmodern armadas. Fresh from his bathysphere right now is Jed Blue, and this is the gold he unearthed within the sunken ship. This is The Very Soil.

On paper (which is one of the ways you can get it!), The Very Soil is an unauthorized critical study of Madoka Magica, originally posted over on Jed Blue's blogspace. As Madoka Magica is in my top 5 of Japanese cartoons, I readily absorbed every word, and delightfully did so again for this new version. Beyond the analysis of the twelve main episodes, there's also several chapters that poke and prod in various directions at the third feature film, Rebellion. (The previous two being more recaps of the television series.) In addition to that, the book's got a handful of extra essays, most of them dealing with spinoff manga. There is an extra chapter about Rebellion, and more analysis of that is always good as it's a very... challenging film, I found.

What gets analyzed here, precisely? Anything and everything. Madoka Magica is already a very rich series, and the book dives right in, unveiling every hidden theme it can. Things you might not have thought of, but get explored in great detail. The Buddhist nature of cycles, and how the show's time travelling character deals with this. Faustian analysis, and issues of bodily consent involving the magical girls and Kyubey. The show's third episode and third-to-last episode being mirrors of each other, which fundamentally change the show by way of miniature narrative collapse. Themes of putrefaction and decay. At its heart, it is a book that enriches the experience of Madoka Magica, and makes one think about it in new and exciting ways. If nothing else, it helped me to make sense of what the hell might be happening in Rebellion.

This is the treasure pulled from the depths; the critical analysis gold. If you are at all fond of Madoka Magica, then you definitely should give this book the old read-through. It is a mighty fine companion piece that delves deep into what makes this masterpiece of a Japanese cartoon tick, and then delves deeper than that into things one might not even consider. Most of all though, it's a book about people. Because, as Jed Blue reminds us in the introduction, all stories are about people. If you have never seen Puella Magi Madoka Magica, then you really had ought to view it at some point. It's fantastic and well worth your time. If you have seen Madoka Magica, then you'd find this book to be well worth your time also.

(The Very Soil can be purchased from Smashwords in e-book form here, or from Createspace in paperback here. 

Oops.

Yeah. I neglected this for over three months. Oops. My sincere apologies to anyone who was really stoked about esoteric views based on 15 minute experiences with old Nintendo games. I'm not going to say that the Nintendo Project Resumed is dead, but I need to regain interest in it. Really, I should have posted an official thing like two months ago, but here we are.

There will be a post in the next day or two about something really cool I experienced, but until then here are a few things I wrote and took part in in the last little while:

-The absolutely massive finale to Phil Sandifer's TARDIS Eruditorum. I wrote a brief interlude for it; CTRL+F "Cynthia" to find it.

-The best games I played in 2014. A lot of interesting waffling about a bunch of rad experiences.

-"A Brief Treatise On The Rules Of Dungeon Crawling", in which I wax nostalgic about old RPGs before praising the wild and wondrous world of 3DS dungeon crawlers by Atlus.

-The Let's Play Summer School II, a Let's Play competition I technically won. I played some of my favorite games, got nostalgic, and bitched about the AVGN Adventures one last time.

-Sockscast, Episode 14. A three-hour podcast with my good pals Polly, Rhete, and Crono Maniac. I say naughty words that get bleeped and talk about video games I played.

-A thing I literally just wrote about Mega Man X5.

See you in a day or two for the special thing.

The End Of The 2014 Mess

This will be quick. Oops, I neglected this again. There's only 15 minutes until 2014 is done here, so I have to hurry. I just wanted to wish you all a happy new year and also post this nice list I did of games I played in 2014. Some of them I've written about here in greater detail. Here you go.

It's been a wild year. Book writing and general disillusionment with video games led to some long absences, and I apologize for that. Video gaming really seemed like the absolute worst cesspool this fall. You know why. Still, let's have hope. I give you this hope via a stupid dumb anime game I played. Observe.

This is Chiaki Nanami. She's a character from Dangan Ronpa 2, which I gave the Game Of The Year nod to. The conceit of the Dangan Ronpa games involve high school students of a prestigious school called Hope's Peak, who are the best of the best at what they do; "Ultimates". So you have stuff like Ultimate Musician, Ultimate Gymnast, Ultimate Mechanic, as well as more oddball ones. Chiaki Nanami is the Ultimate Gamer. I played this game at the peak of the putrid "scandal" that made everyone hate everything, and it was Chiaki here that gave me hope. The mere idea that, in the Dangan Ronpa world, that the best of the best, the Ultimate Video Game Player was a lady? That kept me going. Not to mention that her English VA is also the English VA for Madoka Kaname from Madoka Magica... a direct inspiration for the concept of the Valya on this blog.

So what I'm saying is, Dangan Ronpa 2 is the most important game I've played in respect to this blog. We can all believe in Chiaki. We can all keep hope. Let this narcoleptic anime girl guide us to the golden age of the future. I'm going to go watch the New Year's Eve countdown. See you on the other side.

Big Money, Big Prizes, I Love It! (Nintendo Campus Challenge, Nintendo World Championships)

We've jumped ahead just slightly now. It's 1990. Nintendo Power has become a success, chugging along into the brave new 90's. The Wizard survived Video Armageddon, but its hype fled the silver screen like a demon, spreading like wildfire. By now it had been fully unleashed in cartridge form, and Mario mania had gripped us all. This is not that story. This is the story of the brave maniacs who decided that it wasn't enough for Video Armageddon's harbinger to become reality. By God, they were going to harness its full power and bring it forth into our realm. Ancient tomes were consulted, seals were drawn, prayers were chanted and planted among us. In a summoning ritual involving blood and microchips, it came to us. Video Armageddon exploded across America in a wave, and we Disciples Of The Grey Box still feel the effects of the summons today. In 1990, they called it... the Nintendo World Championships.

I hear they were very good. I was also four years old, and on another island entirely while they occured. This, more than anything, is a reconstruction lost to time. The Nintendo World Championships are dead and gone along with 1990, just like all those missing Doctor Who tapes that got burned. They were an event, but what really happened? The real answer is something mundane like "a bunch of kids who were good at Nintendo games competed with one another", but when have we let that stop us? No, this was a clash of titans. Hard Game Beater against Hard Game Beater, the strong surviving and the weak faltering. Here, in this gladiator arena of the Gods, the barriers between America and Japan were weakened. Things could bleed over and be called "sneak previews". Video Armageddon had been summoned to darken the skies. Anything could happen in this arena of divinity. The competition continued to rage, gods and devils battling alike with their controllers. Destruction rained from the heavens as heavenly light radiated from square grey boxes, the alchemy at hand here beyond the grasp of mere mortals. The heavens shook and trembled. The power of Valya, even here, surged through the competition... until finally it was Thor, God of Thunder, who surmised victory. He had survived Lady Capitalism's challenge, and ventured into the heart of the Plumber's rip through time to collect 50 golden coins. He had taken Endless Adventure's unorthodox driving challenge, and steered himself across the coast at 250 miles per hour. He did these tasks quickly for the true prize, Captain Communism's test of reflex and quadratic thinking... for this was where the points really mattered. With mastery of them all, Thor was crowned Supreme Champion of Video Ragnarok. All hail Thor, our alchemical Destructor.

As for the rest? Lady Capitalism took pity on them, and her sadness brought her to tears. 116 of them fell like rain into our realm, with the first 26 being the most powerful among them. This is the continued legacy of the Nintendo World Championships; the rarity of its cartridges. Most can simply be a teenage ROM fiend, or move up to a reproduction cartridge. For the true madmen, there is shelling out thousands of dollars for one of Capitalism's Tears, an actual divine portion of Video Armageddon used in the battle of the gods. I played the games tonight. To talk about them here is to give away the future, but suffice it to say that my score was nowhere near that of mighty Thor's. The Angry Video Game Nerd had a run-in with the thing as well. Tempted by its greed at first, he plays in competition for the Golden Tear of Lady Capitalism, only to realize that it consists of games he already owns. He rejects the siren song of the Big Time, and... Well, I won't give away the end of that. There was also a Nintendo Campus Challenge in 1991. College students taking breaks from finals to partake in their own little Video Armageddon. Unlike the World Championships, this file is not available for a teenage ROM fiend. The reconstruction cannot happen. It lacks the popularity that the first competition had, and this would be the last on the NES. 1992's Campus Challenge was in 16 bits, which are a place we cannot go.

What we can do is play football or something.

California (The Wizard)

Still not ready to talk about the Nintendo games yet. The entire point of the Nintendo Project is looking back, and I find myself looking back to December of 2013. There, I postulated that the end of the NES was a thing of beauty. To be fair, this was mostly brought on by me being mushy about my friends getting engaged, but I'm going to stick with it. 1994 and 2012 were both about Nintendo partying in the face of oblivion, and doing it with a vibrant celebration of the life that the NES and Nintendo Power had led. Today we go to 1989, where both were riding high. Millions of children were getting the Power every month, and the end of the 80's signalled Nintendo's arguably highest heights with the NES. 1989's silver anniversary is waning, set to be subsumed by a future in which we make the same tired fucking joke about hoverboards and Pepsi Perfect for 365 days. How depressing. Now playing at the Holomax of Infinity, where time is a construct and we flit through it like antsy and esoteric little hummingbirds, it's The Wizard in 5.1-D totally schway vision.

God help us, what are we doing here? A movie starring that Wonder Years kid about road trips and Nintendo games. Dear god in heaven, have we sunk to these meteoric lows? Still, there are things to be said about this movie. It's little more than a historical relic at this point, an artifact of 1989. Is it a very good film? Not really. I don't even know if one could call it a cult classic. It is riddled with problems and things that people on the Internet mock it for... like its video game inaccuracies. Roger Ebert called them out on this. The mental image of Roger Ebert in 1989, playing the first Ninja Turtles game on the NES, speaks to me on so many levels. Part of it is the "secret history" Phil mentioned ages ago, but with me being used to the main reason people call the first Ninja Turtles one of the hardest NES games being the dam level... I want to know if Roger Ebert ever beat it. Short of a seance, I will never know the answer to that question and it fucking haunts me. Just like the NES and Nintendo haunt this film, the spectral force of Nintendo's influence being the fabric that binds it all. Here we sit, at the tail end of the Dance Apocalyptic, and yet in the cinemasphere we have a looming Destructor to rival Peko. It is Video Armageddon that blazes in the skies over Universal Studios in California, and the secret harbored beneath its gates will send the world into chaos and frenzy. But let it sleep for now.

Then you have the weird moments. Jenny Lewis screaming about breasts, for instance. Ah, Jenny Lewis. Looking back again, it was this time nine years ago that I first became acquainted with her voice. Imagine my surprise when I learned that she was in this. How about that. Of course, the Power Glove shows up as well, Nintendo and Mattel's joint gauntlet of doom in these dark times. The camera trickery led us to believe that this would assist our alchemy. We were wrong. Oh god, were we wrong. The muddled power of control was not in our hands. We were fooled into creating a monster... but this is only one of the monsters birthed by our Wizard. The next lies buried within Universal Studios, the harbinger that is the final test of Video Armageddon. Video Armageddon, you see, is a test of the best. The children who have mastered the video games flock, pitted against each other in glorious 8-bit alchemical combat. We come down to three in the final round. A girl that the movie does not care for. Lucas, wielder of the Glove of Deception. Jimmy, our protagonist and Wizard of California. The final test is unleashed upon these three Hard Game Beaters, and it is nothing they could comprehend. They know only the games that have existed. Now, as Video Armageddon strikes their hearts, comes the world of anti-matter, screaming at them in chiptunes. As the gate is raised, the full fury is placed upon them. In this unknown land, they must beat their rivals and become the champion of all video games, both existant and non-existant. As for us, we witness something amazing. Something that set the world on fire in 1989, when we knew naught about it.

Holy fucking shit. Super Mario Brothers Three.

To speak more is to risk being sucked into the open wound that Mario unleashed upon time in this period. Already, I fear the winds are gale force. Still, this is the monster set loose upon the world in 1989, the bringer of Video Armageddon and the vanguard who let Nintendo rule the world. Only a beast altered with superior alchemy could possibly take it on... but that story is not ours to tell. The Wizard probably made money. It probably cemented the hype for Super Mario Brothers Three in the minds of every child of the time. What I know for sure is that this film created several monsters. The Power Glove was one. Super Mario Brothers Three is another. The third came about when Nintendo sought to bring the film to life. That story comes later. God help us all.

Get The Clues That You Can Use (Nintendo Power)

That was fun. As promised, I'm back at this space again. The highly elaborate post about the Ninja Gaiden games will happen someday, but like I said; in the interest of chugging along, we will do just that. Right away, we hit a roadblock. Chugging along, according to my Wikipedian roadmap, gives us a duo of games with some importance. Therefore, a little context is in order. We are firmly in the world of the letter N, and now we are far enough along that we must talk about the Big N. This is the Nintendo Project, after all, but it is time to turn our gaze to the creators themselves; to Nintendo. We know the alchemical machine already, the grey box. We know that its game cartridges are bigger on the inside. Hell, we even know what power words can hold. I am nothing less than an amateur alchemist of the keyboard, firing words off into the aether. Nintendo seized upon that and created an entire magazine about it. Today, I fear, we must talk about Nintendo Power.

Here is where this all gets morbid. Nintendo Power is dead and dusted. Two years ago, its final issue shipped, a loving tribute and celebration. 24 years of fun and profit, going out with a grandiose fiesta of print in the face of oblivion. All returned to nothing, but Nintendo Power embraced it with a smile as it looked back. Peko The Destructor partook in punch before purpose took the Power. This entry, I am afraid, is all after that fact. It's December 1st, 2014, and we are visiting the memorial of Nintendo Power. What do we hope to gain here? Perhaps it is just understanding. The era of Nintendo Power is remembered fondly by some. I was not around for it. I grew up in small-town Newfoundland. Magazines were a rare commodity, and the only subscription I had was to Disney Adventures. Another dead magazine, incidentally. The information rags of our youth die tragically young. Hell, I don't think I bought an issue until 2000, and that was for the Pokemon Gold and Silver strategies. A few years later, though, during my days as a teenage ROM fiend, I bought an old issue from a used bookstore. Mega Man 4. Monster In My Pocket. Super strats for Super Castlevania 4. A thing of incredibility.

What can I say, really? I mean, this is of course a part of the song of the NES. Phil talked about it when he came back for Mega Man 3. The games featured in Nintendo Power, and on its cover, were Important. In a Dark Age with no Internet and only the word of friends to guide you, the book launched all sorts of games into fame. Mega Man thrived. Ninja Gaiden cut through the competition. You had guides for the games, and an entire cabal of secret agent children submitting their codes and cheats to the magazine, electronic espionage hard at work. High scores were on full display, showcasing the madness of the young Hard Game Beaters. Howard Phillips and that smarmy kid with the spiky hair ran around video game worlds, their antics entertaining and educational. When Nintendo Power was on, it was really fucking on. It had its moments of accidental brilliance, like the moment when it almost let Mother exist in our realm officially. Its previews teased and enticed, of course, breaking down that impenetrable curtain between nonexistant lands. As the Wall crumbled and Captain Communism began to crumble with it, so too did Japan and its army of ghosts secretly take over. Nintendo ruled the goddamn world, and Nintendo Power was one of its vanguards. Now it is gone, reaped two years ago after its final party. Its legacy lives on. Nintendo Force is a fan magazine that has fired up the dormant engine and continued the work abandoned by the brilliant official creators. Sound familiar, much? The magazines themselves exist, or scans can be found. The days, however, are gone along with it. I was a subscriber of Nintendo Power, if only briefly. I registered some DS games in 2007 and earned a three-month subscription. Part of my ritual when travelling to visit my grandparents, around that same timeframe, was purchasing Nintendo Power magazines and poring over them during my times without Internet. I longed for the Final Fantasy III remake. I was dazzled at Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. Super Smash Bros. Brawl looked incredible.

It came 20 years late, but Nintendo Power enriched my world and I can't thank it enough for that. Here and now, two years after it has left us... I eulogize it. Celebrate its life, friends. Watch the AVGN wax nostalgic about it. Read about the legendary Captain Nintendo. Enjoy some Howard and Nester comics. Let us remember Nintendo Power, and create our own magic with our memories. Rest well, you silly little book. Rest well.