A new low for games journalism (Nintendo Official Magazine)

Name: RabidBunny

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Product:	Nintendo Official Magazine
Date:	04/04/02 (675 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of pretty pictures, More pictures, About 700 more of them

Disadvantages: Not enough information, Lazy writing, Too many pictures

Nintendo Official Magazine, with an official license to one of the best games company in the world, you expect some sort of quality? Right? RIGHT? Compared to the success of the official Playstation magazine, quality is definitely needed in this media industry, but no, the people at Nintendo Official Magazine have failed to produce the quality needed in journalism… DECENT writing.
But hey, before I give the worst opinion I’ve ever given anything, lets skip back in my life to a week ago. It was a nice hot spring day in the west of London, and all was fine in the world, the birds were chirping, the kids were out at the park playing football, and I wandered over to the newsagent. Inside that newsagent there stood the magazine. It was in a nice cover, boasting a cardboard Gamecube, and for all that have read my first opinion on here, I want a Gamecube. So I just couldn’t resist. Handed over my £2.99 to the nice person at the counter, and walked home merrily in prospect of reading some good material. Come home, rip open the packet, stare at the cardboard Gamecube for about an hour, and then I look at the magazine. Here’s where we cut back to the review.
The very first page, it’s the magazine’s 6 promises. But for purposes of stating how rubbish this magazine is, they’ll be saved until the end. But alongside these images is a picture of the team of writers and editors and people who bring cups of coffee. And they’re all gawking at you, like idiots. This can’t be good; they’re looking like idiots, could they actually be idiots though? Certainly not, no one in the media industry is an idiot… But lets turn over the page again.
So we have finally managed to get to the content. Everything looks normal, nice Gamecube coverage, nice Gameboy coverage. All looks normal, and hey, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 is the first thing to read. I sure did love that game on the Playstation 2. But then it hits yo
u. The people really are idiots. Instead of telling the reader about the actual game, they just show lots of meaningless screen shots, and focus more on the levels than the game play, who cares about the levels when you assume they haven’t even played the game? And that most of the levels look similar to each other. But that isn’t all, turn the next page, you have screen shots of Darth Maul on a skateboard, who really wants to see that? And it’s telling the reader how to grind on a game that isn’t out for another two months. Is there any logic in this? But then, the writer has the audacity to say, and I quote “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 is as close to gaming perfection as you’ll get” WHERE DO YOU ELABORATE ON THIS? Ok, I’m calm. So far though, in the first 10 pages of the magazine, I am extremely disappointed.
So next on the line up of games. ISS2. Now they must give this great football game some decent coverage. And they do. In fact, they some how manage to fit in 41 pictures into the report, covering a huge 7 pages. I’m infuriated; this is supposed to be a respected medium, yet it’s filled up with more pictures than a wedding issue of OK magazine.
But at least, we reach the reviews, this is where the real writing comes into play, maybe the magazine can save itself. And look! It’s a review of Super Mario Advance 2, a great game to come out for the Gameboy Advance. No no no… This can’t be right. It’s all pictures again. And what? They don’t even think it’s important enough to actually talk about the game play? I’m trying to restrain myself here, but how can you neglect such information in such a big review?
And it just carries on like this. For twenty nine pages.
Could it get any worse? Fortunately no! There’s a great section that has been running throughout the life of the magazine in the collection of games reviews. It only includes N
intendo 64 games though, but its still great. Really brings an old gamer a tear in his eye, looking at all these great games.
Then we move onto the tips section. And just like the rest of the magazine, screen shots are told for tips, and because of that are uninformative and rather short in length. And following this is the question and answers section. If you look at the Q&A sections of other magazines though, you’ll find extensive informative answers, which last at least 100 words each, what do Nintendo Official Magazine writers give? I’ll just go count… 30 words. Then to save time and effort they have a yes and no section for short questions.
Now this makes sense, after all the reviews, the games, the tips, they have the news. What kind of person sticks the news last? It would be like looking at the cover of the times and finding a 2 page peanuts cartoon. Then turning onto page 59 to find out that the global economy has plummeted into global recession.
Fortunately though, that is the end of the magazine, and my tortured session is over. But at the beginning I said that they have 6 promises on the front of their cover. So here are those 6 promises:

“You’ll read about new Gamecube or GB Advance games and products here first”

Gameboy advance games, maybe, but unfortunately for them, I have seen all this Gamecube information in other magazines about a month ago. Looks like you’ve failed that one.

“We have the most screenshots from new games”

They actually keep this promise, yay for them. Want to know how many they have though? 773 screen shots of games. Not total pictures, just the screen shots alone. It’s only 114 pages long. That’s almost 7 photos per page. That has to beat OK magazine, surely.

“Our mag’s easy to understand and easy to use”

That’s very true, since it’s all pictures, there’s no wa
y the reader is going to get confused. Just sit and stare. It’s like junior school all over again.

“All our tips, moves and cheats work and help you get more from your games”

Of course they work, does that mean they’re helpful though? I doubt it. I don’t see how anyone could fail though explaining to someone how to get further 20 seconds into a game.

“You can trust what our writers say”

Yes, assuming they say anything.

“It isn’t worth buying any other magazines”

Unless you actually want to find out about the games. So you definitely haven’t fulfilled this promise.

But that’s the end of my opinion, now to get to the structured part, the review.

Content:

In case you haven’t guessed already, the content is thin. Very thin. Nintendo often complain that their machines are portrayed as a child’s toy. Well with magazines like this bearing the Nintendo name, I’m not surprised Nintendo get mauled so much by these allegations. This is very poor journalism, and I don’t know how much the writers are being paid, but if it’s anything above £25K per year, they have the easiest job in the world. But what this magazine does do to the reader is make them feel like a complete idiot by following this childish magazine to the very end.

Presentation:

This is where the magazine starts to shine. Due to the simplicity of the layout, this is very easy to follow, the text is nice and big, the pictures, all 773 of them, are very nicely laid out, and the reader never feels lost. The pages are nice and colourful, the pictures and text are clear and of a good quality. Everything is easy to see, even in the dark you can make out where the text and pictures are. The paper quality is very good, and it does look and feel like a quality magazine.

Value for money:

For £2.99, what could y
ou get? A couple of packets of haribo, a train ticket to central London, three pints, a McDonalds meal, or an even better magazine. For all the extras the magazine gives, this magazine is simply not worth the money. It is by far the worst piece of journalism I have ever seen, and you can only look at pictures for so long, it’s just not fun. There are much better magazines out that easily beat this. And it would be much better spending your hard earned (Or haggled from your parents) money on one of those.

So there you go, it might not be the most balanced opinion in the world, but unfortunately there just weren’t enough good points about this magazine that I could say to make it balanced. The only thing I hate though, the moment the Gamecube comes out this magazine will start producing demo discs, and then I will start buying it again, so it looks like it’s just going to turn into another poor magazine that people only buy for the demo disc. It’s a shame that a quality brand like Nintendo has to be associated with this drivel. It is therefore my pleasure to give this piece of rubbish 1 star.

Summary: