Nintendo Magazine System (Australia)

Nintendo Magazine System

Editor	Natalie Griffith
Categories	Computer and video game magazines
Frequency	Monthly
First issue	April 1993
Final issue Number	August 2000 89
Company	Catalyst Publishing
Country	Australia

Nintendo Magazine System was the official Nintendo magazine of Australia. In publication for seven years until 2000, the magazine was a branch of Official Nintendo Magazine, the UK's official Nintendo magazine, which was also called Nintendo Magazine System at the time. On 12 November 2008 a new official Australian Nintendo magazine was announced.

History

Trielle Corporation

The Australian version of NMS was originally published by Trielle Corporation as a 68-page magazine, with a cover price of $4.95. The first issue appeared in April 1993, and featured Super Mario Land 2 on the cover. It was Australia's official Nintendo magazine, and was very critical to poorly made videogame software, with scores for such games often in the low thirties. The magazine often included news and articles not relating to Nintendo products, from information on the idea of virtual reality, to the highest selling coin-operated arcade games at the time. The mail section held feedback from the editors, who at one time, for example, cited multiple reasons why upcoming consoles such as the 3D0 were superior to the SNES, possibly showing a lack of bias found in many "Official" magazines today (however, the SNES is today generally praised, while the 3D0 is criticized). The cheat section included GameShark and Action Replay codes, something Nintendo, at the time, was heavily against.

The first 100 subscribers of Nintendo Magazine System received a free bonus Snake Rattle 'n' Roll game for the NES, and later in Issue 4 all subscribers could, for a reduced cost of $30, buy a copy of Probotector, the PAL version of Contra.

Catalyst Publishing

Starting with Issue 34 in January 1996, Catalyst Publishing took control of the magazine, but retained the issue numbering. The most noticeable change was the lack of advertisements in the magazine, with almost every issue only having two in the last page and back cover.

Less noticeable was the swing in attitude towards any unlicensed third party peripheral for Nintendo consoles, being cited in the mail section as "bad" and having the ability to void the warranty on such machines. At Issue 54 the cover price increased to $5.95 with the page count increased to 84 (this later increased again at Issue 69 to 100 pages).

Controversy

The magazine caused controversy when it awarded Superman a score of 80%. Superman was called the 7th worst game of all time in Electronic Gaming Monthly, the second worst game of the 90s on Filter, the worst game of all time by GameTrailers, and the Worst Game of 1999 by MTV's Gamer 2.0.

In June 2000, the cover price was increased to $6.95 and had "This product includes G.S.T" printed next to the price, which at the time was set to come in at the first of July in Australia. Ironically, after being forced to apologise in the next issue (the July issue) by the ACCC about the printing error, by making a full-page notice and stating it was nothing more than a cover price increase, the issue of the magazine in question retained its release date of 28 June, making it the second issue to break the law. Surprisingly the price of the magazine did not increase by ten percent to $7.70 due to the goods and service tax (GST) but stayed at $6.95.

The end

The last issue of Nintendo Magazine System was Issue 89, the August 2000 issue, which featured Lara Croft on the cover. Issue 90 was to have Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion as the feature review and the July 2001 issue would have been the 100th issue, had the magazine continued. The cancellation seemed abrupt, ending without any announcements in previous issues that had hinted toward this. Declining readership made this inevitable.

Magazine sections

One of Nintendo Magazine System's most notable sections was its letters page, as it continuously posted multiple fan submitted drawings of Sonic the Hedgehog getting either killed, beaten to death, or humiliated by one of Nintendo's mascots (usually Mario), or by one of the NMS staff members. This was split into two sections: the first went through different changes, starting under the name "Fat Boy", then as the magazine changed hands, under the same title as the magazine itself, "Les" and then finally "Nursie". The second section was entitled "Skull's Mailbag", which started out as a rough-and-tumble, sexist, masochistic aggressive type of mailbag. Amongst other things, writers pledged allegiance to the legions of DSV (Death, Suffering and Violence), and competitions were held to draw the sexiest female game character. Eventually it was toned down from a heavy metal type skull to a cartoon horror type skull, as the magazine changed its target audience to younger readers.

Game guides

While the Magazine itself included game Guide material, five Nintendo Magazine System branded game guides were produced for Banjo-Kazooie, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Pokémon, Jet Force Gemini and Donkey Kong 64. Each had 100 pages except Donkey Kong 64 which had 116. They were all priced at $9.95.

See also

• Nintendo Power
• Nintendo Official Magazine