Read-a-long with Nintendo Power (#227, April 2008)

By Joe Fourhman | March 25, 2008

Pejoratively referred to as the “Party Press,” Nintendo Power has long seemed stuck on the rocky road to respectability. Can recent editorial changes transform the magazine? Join Aeropause for this regular dissection of this twenty-year-old gaming staple… and read-a-long!

Issue #227, April 2008
featured games: Mario Kart Wii, Deadly Creatures, The World Ends With You, Okami, We Love Golf, Super Smash Bros Brawl

The cover feature this month is ten pages on Mario Kart Wii (is that really going to be the final title?), although those ten pages are padded with plenty of screenshots and large character clip art. The question is, what did they reveal?

Sixteen of the game’s 32 tracks are mentioned (eight of which are shown to be enhanced versions of tracks from previous Karts), but I think even fans would admit that you can’t really glean that much info from a single screen and the name “Moo Moo Meadows.” Twelve starting characters are listed, perhaps the most unusual addition being Baby Peach. The article claims six secret characters, and trumpets the coolest unlockable character ever… your Mii. Why was there no Mii fighter in Smash Brawl?!?

But that’s all gravy; we pretty much all know how a Mario Kart is going to work. What everybody wants to know is: how does that pack-in Wii Wheel feel?

Perhaps predictably, Nintendo Power says the Wii Wheel is fine. “…it wasn’t really harder to use, just different.” I’m just not sure I believe that, given the spotty history of steering wheel peripherals and the utter lack of physical resistance on Nintendo’s floating Remote. The good news is that Mario Kart Wii, like Brawl before it, supports Remote+Nunchuk, Classic Controller and the GameCube Controller. GameCube plz kthx bai.

This is probably the only publication that is going to give any attention to upcoming WiiWare chaff Major League Eating: The Game and SPOGS Racing. Sure, I’m excited about some of the announced WiiWare releases… but these look like complete dreck.

Downloadable garbage aside, this issue does a great job of introducing readers to some very unique third-party games, which has got to be some kind of editorial mandate so NP doesn’t continue to be My First First-Party Hype Rag. There’s six pages on THQ’s Deadly Creatures, where you play either a tarantula or a scorpion in a realistic nature vs. nature adventure game. I was rather non-plussed by this concept until I read that the game “is told in flashback” and that the general story involves humans searching the desert for Civil War era gold. And remember, you’re just a life-size real-world scorpion, not Pinchy Scorpo Pants and His Magical Cartoon Adventure Quest… so if I hear good things about the gameplay, I’m sold.

There is a single page preview of Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, the fourth game in this often-overlooked horror franchise. The series – one of my all-time favorites – was chiefly a PS2 franchise (with two Xbox ports), so I’m interested to see how Tecmo leverages the Wii exclusivity for this iteration. Hopefully by allowing us to save ghost snapshots to our Wii Message Boards at the least.

Speaking of horror, you’ll be able to play as a Silent Hill Pyramid Head in Konami’s new Track & Field game for DS. First of all, I’m impressed that anybody gives a crap about a new Track & Field game, much less the fan service nonsense of including a Pyramid Head as a playable character. Cue the hilarious screenshot:

And of course it is fantastic to see a couple pages on Okami, coming to Wii in a month or two. Will Nintendo finally give Okami the audience it deserves? Zack & Wiki just called, and they say “No.”

The Smash Brawl feature is a dud, merely showing off a couple of custom levels made with the in-game stage editor. The level editor itself is kind of a dud, in my opinion. There’s just not enough cool stuff to play with, even after you’ve unlocked all the secret piece packs. One great Smash tip from the article: hit your Shield as soon as you smack into a wall. Instead of careening around and taking damage, you’ll bounce off and leap back into the fight.

Lightning Round
Virtual Console Staff Picks: 1080 Snowboarding, Lords of Thunder (seriously!), Harvest Moon, Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers

Top scoring Wii review:Bully: Scholarship Edition, 8.5 (all scores out of 10)
Top scoring DS review: Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword, 8.5
Lowest rated Wii review: Baroque, 3.0
Lowest rated DS review: Myst, 5.0 (take that, decade-old PC ports!)

Surprising trivia: The guy who created Punch-Out!! and StarTopics, Genyo Takeda, also invented the built-in battery for NES carts like Legend of Zelda.

Snide anti-Nintendo comment included solely to build street cred: “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the GameCube, Nintendo’s least successful console, was also its least innovative – it was essentially an N64 with better graphics.” – Editor in Chief Chris Slate

We hope you enjoyed this edition of Read-a-long with Nintendo Power! Join Aeropause next month as we tear through issue #228. We read NP so you don’t have to!