Nintendo normally keeps a fairly tight reign on its properties. Mario is their face, their symbol; thus they strive to make sure that if he's used in a video game, he's used right. The vast majority of Mario games are developed by Nintendo, with an occassional license to a trusted third party like Square (Mario RPG, Mario Hoops) or Hudson (Mario Party) or Camelot (Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Mario Jai Alai, Mario Shuffleboard).

Except, that is, for a stretch of about four years in the early '90s, when apparently they just handed him out like candy to random passers-by. From 1991 to 1995, nine Mario titles were released by companies other than Nintendo, one of them being Mario's first appearance on the PC, six of which being edutainment titles. They were all made with kids as the intended audience, meaning the name of this article also serves as a good catch-all title for any of the games seen below.

Continue reading "Mario's Bastard Children" »

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Because you're bound to see it somewhere: No, this is not a screenshot of GTA4.

• New Super Mario Bros. sells 500,000 copies in its first month. Nintendo claims this amounts to 20 copies every minute since release.
• The Clock Tower movie gets a director.
• The Sega Master System turns 20.
• The Prey demo is available for the PC now, but the Xbox 360 version is held up for some reason.
• Sony's first Blu-ray player is pushed back again, to October 25. Any later and the PS3 will end up being Sony's first Blu-ray player on the market.
• Sony claims GTA on the 360 "won't hurt us."
• Do not click this if you enjoy your eyesight.
• A long dossier on the making of Goldeneye.

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The Ars Technica games blog asks, "Why should we fight to save used game sales?" Why should we care to save brick and mortar game stores at all?

• Nintendo Power suggests visuals for the Wii and Gamecube versions of Twilight Princess will be identical.
• EA buys Mythic Entertainment.
• Survey results show few Japanese gamers are willing to pay for online games.
• Next Generation lists the 30 best games coming out this summer.
• The Undertaker is a lot fruiter than I remember him.
• Phoenix Wright is still selling out, and the next printing isn't until August.
• Screengrabs from a Japanese report proving girl nerds exist. Downside: They're all into gay romance manga.
• Game Informer claims the wonky controls in Red Steel reported at E3 have been improved.
• Gamespot has a Q&A with the producer of Chromehounds.
• A collection of show how each Wii game at E3 used the controller.
• Ludologist attempts to chart how "matching tile games" (Tetris, Lumines, et al) evolved.
• Racketboy offers up a PDF scan of the first issue of Sega Visions, from summer 1991.
• A sampling of the goriest scenes in gaming history.

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A lot of non-scan (or gaming) related things going on today, so this week's installment is a bit of a cheat. There are scans; just not mine.

A lot of people miss that mammoth abandonware site Home of the Underdogs also has a gamebook section. It contains scans of many solo adventure pen & paper RPG books as well as several Choose Your Own Adventure style titles. In particular, I want to point out their collection of 3 out of the 12 Nintendo Adventure Books you probably read as a kid if you're sufficiently old enough. They're available in PDF format, and are worth flipping through just for the nostalgia kick. Proof that you could get kids to do anything, even read, if Mario was involved.

Then again, I remember getting lots of Choose Your Own Adventure books from the library when I was a kid, but I never finished any of them. So joke's on them, I guess.

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Tim Schafer wants you to write to Microsoft to request Psychonauts be made backwards compatible on the 360.

• George Broussard isn't swayed by the $500,000 offered to complete Duke Nukem Forever by the end of 2006.
• Screenshot accounts are being "delisted" (not removed, just unsearchable) on Flickr because they want the site to be about photographs.
• Laserdisc arcade classic Dragon's Lair will get a new release in August that is remastered in HD.
• Three Street Fighter II picture packs and one theme have been released on Xbox Live Marketplace. Contrary to what you might imagine, Capcom is saying this is not evidence that Hyper Fighting is coming soon.
• How to get Xbox saves on your 360, as long as you don't mind using some equipment to do it.
• New Pokemon Diamond and Pearl scans and information.
• Before you hit Ebay, read up on how to spot pirated DS carts.
• Bungie has a preview of the upcoming Halo graphic novel. Cheesecake shot of Cortana included.
• A major shipment of black DS Lite units has gone missing in Hong Kong.
• A boatload of scans from 1990 and 91 issues of Famitsu, showing early Super Famicom prototypes, and early screens of SFC games (SMW, a game called Dragonfly which would later become Pilotwings).

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A film script reviewer claims the Transformers movie script includes a scene of an iPod and Xbox 360 transforming. I could say that's really silly, but... C'mon, Transformers as a whole was silly.

• FiringSquad interviews writers from Time, USA Today, The New York Times and the Washington Post about game coverage in mainstream media.
• Doom 3 and Lego Star Wars are two of the 20+ games on the list for the next 360 backwards compatibility update, due in a couple weeks.
• GameDaily Biz wonders where all the game gods have gone.
• Sony and Pioneer delay the release of their Blu-ray players.
• Oklahoma's games as porn bill goes into law, will probably be deemed unconstitutional before it goes into effect November 1.
• I'm really surprised it took so long: Nintendo Monopoly. Not software, an actual board game you buy at the store.
• Four screenshots of Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam for Wii.
• The Oblivion patch didn't fix item duping. Brilliant.
• Video of Castlevania being performed by the Minibosses.
• More artwork based on 8-bit characters. That King Hippo picture would make a good poster.
• NPR debuts a gaming related podcast.

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Today's scans come from my terribly mangled copy of the June 1993 issue of Game Players. Little hint to you kids out there: Don't take your game magazines to school. My first four issues of Game Players are torn up as a combination of being stuffed into my backpack and being passed around to other kids. One time I was approached by a kid during lunch (who I didn't even know) who asked if he could borrow the latest issue I was toting around. Being the chump I am, I obliged, and when it came back it no longer had a cover. So the lesson here is don't do anything for anyone.

Continue reading "The Saturday Scan - Ad Space" »

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Take Two has cancelled their upcoming drug kingpin game Snow. Am I the only one who hadn't heard of this game at all prior to this?

• Ridge Racer 6 and Condemned: Criminal Origins for the Xbox 360 drop to $39.99.
• Bungie is working on a documentary about the Halo 3 teaser shown at E3. I guess Halo fans will take anything they can get.
• State of Emergency 2 developer shut down.
• Next Gen lists America's biggest, most successful publishing giants.
• The 500 millionth game of Halo 2 was played around noon Monday.
• Scientists have determined this is five kinds of awesome: Special Sega Projects, a collection of animated gifs of all the various ways the Sega logo appeared in the 16-bit days, as well as gifs of all the Eternal Champions and Mortal Kombat series fatalities.
• Boy, Smash Bros. looked a little different when it first started out...

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Features have come and go with Nintendo Power, but one has been there since the beginning: The contests. For the first few issues, it was just game giveaways, but soon they figured you've already got games, that's why you're reading this, so they branched out.

Continue reading "The Saturday Scan - Give It Away Now" »

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I've heard your cries. I know what you're thinking. "If I only had the proper instructions for E.T. The Extra Terrestrial for the Atari 2600, then I could enjoy it to its fullest." Well, I'm here to help.

Continue reading "The Saturday Scan - Phone Home" »

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Today we look at volume 56 of Nintendo Power from January 1994, for a feature about those wacky games those wacky Japanese play, and why we'll never get them here. Because we're not wacky.

Continue reading "The Saturday Scan - Only In Japan" »

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As most people are aware at least to some degree, Nintendo at one point had plans for a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES. Originally they partnered with Sony, but that fell through, then they switched to Philips. If you need a primer, read about it here. With the Philips deal in place, it was time to employ Nintendo Power magazine to do what it did best: Get the legion of loyal Nintendites buzzing about what the company had planned.

Continue reading "The Saturday Scan - The War With Eurasia" »

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We stand here, days before E3 2006, on the cusp of the debut of a new Nintendo system with a weird control scheme and a lighter version of a popular handheld. At a time like this, perhaps we should put things into perspective looking back ten years to the 1996 E3 show, where we were on the cusp of the debut of a new Nintendo console with a weird control scheme and a lighter version of a popular handheld.

Continue reading "The Saturday Scan - Then And Now" »

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In 1991 and 92, Nintendo Power produced a set of five Player's Guides to be offered alongside new subscriptions and sold in stores, with four of them covering multiple games (one book for the SNES, one for the Game Boy, one for the NES and one collection of passwords for games across all systems), and the fifth being essentially a souped up Super Mario World strategy guide called Mario Mania.

Continue reading "The Saturday Scan - Mario Mania" »

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Ah, for the days of one overwhelmingly popular console on the market. It makes things so much simpler. The fans can get a little out of hand, though.. Especially when they're kids. Today we look at the May/June 1989 issue of Nintendo Power -- far back enough that the Power Glove and Game Boy were being introduced as exciting new products coming soon -- to see some examples of the fan brain at work.

Continue reading "The Saturday Scan - The Fan Attic" »

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