ASS!
He's gonna take you back to the past
To play the shitty games that suck ass
He'd rather have a buffalo
Take a diarrhea dump in his ear
He'd rather eat the rotten asshole
Of a roadkill skunk and down it with beer
He's the angriest gamer you've ever heard
He's the Angry Nintendo Nerd
He's the Angry Atari Sega Nerd
He's the Angry Video Game Nerd
♫ ♪ ♬
♫ Get the power ♫
♫ Nintendo Power ♫
♫ Get the clues that you can use, Nintendo Power ♫
♫ Higher and higher, fighting your way through enemy fire ♫
(explosions)
It's time to chill out. Nah, don't worry,
I'm not going mellow on you or anything like that.
And next time it's going to be a game review again.
But for now, I just want to take you back
to one of the most important parts of my childhood: Nintendo Power.
You know, today there's Internet.
Anything you want to know about any game, you just look it up.
But back then, your only source of information was magazines,
like Nintendo Power.
If you had a subscription, you were the man.
One of your friends will be breaking their balls to beat some game
and you'll be like, "Oh, I know how to beat that game," or, "I know a code."
That's because you had the power!
Nintendo Power, motherfucker!
When it landed in my mailbox,
issue one was the most mind-blowing thing I've ever seen.
Just opening up a page to a map of Metroid, it was so helpful.
That game made you feel like a rat in a maze.
Then there was the Super Mario Brothers unlimited 1-up trick,
the famous Contra code that gets you thirty extra lives,
and how to skip to Zelda's second quest.
All in this groundbreaking issue;
from front cover to back, it is absolute classic.
One thing that used to piss me off was the NES Achiever section.
It's just a buncha nerds showing off their high scores.
But how do you prove it? You gotta take a photo of your screen.
And nobody really knew how to do that.
I mean, remember, there were no digital cameras back then,
so, you take the picture of your screen,
you have no fucking clue what it looks like,
and there could be like 20 other pictures on the roll,
so you either have to, like, waste them all, or wait 'til it gets finished,
you get your mom or dad to take it to the store to get the picture developed,
it comes back and what does it look like? Looks like fucking shit!
So, Nintendo Power printed some guidelines basically saying,
"Look, dumb shits, this is how you do it."
And if my game said "cheese," I think I'd shit my pants.
And if I was wearing that, I'd have problems.
Nothing brings back memories like breezing through an issue of Nintendo Power.
Remember when the Nintendo 64 was the Nintendo Ultra 64?
Remember when the piece of shit Virtual Boy was called the VR-32?
Remember the NES Satellite, or the SNES Catapult?
Remember Star Fox 2, the game that never saw the light of day?
Remember reading about the new shows coming out,
like Captain N and The Super Mario Bros. Super Show?
Remember that shitty movie The Wizard,
and that fucking dumb-ass Super Mario Bros. movie?
Man, I remember reading about that and being so excited;
I couldn't WAIT to see that movie.
But it was just like waiting for a buffalo to take a shit all over your face.
Another thing powerful about this magazine
was the power to know what games were coming out.
But only if we could read between the lines we would know how shitty they'd be.
This one says, "in-depth playing tips on the horrifying sequel to Castlevania."
This one says Back to the Future
"has that distinctive LJN style and an interesting timer."
Wow. They knew it was bad.
Another classic section was the Top 30,
in which they'd list the most popular Nintendo games.
I don't know what Ninja Turtles was doing at number one for so damn long.
But anyway, it was only NES for a while,
but then they started doing the top SNES and Game Boy games.
They even had a Top 5 for Virtual Boy.
That's just hilarious,
because that's almost the whole library of games for that fucking piece of shit.
The covers were always exciting to look forward to.
This one gave kids nightmares and parents complained.
I thought it was awesome.
And I never noticed that face in the background 'til today.
This one's cool because it's an owl, and owls are cool.
But this one really sucks. Why is it all gray?
I mean, what the fuck kinda cover is this?
Oh. Well, what the fuck?
The illustrations were awesome too.
Even if I didn't have the game, it was fun just looking at the pictures.
Here's a page on Clash at Demonhead.
Just a nice page, everything's fine,
but then there's something that bothered me.
What's this?! He's flippin' the bird!
He's givin' the finger! And I'm not making this up.
Well, this one's kinda intimidating. I mean, what's Dracula's problem?
(Castlevania II night theme plays)
Speaking of illustrations, there were also the comics.
Howard and Nester were classic.
Usually it would relate to a new game that was coming out;
like, this one's about Castlevania II;
it even makes mention of that weird tornado thing.
There was also a Tetris comic, Battletoads, Zelda, Mario, Star Fox,
Metroid, Shadows of the Empire, and Killer Instinct.
The ads were kinda weird.
This kid better be careful not to get those games wet.
Actually, those games suck ass, throw 'em to the sharks.
Wow, there you go! Huddle around the phone.
Charge your parents' phone bill up the ass.
Unmask the power animal in you! Uh-oh, here we go!
And radicalize your game with a subscription to Nintendo Power!
Holy shit, will it make me grow claws like that?
You know it's gotta be awesome when you're flying a Jeep through space
going apeshit with Nintendo controllers.
This one's so weird somebody actually wrote a letter asking,
"Did you really freeze a Super Nintendo? I'd love to know."
The answer, "Ah, Jay, the wonders of special effects and photographic tricks!
"The answer that you're looking for is 'No.'
The block of ice is actually just a plastic shell. It's way cool though, huh?"
As Nintendo Power progressed, the ads went from being weird,
to just being... fucking disgusting.
Why the hell is there a picture of a jar of toenail clippings
in a video game magazine?
What where they thinking?
Now here's the worst one yet.
It's some old creepy bitch holding a log of shit! God damn!
One ad was so gross, I stapled the page shut. I'm actually not joking.
Then this one just shows a hurl bag. Yeah, that's great.
That just sums up how I feel about the whole situation.
Nintendo Power! Don't open unless you got a barf bag!
(vomiting noises)
Each issue always came with a poster.
As you can see, I still have them on my walls,
but each one represents frustration.
Getting these things out without ripping the fuck out of the poster
is just a real shit sucker.
Ah, fuck!
Ah, shit. Fuck.
Eventually they started putting staples in the posters.
Fuck!
Piece of shit!
Besides the posters, there was a lot of stupid shit,
like this Donkey Kong iron-on t-shirt.
And this weird scratch-and-sniff Earthbound thing.
Oh, dat stinks!
Then there was also these cards in the back. I mean, what's the point?
Star Fox looks fucking pissed.
Speaking of Star Fox, there was also this fighter jet paper cutout model.
Then there were those Magic Eye pictures.
You're supposed to stare at this thing and see Mario or something.
I don't see shit.
There was also a contest in every issue.
Grand prizes would include a sneak showing of the Ninja Turtles movie,
a chance to meet Arnold Schwarzenegger,
to win Bill and Ted's phone booth,
to win a Street Fighter II arcade machine, to dig up dinosaurs,
or to be an extra in The Mask II.
The Mask II?
Oh, that's a great prize! That movie never got fucking made,
unless you count Son of Mask, but that wasn't 'til about ten years later,
and did they give the winner a rain check for that?
To be in a movie with a computer generated baby,
or any of the other sequels to Jim Carrey movies that don't have Jim Carrey?
Then there's this prize. It's just plain weird.
"Have you ever dreamed of yourself in a tropical paradise,
surrounded by sea and sand, a volcano rising at your back?"
Well, not if it's erupting like in the picture.
"It's tropical, dude!" There's the sun. I don't really see the sun.
There's fun--oh, that's where the fun is, right there? Surf? OK.
Uh, you? You're right there? OK.
Sand? Well, that is definitely sand.
And trees? Yep, uh, there are trees, all over the place.
There was also a contest to design enemies for future Mega Man games.
Some of the entries would include Balloon Man, Sun Man, Yo-Yo Man,
Spring Man, Magic Man, Clock Man, Whip Man, Spook Man, Clown Man,
and the only two female characters were Mega Woman and Mega Girl.
Then there's... Weaseletta and Terror Teddy?
What the fuck?
Nintendo Power was great,
but as it went on, they made some dumb decisions.
It was really nice when the spines were all numbered,
so I can easily organize all the issues, but then... what the fuck?!
That's so inconvenient.
I mean, some of them didn't even have the number on the front cover.
You had to open it to find out.
Then they came back to their senses and brought the spines back
with a picture of Mario. Way to go above and beyond.
So, let's read some letters.
Here somebody asks, "Do your Nintendo tapes only last five years?
Does it matter if you set them on chairs or if you put the controllers on the floor?"
Huh.
Here somebody sent in a recipe for Mike Tyson's Punch.
Oh, that's funny.
Oh, and oh my God, here we go, we got a Zelda rap.
(rapping) ♫ It's the Legend of Zelda and it's really bad ♫
♫ The creatures in the game are really rad ♫
This sounds familiar.
All right, now we got some Mario jokes.
"Why did Mario cross the road? Because he couldn't find a warp zone."
"What kind of fish would dare to attack Mario? A Barakoopa."
"How does Mario know what will happen in the future? He uses a Luigi board."
Aw, God.
All right, now we got some Zelda jokes.
"How did Link win the basketball game for his team? He used his Hookshot."
"What did Zelda tell Link when he couldn't unlock the door? Triforce."
"What did Link say to Ganon when he captured Zelda? Leever alone!"
OK, here's a really weird one.
"If Mario Paint has 41,664 dots available
"(judging from page 112 of the Mario Paint Player's Guide),
"and 15 different colors to choose from,
"then did you know that there a total of,
"1, uh, 97885712197941 (repeats 'oh' quickly)
"different possible images to create on a single page?
That's a lot, eh? Just thought I'd tell you."
"Uh... thanks, Ian. That's certainly some useful information."
Now we got some complaints.
"The game I purchased that was completely different than I expected
"was Rambo for the NES.
"I saw him firing a machine gun on the package and it looked really cool.
"So I bought it. When I got home I started to play the game.
"It was boring. All you do is walk around and fight with a knife.
The only enemies I met were spiders, gorillas, bugs, et cetera."
Tell me about it. We'll get to that one some time.
Ooh, ooh, here we go.
"I once bought a game from a friend called Fester's Quest.
"I was expecting a great game after reading about it in Nintendo Power.
"But even with the magazine at my side,
"it took me two and a half hours to make it to the first boss
and another two to make it to the second."
You wanna know about Fester's Quest? Next time.
Oh, here's a good complaint.
"So, nice names guys, Mario 64, Super Mario Kart 64, Pilotwings 64,
"Wave Race 64, Killer Instinct 64, and the list goes on. Yeeeeeesh!
"I'm not really mad, but I think you guys
could at least put some effort into the names of the games."
He totally has a good point, but here's the response:
"So you're saying you wouldn't be in favor of our plan
to rename the magazine Nintendo Power 64?"
Wow, what an asshole.
"It is quite apparent what an active and important role
"marketing plays in the video game industry.
"I have to wonder what you are thinking
"when marketing the Nintendo 64 to elementary school gamers.
"You risk alienating gamers 15 and up.
"You should target older gamers, because you'll also target younger ones,
"since the audience perception of 'coolness'
often depends on what the older, teenage audience thinks is cool."
I agree. And the response?
"Your suggestion inspired us to target more teens with our marketing,
so tune in to a very special episode of 'Friends' this week to see--"
OK, here's my letter.
"Dear Nintendo Power editor: what the fuck is your problem?!"
♫ Get the power ♫
♫ Nintendo Power ♫
♫ Get the clues that you can use, Nintendo Power ♫
♫ Higher and higher, fighting your way through enemy fire ♫