Honestly, I subscribed from about fall ‘99 until the magazine shuttered in 2012, and I cannot think of a game they scored that was vastly out of sync with the rest of the gaming media. If anything, sometimes they elevated more obscure stuff, like when Elite Beat Agents got ranked best DS game ever.
I think that’s why they ended up making the switch to the five star scale: soooooo many games got brutally killed when it was out of 10. But even when they switched over, I don’t recall them ever steering me towards anything bad.
Man, I loved that magazine. I don’t think I’d be a video game journalist today if it weren’t for that magazine. NP and EGM had such a huge impact on me as a teen.
I had no idea it was that good and had no plans on buying it. Totally bought it as a result of that article and it was such a good decision. Love that game. Needs a revival in the Switch era.
I first subscribed at the start of 1990 and stayed with it (minus a few lapses when I was in college) until the end.
Yeah, they’d mention every game even in the early years, but the actual good ones got the most pages. And some of the most expensive/rarest NES games got BIG coverage.
The worst I can say about the magazine is that it could be prudish with some M-rated games, and that didn’t help the company’s image. They’d have no issue covering Resident Evil, but Conker’s Bad Fur Day barely got a mention (understandably) and Eternal Darkness (bafflingly) got no coverage.
I think the issue with Conker and Eternal Darkness is that Nintendo Power, having built itself on tips and tricks more than anything else, had strategy guides for both games (the N64 era was when they really leaned into first party guides), and too much might take away from the big $15 guide.
Going off memory (since I’ve been forced to sell my near-complete collection), I think RE2 got a Now Playing mention that it was a tech marvel, but it was otherwise very undersold in there, and I think it may have been because NP was still run by the people who started it when NOA was kid friendly.
Oh, it was definitely to keep the magazine family friendly, from what my colleagues told me. That changed dramatically by the time I joined a few years later.
