1 More Castle - For Dummies
Jonathan Hallée
A Farewell Message from the 1MoreCastle Contributors
Daniel Lamplugh
Retro Power: Goodbye, 1 More Castle
Alex Weiss & Valerie Minnich

Chris Owens

Chris Owens enjoys gaming history and wants to share it with whoever will listen. You can follow him on Twitter @metalslime80 for daily NES gameplay videos and other retro game links that he finds interesting.

Playing With Power

Playing With Power new site

I wanted to thank everyone who checked out the magazine that defined my childhood and I hope you have enjoyed reading the old issues of Nintendo Power as much as I have enjoyed posting them.  It’s been a lot of fun going through the scans and remembering the days of dissecting the magazines for details and screenshots of games that I wouldn’t even get to play but would imagine playing them through the images in the pages. I’m moving my scans over to a WordPress site which you can find here.  I hope you come by and check out some more issues of the greatest magazine in history, Nintendo Power.

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Playing With Power

Playing With Power – Nintendo Power #8

Overall, issue 8 feels like it spends a lot of time looking forward and not as much on what’s current. But given that this issue would have been produced during the summer of 1989, there wouldn’t have been too many games coming out around that time.  Still, in this issue we get a great look at the NES classic Ducktales and more information on the RPG that Nintendo hoped would storm America, Dragon Warrior.  We also get a feature on the NES Satellite which allowed 4 player gameplay on games that supported it.  The games listed that support it are mostly sports game but I was a bit surprised to see that Nightmare on Elm Street supports 4 players. Read More

Playing With Power

Playing With Power – Nintendo Power #7

Happy Anniversary!  Since the Nintendo Fun Club News, Nintendo publications were on a bi-monthly release schedule so issue 7 marks the 1 year anniversary of Nintendo Power.  There wasn’t to many changes to the layout of the magazine but they included a fun addition that would give gamers a reason to pull out their copy of Super Mario Brothers 2 and play it again. Read More

Playing With Power

Playing With Power – Nintendo Power #6

T-U-R-T-L-E POWER!  By the middle of 1989, we were in the middle of a turtle craze that would last for arguably the next 10+ years.  Originally seen in an ad in the last issue of the Nintendo Fun Club News, the first video game based on the Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtles had released and was the cover feature of the magazine.  Looking back now it is definately the most unique of the games bsaed on the licence but at the time this was the only way to play out the characters we watched every Saturday morning. Read More

Playing With Power

Playing With Power – Nintendo Power #5

Issue 5 released with the first format change for the magazine.  Going back to the Nintendo Fun Club News, the reader mail was always found toward the end of the magazine but this issue it was finally moved to the front where it would remain for the run of the magazine.

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Playing With Power

Playing With Power – Nintendo Power #4

After patiently waiting since first being announced in issue 3 of the Nintnedo Fun Club News, we finally get a full length feature on Zelda II: The Adventure of Link!  Highly anticipated by everyone who played the first game, Zelda II was very different than the original Legend of Zelda and the game was much more difficult than the first game.  If you ever wanted a perfect picture of the 80’s though, just look at the cover of this issue.  The mullets, the perms, and is Link wearing an earring in that picture???  The cover of the magazine could have been the cover to a rock album of the day.

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Playing With Power

Playing With Power – Nintendo Power #3

So after the controversy of issue 2’s cover, Nintendo scaled back the cover of issue 3 for one of the most boring covers…a pair of tennis shoes.  Sure they are tennis shoes with rockets…but shoes none the less. Not too much changed with the issue, the format is the same and the amount of coverage per game is still pretty expansive.  A couple firsts in the issue…role playing games were given a true introduction with an explanation of how they are different than other games as it relates to slower action and longer gameplay and then proceeds to highlight Ultima and Legacy of the Wizard, neither which are greatly remembered these days.  Also, for anyone who might remember the cartoon Captain N: The Game Master, the character was introduced in this issue with a short story about the origin of the character.  The story isn’t the same as the one from the cartoon but it’s interesting to learn that the character did originate in the pages of this magazine. Enjoy issue 3!

On another note, as I’ve started working through my issues of Nintendo Power I have found I am actually missing issues 7, 8 and 9.  I am going to start searching online to purchase the issues but if anyone has a copy of any of these issues and would be willing to donate, please send me an email at ce_owens80@yahoo.com.  Thanks and see you next time!

Play with power!

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Playing With Power

Playing With Power – Nintendo Power #2

Happy New Year!  Welcome to 2015 and issue 2 of Nintendo Power!  I’m slightly changing the set-up of my posts.  In my first few posts, I’ve been commenting on certain pages of the magazines if I notice something interesting or noteworthy but that worked when the issues were only 30 or so pages.  Now the issues are going to be 100+ pages so scrolling through all the pages to find the comments will be difficult going forward.  Also, I realized that this will be the first time many of you will be reading these magazines and I would much rather you enjoy the issues for what they are without my comments interfering with your enjoyment of the magazine.  So for that reason, I will keep my issue notes and comments to the paragraphs. Read More

Playing With Power

Playing With Power – Nintendo Fun Club News #6

At the start of 1988, Nintendo had 3 big titles in Mega Man, Contra and Wizards and Warriors all releasing within a few months of this issue coming out.  Once again, the newsletter retains the style and format of the previous 2 issues but the back of the Game Pak Wish List has the first mention of the new magazine that will release later in the year.  Nintendo had to know the time to strike was around this time with such big titles like Metal Gear, Double Dragon, Super Mario Bros 2 and Zelda 2 all releasing by the end of  1988 and both EGM and Gamepro launching within a year, they wanted to get their magazine out first to beat the magazine competition to the market. Read More

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