Nintendo Power 88 - Super Mario 64 [S1E8] - FunFactor

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Ty, what's the fun Factor elevator? Pitch Well? We
review reviews from old gaming mags. Right, yeah, you got it.
But what if instead of reviewing magazines made by other
people we reviewed podcast episodes made by us. Oh easy,
just give every single episode five stars on Apple, Podcasts,
Spotify and like on YouTube. We could call it fun

(00:22):
Factor power, fun Factor power. You've got fun Factor Two
old gamers reviewing old video game magazine reviews. I'm Ty Shelter,
He's Aiden Moher, and we're two professional writers who grew
up loving the video games and video game magazines of

(00:42):
the nineteen eighties, nineteen nineties and two thousands. Every episode
we take a critical look back on the games media that,
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(01:03):
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(01:26):
else at fun factor Pod. So ty way back on
our very first episode, which was like a million years
ago million we talked about a million years ago, not
three months, million years correct. We talked about PSM, which
build itself as the quote unquote one percent independent PlayStation magazine.
On that episode, you know, we used a great length

(01:47):
about how nice it was to have a media landscape
that not only supported single console magazines but actually had
space for like multiple single console magazines. Uh yeah. It
was a testament of both how much money was in
video games media at the time and also maybe an
interesting experiment and how good coverage could be when you

(02:10):
were behold into one platform, right. And I mean, of course,
the granddaddy of the mall was Nintendo Power, which is
the magazine that we're covering in today's episode. It launched
all the way back during the NS era, I think
in nineteen eighty eight, and it had this like the
first issue had this beautiful plasticcene cover for Super Mario
Brothers Too, which, like the color palette's all wrong, It's

(02:34):
bizarre and surreal, but I just love it so Dearly
ran for twenty four years, which is among the longest
in games media history, but it was also an odd duck.
As an official magazine, they made no such claims to
impartiality like some of the other official mags, and were
very clearly a marketing tool, packed full of previews, walkthroughs, interviews,

(02:57):
et cetera, but very slim on actual like critical content
and reviews during this period that we were looking at.
They sort of expanded on that later in the run
and had more traditional style of reviews near you know,
in the early two thousands, but in nineteen ninety six
it wasn't It wasn't so much, but like did it

(03:18):
really matter? The content in the magazine was of such
high quality, and I was like such a Nintendo sicko
at the time that I was happy to immerse myself
in the beautiful layouts, deep dive looks at games, and
kind of the general overall peppiness and enthusiasm about Nintendo.
They were sort of at the heights of their power

(03:39):
at the time, you know, I couldn't get enough of it,
and I really, in hindsight recognized how it skipped out
on a lot of the juvenile humor that was running
rampant in so many of its contemporaries that we've obviously
talked about at length on other episodes of the show.
What was your experience like with Nintendo Power. Yeah, I
definitely read it, had a few issues, especially when there

(04:02):
was like a game I was particularly interested in. I
think I mostly read it at the grocery store. As
we talked about our quasi universal experiences reading game magazines
at newsstands while our mom's shop, and so there was
something about it. And again, as I said on earlier shows,
I subscribed to game players very very early, towards the

(04:22):
end of third grade. I think was when I started
subscribing to Game Player's Guide to Nintendo Games. So it
was very much into magazines and had opinions about them.
Nintendo Power obviously that first party access a lot of times,
the previews screenshots were so much better than other magazines. Right,
they had a lot of access, as we've talked about
to creators and developers and marketers, having actually behind me

(04:47):
game Master classified. Howard Phillips and Matthew Toronto kickstarted project
with kind of the inside scoop where you had like
the one of the top execs that Nintendo of America
being like a presence within the magazine and humanizing it,
and especially at an era when Japanese game companies in

(05:08):
Japanese made games where this othered thing in positive and
negative ways, and they came over and and you know,
the marketing was who knows what you know it as
a grab bag or whatever. Here you've got a guy
and a bow tie who's like, Hi, I'm the guy
from Nintendo. Look at the Nintendo games. Like that was
very cool to me. But as we talked about on

(05:29):
the Fun and Games podcast, when we went and joined
those folks a couple of months ago, I still could
perceive a sort of corporateness. I could perceive a sort
of like, you know, it's not just like a lack
of juvenile humor, but more I guess PR speak. I
wouldn't have had the language for that at the time, obviously,
but my mom did work in advertising my whole life,

(05:49):
and so I did have kind of a tuned ear
towards like this is still a little bit advertising, and
you know, they would rate games, they would call it
good games, good and bad games. They would point out
things that we're lacking. You know, you could kind of
learn to read between the lines a little bit. But
I I considered their opinions and I liked the access,

(06:12):
but I also knew that I was never really going
to get the straight story from them, right. I mean,
even on the cover of this issue, they build themselves
as quote unquote the only inside source for all Nintendo games.
So they're not even really trying to put themselves up
against the enthusiast breasts or present themselves as an equivalent
to EGM or game players. They're saying, Hey, you want

(06:33):
the stuff that nobody else has access to, this is
where you're going to get it. And I think they
delivered on that, and we'll touch on that through the
flip through, because there's some pretty cool stuff in this
issue that like nobody else would have access to. And
I think that was what really sold me on Nintendo
Power was it felt like something that had a special
element to it that wasn't justified by you know, the

(06:55):
personalities of its writers. Did you trust them, like, did
we need to? I think that's the big question when
it comes to something like an official magazine like Nintendo Power,
because they, like, in my opinion, because they didn't position
themselves as like, you know, a critical source. They never
really tried to be anything or pretend to be anything
that they weren't. I think that was fine. It was

(07:17):
what it was, right, and magazines were so ubiquitous at
the time that it was okay to me to have
one that was just like, you know, pure enthusiasm, even
if it didn't have sort of the critical element that
I was starting to appreciate around this time. Yeah, that's
interesting because I think I did view it as a
direct competitor to the third party magazines, and you know,

(07:40):
it's on the same shelf kind of in the same section,
like this is another one of those, And even though
you knew it was Nintendo self published, it was still
kind of like, okay, well, like what I like is
is the analysis and the information and how does this
stack up? And yeah, there certainly was, you know, and
I'm sure we'll get to this as we flip through.
I think the art you're talking about, you know, like

(08:01):
the art, the commissioned art that covers have been a
subject of a lot of fascination. I think they had,
in their own way, some really interesting and you know,
inspired art design and creative direction to kind of set
them apart. And it didn't hurt that I was just
a big Nintendo fan I had any Yes, yeah, I
had a Super Nintendo, not a Sega. My friends had Szega.

(08:22):
I played, you know, plenty of Sega Genesis. I ended
up getting a Dreamcast and Next Generation, but it was like,
you know, for me, Nintendo was where it was at.
And even so it still felt like, Okay, but what
I want is in depth critical reviews, and what I'm
getting is not that or or you know, the abridged
versions of that. That was enough interesting enough for me

(08:44):
to read, for sure, not enough for me to convince
my mom to spend her hard earned money on, and
certainly not supplanting game players at the time. Yeah. I mean,
if I look through my collection of magazines that I have,
like Nintendo Power, I have a lot of issues from
like the Nintendo DS game Cube era, but I don't
have a lot from this sort of like nineteen ninety
six Super Nintendo, Nintendo sixty four era. The thing that like,

(09:09):
looking back on this issue that really stood out to
me though, was I think Nintendo Power was almost always
supposed to like connect with new players, you know, the
fact that it didn't really have that teenagey humor. It
was a little more you know, accessible in that way.
Like it almost feels to me like instead of trying
to appeal to twelve to sixteen year olds, it was
like eight to twelve year olds, you know, like who

(09:31):
don't really care. They don't want somebody to tell them
if a game is good or not. They just want
to know about that game. And I think that that's
kind of really appealing. It's almost like a gateway into
Nintendo stuff. But I'm sure. Yeah, And I think some
of the some of the strategy stuff, you know, they
have kind of like easy you know, strategy quote unquote
tips and tricks. Yeah, Like the Howard and Nester comic

(09:53):
often had like extremely basic gameplay info in those comics
presented as tips and tricks, and I needed it. I
needed it, Like I do have a pretty distinct memory
of reading a feature on Metroid for nes know, I'd
rented Metroid, I'd played it at friend's houses, you know,
and I've been like, what the hell is going on,

(10:15):
I go forward and then like I can't go forward,
and then I go back and there's a door, and
I don't have like what am I even supposed to
be doing here? And like reading a very simple Nintendo
Power feature that's like oh yeah, in this you look
around for stuff and then you find the stuff, and
then that lets you go backward, which even going backwards
was an innovation to an extent even at that point,

(10:35):
right like here's my platform, I'm slide scrolling to the right,
you know, So like having that Nintendo Power just those
very very basic this is how you play video games kid,
Sometimes it was helpful even for kids that considered themselves
very very advanced gamers for being seven sure, and like
Nintendo was really leaning into a lot of like innovation

(10:57):
in the gaming space, and so a lot of players,
specially younger ones, wouldn't necessarily have the you know, language
to understand that new games like Metroid because it doesn't
play like Mario, and so I think that they recognize
that like having that sort of like again, it's like access,
it's like, oh this isn't new and cool. Me and

(11:17):
my friends can't figure out how to get past the
morphball room. But I just got this issue a Nintendo
Power and now I can bring that out to school,
I can show everybody, you know, what we need to
do next is really compelling. Video game rentals were a
huge thing at this time as well. I'll talk about
it a little bit later, but like I bought Super
Mario sixty four a KRT before I had a Nintendo

(11:38):
sixty four, and I would just rent a console. Right.
All of my anis experience was renting an nes from
the video game, like they're the video rental store, right,
and so like you know, those often didn't come with manuals.
Those often didn't come with you know, like any sort
of instructions, and so if you had sort of access
to that, that was really compelling for kids who were
like trying to explore this new space. Do you ever

(12:00):
have a third party, third party instruction manual? I didn't know.
I had some strategy guides, but never a third party
in structure manual. Yeah. Those my mom went to, like
the hipster indie video store, Any's Lancing Rip Video to
Go an incredible store, big anime selection in like nineteen
eighty seven, when such things did not exist relatively big,

(12:21):
they had like thirty two videos, which was still like
but yeah, they had a big video game rental and
you know, kids would lose the instruction booklets, and somewhere
along the line they got a contract with some company
that made third party instruction manuals that they could just
print off as many copies as they wanted and obviously
didn't have a lot of the original art or anything
like that. Obviously it was a lot of abridged but like, hey,

(12:45):
this is jump, this is run, this is shoot, Like
oh okay, like it got you what you needed to
to get to the game. They were probably getting so
many phone calls from kids and stuff. Nowadays, if my
kids run into like any sort of friction in a game,
they just start yelling for me to come and tell
them what to do. And I'm like, man, like, you know,
back when I was a kid, not to sound like

(13:05):
an you know, old old man, but it's like, you know,
kids didn't have access to an adult who could kind
of walk them through that most of the time. So
I've become the instruction manual for all my kids. But
but yeah, back then, like you kind of did what
you did and what you could and Nintendo Power helped like,
there's some cool stuff in here. And as we do
the flip through, we'll see they sort of merge preview

(13:27):
material with strategy guide material, which I think was kind
of an interesting way of making it more appealing broadly.
All right, it's time to open the cover. If you're
not already a member of fun Factor Ultra and getting
ad free episodes, hang tight through the break. When we
come back, we will flip through Nintendo Power number eighty eight.

(14:05):
Welcome back to fun Factor, to old gamers, review old
video game magazine reviews. Of course, we want you to
review us. Do we get a full five point zero
fun Factor? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and
we'll read the best, funniest, kindest, and most entertaining ones
on the air aiden Nintendo Power. I know a lot
of people have been waiting for us to get to
one of these issues. Give us the breakdown. All right,

(14:28):
So we've got Nintendo Power eighty eight. It's from September
of nineteen ninety six, one hundred and eight pages, so
that puts it sort of in the mid range I
would say, light wise. But we'll notice that there are
far fewer advertisements in this compared to something like EGM
at the time, sure number of games reviewed is ten

(14:48):
for three systems, Nintendo sixty four, Super as game Boy.
This was a big issue. This was a big one.
Emblazoned on the cover is a gigantic, huge render of
Bowser looking like way better than anything you'll find on
the Nintendo sixty four at the time, which I think

(15:09):
is oh a little misleading, Oh yeah ah, But then
the tagline says it all super Mario sixty four Mario
launches the fun Machine, And I thought this, like, besides
like the big impactful, like green and yellow and red's
like really colorful cover with Bowser, not Morio strikingly, but Bowser.

(15:31):
The interesting thing to me was like this branding sticks
out because at this time Sony was entering the game's
market with the PlayStation. They were already like the PlayStation
was already out. They were going deep into portraying their
console as like a more mature gaming option for you know,
kids who played nes Now you're a teenager and you

(15:51):
want something that's for grown ups. Nintendo didn't do that
and still doesn't do that, right. They still lean into
like we make video games, we create fun, no shame,
no fuss, and I think that's like right here on
the cover and really stands out to me. I think
there was a quote at the time. It's stuck in
my head. I can't remember what magazine I read it in,

(16:12):
but through Shi Yamochi, the longtime Nintendo president, said something
like right about at this time, like oh, well, like,
aren't you afraid that like gamers aren't going to want
to play the fun machine, you know? And he was like,
our machine is not for those weirdos who go to
a kiabara and dye their hair brown, like our machine

(16:32):
is for everybody, remember, yeah, and taking great offense to
this in nineteen ninety six as a fifteen year old
who I think has people did still has not gone
to a kiabara and probably never will, you know. But
like consider myself a lot more spiritually closer to those
folks than to American Midwestern families, even though I disputably

(16:54):
was part of one. Yes, absolutely, I mean, in hindsight,
maybe it was the wrong call, Like the sixty four
was pretty flat, but I don't think that's because it
was the fun Machine. I think it was you know,
all the myriad reasons why the Nintendo sixty four failed
are pretty clear. And and again the we and switch right,

(17:16):
it's like every other generation, right, It's like the idea
it's targeting the mass market versus the hardcore gamers is
not the failure. It's the execution of the way that
we target those people. That is, whether Nintendo is king
or in a distant third place. Absolutely, and we're I
think we're seeing also a place where we're getting back

(17:37):
to Nintendo having a pretty clearly defined niche in the
games industry, while Sony and especially Microsoft are trying to
figure out what the future looks like, whereas Nintendo's just like,
we just make games, put your games on our system.
But that's the you know, probably a whole bonus episode
right there. Uh, this issue is like pretty impressive when

(17:59):
you flip over to the mast head, so I think
it's on page seven, and before I do, before I
flip over it, I'm gonna say visual folks, you know,
for people listening to the audio version Aiden when he's
talking about how good this bowser Render is and so
much better than anything that could ever have been on
the sixty four, he's not joking. I don't know when

(18:19):
the next I don't know when this level of size
and realism and a Bowser three D model it was
next created like in the history of time, but it
might have been for like the Super Mario movie. Like
there's there's the textures on the hair, the textures of
the scales, like I mean, you know, this is the
particle effects of the fire and everything. Like they made

(18:41):
this gigantic, gigantic, one off three D render of Bowser
that is nothing like anything that could have appeared on
the system. It's probably two generations away easily of being
something that could be displayed in real time. It's genuinely
a really impressive cover. Yeah, it's like it's probably I
wouldn't expect to see this on the Wii, right, Like
we're probably talking to you to get that level of

(19:04):
like detail in the textures and stuff like that. You know,
it's nineteen ninety six, so some of the texture work
is is crude by today's standards, but like you know,
you can see the texture of his like skin, his
turtle skin, texture of his hair. There's like reflections on
his his spikes and stuff like that. Like it really
is something that like you know, Toy Story was coming
out at the time. It looks like if Bowser had

(19:25):
been in toy Story at the time, and we'd all
be like, WHOA, that looks amazing, and video games have
never looked this good. Okay, flipping through to page seven,
we have the masthead, and this thing is like it's
a thing of legends. If you know anything about Nintendo's
North American history, it's like a Hall of Fame ballot
from the mid nineties. Publisher is Mineru Arakawa, who is

(19:49):
the son in law of the infamous Nintendo president Roschi Yamoji,
who just mentioned he was also, along with his wife,
pivotal in launching Nintendo's North American success in the wake
of the eighties North American gaming crash. He basically got
sent over by Yamoji along with his wife and was

(20:12):
told to start up Nintendo in America. He was sent
to Vancouver, BC, so right close to where I live,
and eventually made his way down into Seattle and New
York City where you know Donkey Kong. He's he kind
of helped launch Donkey Kong into arcades and pubs and
all over the place, and so he was heavily involved,

(20:33):
like you know, in Nintendo Power as the publisher even
you know several years a decade and a half later,
which is interesting. Editor in chief is the legendary Gail Tilden,
who I would desperately love to book for a bonus episode.
Would be one of my like top tier guests if
we could ever get her. Uh so, you know, if
you're listening, Gail, have your people call my people. My

(20:56):
people are Taie. I was just about to say it's me.
I'm people like it's Tie. At senior editor, we have
Leslie Swan, who, in various capacities, including his localization manager
at Nintendo Treehouse, worked on games like a Link to
the Past, Metroid Prime, Animal Crossing, Hotel Dust, and pretty

(21:21):
much every one of your favorite Nintendo games. Leslie Swan
worked on like she was everywhere and touched everything. She
was even the voice of Princess Peach in Super Mario
sixty four, Like incredible stuff, like the range of work
that she did at Nintendo Wild And then you know,
we have a bunch of staff writers as well, and

(21:41):
then right in the editorial consultant list, we've got your
buddy Howard Lincoln, who you're just talking about. So, like,
just you know, these are when I think in Nintendo
of America in the nineties, like these are the people
I'm thinking of, and they were directly involved in the magazine,
which I think is impressive. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean we
had talked about, you know, at this same time, PlayStation

(22:04):
had worked with Ziff Davis from PlayStation wanted their official
US PlayStation magazine that just had Ziff Davis by a
completely independent third party magazine, and go, hey, guess what,
let's have double the budget. You guys hired double the writers,
and you're the official PlayStation magazine. Now go go go
do it, go go PlayStation you know. And well here

(22:27):
we got Nintendo executives, Nintendo creative staffers working like right
on handing glove as the editorial staffers, and with the
editorial staffers of this magazine. It's really something, yeah, really
impressive stuff. Okay, we've talked about the cover, we've talked
about the masthead. Let's get to the editorial content. It

(22:48):
is time for the filip through. Okay, so it's called
a flip through. We're not even gonna have to flip
the page before we get to the first thing I
want to talk about though. On pages seven and eight,
the masthead is presented alongside reader mail, which is always fun,

(23:11):
but specifically what I want to call out today is
the letter art that came in on the envelope. That
was a pretty common thing with these magazines, so people
would write in their letters. It was way before email.
It's snail mail letters, and they illustrate the art the envelopes,

(23:31):
and I don't know, like this is some pretty impressive stuff.
Like you're used to sort of amateurish, like you know,
kids drawing pictures, but like there's some pretty like nice
artwork here and unique artwork. You've got a bunch of
Chrono Trigger, which is obviously appealing to me, but then
there's like some genuinely beautiful illustrations of Zelda, like just

(23:52):
Princess Zelda holding the tri Force, and you've got Diddy's Conquest,
like an underwater scene. Like obviously people who have like
artistic talent, not just kids who are enthusiastically sort of
drawing pictures from their their favorite games. The Real Winner though.
At the bottom of page eight there's a horizontal envelope
and it's like this crazy post apocalyptic mashup including Earthworm,

(24:16):
Jim Samus Yoshi, link Frog from Krono Trigger, and even
Killer instincts, spinal like a badass pirate skeleton, all sort
of a raid in a heroic like you know, like
line of heroes. And in the background it's hard to
tell you know, on the screen, but it looks like
a kind of green, eerie, toxic, post apocalyptic background. It's

(24:41):
like the most bizarre and awesome thing I've ever seen. So, like,
you know, somewhere out there Brian has a Walnut Creek, California,
was living his best life. Outstanding work, truly remarkable. I
wish I had that sort of talent. Yeah, the vision
here is so strong. It's it's is that a dinosaur
from Tuak? Is that what that is? In the middle?

(25:04):
It very I think that's well could be coming out
from between Krono and Frog. I think it's just a
yeah that No, you know who that is? Who it's
from Primal Rage. It's the Raptor. I can't remember their
name off the top of my head, but it's the
Raptor from Okay. Yeah, so, like you know, like a
huge spread of games, like you could tell the Brian

(25:26):
was like hitting up the video rental store playing all
the big hits and just like loving it. So I
like it it's cool to see like original art, you know,
mixed in with people who are obviously like you know,
aping off some of the official art in a fun
way too. There's a pretty impressive, like pencil Crayoni rendition

(25:47):
of Mario RPG's three D art of Mallow and Gino
and Mario. That's pretty cool because, like you're used to
seeing that picture in rendered three D, and this is
something that feels a little more you know, natural, a
little more warm than that. Flipping forward just a couple
of pages, this is the big Nintendo sixty four launch

(26:08):
issue for Nintendo Power, and so we're greeted with a big,
you know, like huge multi page feature about the system itself,
which is fun, goes into like tex bacs and you know,
just the things you would expect Nintendo to Power to
say about this the Nintendo sixty four. They have a
funny little like cutout box out sidebar that specifically talks

(26:29):
about like all the games coming to Nintendo sixty four,
as though there was like, you know, an avalanche of
content coming, which obviously ended up being one of the
challenges for the system. But they were selling at hard.
They were they were going hard there. Yeah, I was gonna.
I was about to say all the seven, I actually
just counted. I count eleven just in this little sidebar,
which of course not all of these were available at launch,

(26:51):
so it's like here we go, Like soon soon there
will be up to eleven games for you to play.
There is we've talked earlier about, you know, Nintendo Power's
access to like exclusive materials. There's a really cool like
schematic of the bottom of the Nintendo sixty four included
in this preview. It's like blue, looks like a blueprint

(27:13):
with a lot of like red lines, architecture. Cool. I
don't know anything about that, but it looks cool to me,
and that's something you'd never see elsewhere. And then there's
just funny stuff, you know, like the fun Machine and
they say, you know what it's called. So it's a
table trying to like kind of make the features of
the Nintendo sixty four a little more palatable for people.

(27:35):
So in one column it says, what's it called anti
alia scene? What does it do? Smooths out jagged edges?
What is a reality coprocessor? It's the heart and soul
of the Nintendo sixty four, A sixty four bit custom
chip from syl and Chon Graphics that performs all graphics
and audio processing. So you know, it's definitely trying to

(27:58):
appeal to people who aren't necessary like deep into game
console architecture, which was probably most people at the time,
and I think it does a pretty good job of that.
One note I wanted to say in that table interesting
unified memory architecture. The N sixty four has lots of
fast memory. You'll be able to add to it too, well, like, yeah,

(28:18):
that's the rampant you no, I know what it's it's
referring to. I think that's interesting that a they're selling
me on. Yeah, it's the unified memory architecture. We put
a whole bunch of fast memory and one spot and
unified it. Also, it might not quite be enough, and
we've made concrete plans for adding more that you'll chunk
on in an expansion pack that is also somehow part

(28:39):
of the unified memory architecture. And like, you know, what
is funny is this is a selling point for the
console it was, and it makes me think about like
nowadays there's a lot of chatter about like places like
Digital Foundry doing tech analysis and should we care about
frame rates and game resolution and all that kind of stuff,
and it's like it's all always been here. Yeah, you know,

(29:00):
like getting the ram cart and playing something like the
Star Wars pod Racer game, and like you enable the
features from the ram cart and it looks so much
better in it plays so much better. There's even a
performance in quality mode in a Nintendo sixty four game,
and so, like, you know, those aspects have always been around,
and it's interesting, like you say, to see how they're

(29:22):
sort of selling it here as like, yeah, it's this
system's really great, it's really powerful, but it might be
more powerful in the future. Yeah, and it is. You know,
people invest in, they want to they want a future
proof that investment. Right. You know, we've been talking a
lot about console launches and prices and you know, properly scaling.
Is it really that expensive right now? The four hundred

(29:43):
and fifty dollars switch compared to what this cost when
it came out. How different are console launches really? And
you know, we're still saying, hey, yeah, the PlayStation is
just basically given up on future proofing and it's going, okay, cool,
We're just going to have an in between console every
generation now there's PS four, PS four pro ps five,
PS five, pro ps six, it's gonna be PS six

(30:06):
pro and just know that, like that's going to be
constantly happening to keep people on something close to the
latest generation of hardware. So, you know, as much as
we might, you know, rag on this a little bit,
they were clearly you know, walking that tightrope between performance
and release date and availability and the fact that it
is a little bit future proofed in that way is

(30:28):
it is a selling point. But it's also just funny
to be given this this sales speech of it's, oh,
it's this unified memory architecture and it's gonna it's there,
there's an expansion port, you're gonna have to add to
it later, and it'll cost money. It's like, there's a
lot of criticism of the Nintendo Switch to screen LCD
screen right now, it's response time and all that kind

(30:48):
of stuff. Without kind of getting into details of that.
This would be like Nintendo talking about how great the
screen is the HDR the VRR one hundred and twenty hertz,
but we may be releasing an get excited about that. Ye.
Pretty bizarre from that perspective, but I do think The
idea of being able to expand and build on your

(31:11):
computer to make it better was interesting, maybe appealing to
PC gamers who are used to doing that sort of thing.
You know, we're nineteen ninety six, so like Doom is huge,
Quake is around this time, Balder's Gate, Diablo Warcraft. Like
I was playing a lot of computer games and getting
an upgrade to my computer, like another like four megs

(31:31):
of RAM to pop into my computer was like like
legitimately a game changer, and so this is the sort
of thing that would appeal to me. It's like, oh,
you mean in a year, I can save up and
make my games feel and look better like I'm in
this is I also one last thing on this because
we do got to keep moving. But in this table,
great contrasts with third party stuff, right. Remember when we

(31:52):
did the next generation coverage of this, some of these
features like load management and MIP mapping and anti aliasing
were described but not described correctly because whoever was transcribing
the interview did it wrong. Some of this information this
technical information is marketing speak, but also all of the
features are described accurately because it's coming from first party

(32:16):
sources and not done by like a journalist in a
crowded you know, conference hall or whatever. So there's it
does give and take. There's a trade off there, absolutely absolutely. Yeah,
Like you're seeing like in Nintendo Power, like the most
sort of like smooth edged magazine at the time, you're
seeing words like alpha blending, central processing unit, you know,

(32:38):
coprocessor stuff like that that you'd never really see. You'd
never get a journalist writing about those sorts of things.
Now we have specialized journalists who cover that stuff, like
Digital Foundry. But the fact that this was in like
you know, the sort of like preschool magazine, you know,
at least that's the way people think of Nintendo Power.
But then you're write that this, you know, z Boffer

(33:00):
information probably came from a dev somewhere at Nintendo and
then was maybe you know, like copy edited to be
a little more readable. But it's definitely a deeper level
than you know, what you were used to seeing in
these at the time. Moving on, the very next feature
is a big spread on Super Mario sixty four. Like

(33:22):
as you would expect, it was the big game. It
is a huge game, right, it's like a high water
mark for you know, game design. It created new genres.
It defined, you know, three D action platformers and continues
to this spread does it justice. It is rich with screenshots,

(33:43):
lots of high res renderings of Mario doing three D
things like flying through the air, like kicking, and these
are all of the same quality that matches up with
the bowser on the cover, like these look really good
for nineteen ninety six, way better than what the game
looks like. But that didn't really matter. It was like
such a vibe. I would see these renderings and then

(34:05):
I'd see Mario in the game. My brain would just
like kind of put these renderings onto the Mario in
the game because they exist in this capacity. This is
like the kind of content that I would just sink
into for hours as I waited to get my Nintendo
sixty four. It's also like a preview, but it's a

(34:28):
strategy guide and it's an instruction manual. It's all those
things we were talking about earlier. I love it. It's really
engaging in a way that these mid nineties magazines always
tried to be just unique page layouts, unique graphical assets,
really really image heavy, not afraid to spend twelve pages

(34:50):
on something. Yeah, you know, because they have all the
word count but they want to fit all these images in.
This is the way to sell video games in the
mid nineties, make them feel unique. You couldn't do this
with a movie or a TV show or a book
or an album. You can do this with video games, though,
And I think that's that's worth you know, that's worth

(35:11):
paying attention to and wondering and thinking about how we
cover games now and how maybe we could do a
better job of covering games. Yeah, again this I love
this spread. It's like fifteen sixteen. It's the first two
page spread in where you've got Mario's Supermoves Princess Toadstool's
Castle are like the main headings, the subheadings for both
sections are different, and they're like three D rendered and

(35:32):
whatever three D rendering font and there's like a couple
of different fonts, but there's a lot of space, there's
a lot of color, and then stuff like Princess toads
Stools Castle. We have this kind of uh, you know,
abstract blocky kind of background with a big coin and
then we've got this layout of the castle, the main
hall of the castle with the two layers and the

(35:54):
staircase and everything, and that is like an exploded three
D render that they must have gotten in dev tools.
There's no way they could have done this any other
way to give you this layout of the interior with
the roof off and no background. But then outside they've
laid a blue sky and I think it's just a
generic blue sky cloud graphic, but it gives off the

(36:15):
appearance of being there's the outside and there's the inside
of the castle with all this space around, it feels
really open and airy. And then also there's a picture
of the outside where you can see the exterior and
the blue sky of the Princess's castle, and it's it's
it's just a really great layout. A lot of attention
to detail, a lot of professionalism, and yeah, is this

(36:37):
Molly Patterson and her colleagues of mismatched computers like working
into the wee small hours of the night, making things
up as they go. No, And and maybe that passion
is mission, but this is passion and attention to detail
and professionalism of a different kind. Yeah. Absolutely, those three
D maps, like the bird's eye view maps each of

(37:00):
the levels, because that extends beyond Peach's Castle, like there's
bab Bomb Field on the next page there's wamps fortress.
These are like and then on page nineteen there's like
just a straight up overhead map of Ba bomba Bob
on battlefield. This is stuff nobody else could get butt
Nintendo Power and the way that it sells the idea

(37:23):
of a three D video game is so good, and
it's useful as like a walk through, because like these
are genuinely like useful looking maps, Like if you were
playing Mario and you didn't know where you were, you
could look at these maps and reorientate yourself. But they
also are like, hey, this is three D. This is
a new way to think about video games, of about
video game worlds, and this is the sort of thing

(37:45):
we can do. We can show you the whole level
at once. Just remarkable stuff that I think to me,
like I said earlier, like does it matter if we
trust Nintendo Power's objectivity, Not really When they're giving us
kind of unique access to game content and coverage, I'm
not looking if I know, I'm not looking for critical

(38:06):
you know, feedback about games. This stuff is invaluable. It's
so good, and I'd love to find out, like I
don't know where do these assets still exist? Like who,
like who pulled these out? What are the stories behind this?
Because this is something that you need that direct like
connection to the developers to get really cool. And then yeah,

(38:28):
so the Mario one is like it's several pages, it's
quite long. It goes through the first like three levels
of the game, which is which is pretty pretty impressive,
basically the whole first world, and teaches you how to
play the game and even shows you, like, you know,
like little secrets that you might not find otherwise, like
there's a warp zone pull out and stuff like that.

(38:52):
Just fun. It's something that will get you excited about
the game, and that continues on as you go deeper
into the magazine. They do something similar with Pilot sixty four.
They do something similar with Cruising USA, which is like
an underrated gem that I played a lot of on
the Nintendo sixty four with my brother. My favorite thing
about the Cruising USA preview though, is that they have

(39:13):
like a red like Ferrari driving along with like a
canyon in the background, but then like over its shoulder
are the like houses from Full House, like the Pink
Ladies or whatever in San Francisco, and it's just like
this hilarious superimposed image. I do believe. Oh no, this
was made in Washington, so they would have just found

(39:34):
some funny stock imagery of what at the time in
the mid nineties, like these were the full house houses, right, Yes,
and the implication that the Tanners lived in one of
these incredible, beautiful row houses was funny. So I do
like thinking about the fact that there's this Ferrari sort
of driving through a canyon but also past the Pink Lady. Yes,

(39:55):
is that what they're called? The Pink Ladies, the Painted Ladies.
I can't I can't remember. The Pink Ladies is Greece
the musical Okay, it could be, that could be. I
don't know, but I know I think it's a painted
I think it's the Painted Ladies. I don't know. Yeah,
this is Tie from the future. They are, in fact
the Painted Ladies. The Pink Ladies are the girl Gang

(40:16):
from Greece, the musical Shoebop, Shauadawada, things of that nature.
I had lunch across from them once. It's a very
nice park. After cruising USA. We have a turrock feature,
so it's called rocking with tarrok Oh. Yeah. Notably, it's
spelled t you are okay okay in the uh in

(40:38):
the title for the section, and this is more of
like a it's a preview, but it's also like a
deeper more of a I think they must have interviewed
the dev team at Iguana for this. Okay. Oh, there's
a picture of the Iguana team. Uh, it's called the
caption is the Tarrok team at Iguana Entertainment. But they

(40:58):
spell it to you are O. The spelled the name
of the game. We're off right there where it's it's
spelled correctly everywhere else, So you know, even Nintendo Power
had those little copyet it mistakes here and there the
standout for me. So there's like lots of images screenshots.
Of course it's Tarok. So all of the screenshots are

(41:21):
a big enemy, a flat like textured ground, and then
a gray wall of miss. Right, because that was Tarok.
Every single screen shot included here, same thing, big enemy gun,
big wall of mist. There's a whole section of this
interview about the mists and then trying to like sell
it as like an environmental like aesthetic feature and not

(41:43):
like a we can't render anything past like six feet
beyond what the player can see, so we're just gonna
hide it all in fok, which I think is is
really funny and shows like in hindsight, Tarrok hasn't aged
very well because of that miss But at the time
when three D console games were new, it was seen
as like a clever way to push the hard work,

(42:06):
and I think it did. I think the game was
good enough and people liked it enough. It did give
you a suspense and that you know, it's tough to
see the enemies coming. It does look more jungly that
kind of thing. Any kind of environmental effects were new,
but no, it was also definitely pretty clearly to hide
the flaws of the system in terms of what they

(42:27):
could render put on screen at once. And you weren't
seen a lot of that. You weren't seen missed in
Super Mario sixty four or Pilot Wings or Crewis in
the USA, and so you didn't really recognize that it
was a technical thing, not like a vibes thing. Of course,
we have now gone, you know, with however many years,
twenty years of hindsight, thirty years of hindsight, we can say, oh,

(42:48):
now we've seen missed in a million games from this era.
We know exactly what they were doing, but it is
interesting to see at the beginning how it's been sold
as a feature, not as a limitation. And that's why
I think it's worth going through and looking at magazines,
these old magazines and understanding like what were the devs
thinking at the time, like what led to these decisions
that are you know, remarkable now or they're looked back

(43:11):
at as like sort of lamentable, And you can see
how it all came together. After the Nintendo sixty four stuff,
We've got a bunch of superanneous content. There's a big
preview of Kirby, smaller previews of the Goat, sim City
and Lufia two. There's some secret of evermore content, and
then the game Boy stuff. And this still would have

(43:33):
been a huge draw for me at the time, Like
I was still deeply into my Super Nintendo. I was
still deeply into my game Boy. You know, you can
tell the order of preference by the editor editorial staff
because it goes Nintendo sixty four, then Superintendo, and the
game Boy. But I'm glad to see that, like even
the game Boys getting some space for all of those
kids out there who are still playing game boy all

(43:55):
the time, Right, It's all very like hype training promotional content,
but it's really high quality. And I think that's what
separated Nintendo Power from similar magazines and helped it last
for twenty four years, which is pretty remarkable. Yeah, and
I'll say in some of these, like you know, the
Kurby content, and this goes way back to the NYES

(44:15):
days where you wouldn't just have high quality screenshots that
were ripped, you know, like from the cartridges or whatever.
You've got literally whole levels laid out in one giant
wall to wall screened is graphic and genuinely, I don't
know how how useful it would be to me as
a player to have, you know, the metaonite level of

(44:36):
this Curby game printed half an inch high from once
from the left page the left edge of the left
page to the right edge of the right page on
a two page spread. And I can see every little
you know in this this like thirty thousand foot view
except thirty thousand feet sideways. Like I don't know what
that gets me, but it's freaking cool to see. It's

(44:58):
really cool to see, like, wow, that's what it looks like,
you know, like if you actually looked at what the
Techmo Super Bowl football field would look like, and you go,
wait a minute, the skiing is way off. So yeah,
that is graphically very cool and interesting and again nothing
anybody else could do. And I think that this is
something that's interesting to look at now because in the

(45:19):
Nintendo sit switch to Welcome to Her game, they show
off all the new features from the console, and one
of the features they want to show off is four
K display, And so they have a mini game where
you play the first level of Super Mario Brothers that
we've all played a million times before. But instead of
like just smooth scrolling through the level, the level starts

(45:40):
on the left side of your TV and it just
expands all the way to the right edge of your TV.
So you see the whole level displayed as you play through,
but you're like tiny on screen, so it would be
like exactly what we're seeing here at the bottom of
this page, Like this is a level that spreads across
three pages in the magazine, Like it looks like a

(46:00):
border along the magazine at the bottom of the magazine.
It's about what an inch tall maybe, ah, And yeah,
playing that level in uh in Welcome to Her reminds
me of this, And I think that Nintendo, with this
kind of wealth of knowledge and experience in their back
catalog because they made an in house magazine, they can

(46:21):
look back and say, hey, how can we think about
the way we portray video games or help people experience
video games in different ways that can be informational and
fun and interesting, and like I want, you know, I
wonder if there's that connection there where somebody remembered these
like long tiny levels displayed all at once, and if
that somehow led you know, to to the way that

(46:43):
they treated Mario and welcome to her. Probably not, but
it's fun to think about and kind of see that
that train and progression. Okay, well, no matter how great
the content in these magazines, are our favorite content to
read is the writing in your life, letters, your reviews.
When we come back from this ad break, we read
your reviews of our reviews of classic video game magazine

(47:06):
reviews right here on Fun Factor. So hey, everyone, this

(47:28):
is Tie. Just wanted to let you know sorry about
the letters section this week. Aiden and I just had
our schedule mismatched. We were going to do an extra
recording session where we got this week's letters in but
we just didn't get that together before I had to
put this up. So, but we need more, We need
more reviews and letters to talk about. Go ahead and
send us a message on Discord, send us an email

(47:50):
if you don't want to put your stuff up there
for the whole world to see. On the reviews. We
will read those on air as well. Just note that
if you send us nice letters, just we will read
them if you said them to us to read. So
all that being said, let's get back to the show. Well,

(48:17):
we as always are having five stars out of five
worth fun today, folks. If you are to again leave
us a rating and review on Apple podcasts, it helps
us grow, helps us get on those all important leaderboards,
moving up those Apple podcast charts, the download numbers. It's
a big deal for us. We also see people say
over and over they love the YouTube version. They love

(48:39):
having the slides and be able to actually see what
we're talking about while we're talking about it. Subscribe there
on YouTube, Watch on YouTube if that's what you'd like
to do, because we got to get bigger, if we
want to be able to offer more of the features
on YouTube that other creators like to offer. You too,
But now it's time to review the review. So, as

(49:04):
mentioned off the top, critical review content in Nintendo Power
is pretty slimm hmm. There's technically a review section at
the back, but it's called now Playing and it issues
like any type of rating system in the capsule reviews themselves,
there's a single like plus and minus bullet point for
each game, but they don't have any scores, no numerical scores,

(49:27):
no indication of like editor's choice that comes later. I'm
not a big fan of numerical rating systems, but doing
it this way where it's like every game has a
plus and a minus gets a screenshot in a write
up sort of like flattens the structure where every game
is equal, every game is good, and it has a
pro and it has a con and that's it. And

(49:48):
I think that that was sort of a way for
a Nintendo Power to approach and sell every game equally
without showing sort of like a bias or favoritism. And
I don't think it's great, but it, you know, kind
of is what it is. Yeah. I like the little
icon code here where we've got one one person for

(50:11):
one player mode multiplayer alternating there is one and then
one at fifty percent transparency, multiplayer simultaneous two next features,
Is it a password or a save? Battery backed memory save?
Is it compatible with game Link, Super Game Boy Enhanced?
Does it have the Super Effects chip? So it's got
all these little icons that indicate critical features that you know,

(50:31):
are the save versus password, you know, is a big
deal at the time for sure. Yeah, but there's also
only so like they display these icons beside some of
the release information the company that released it, the date,
the size of the cartridge. But there's only room also
for two of these icons. So every game has two icons,
not every game, actually some of them have one, but

(50:54):
it doesn't also let you kind of get granular with
all the features that they have. But it is, you know,
kindkind of a selling point. And as we look through
some of these reviews, some of them here we have
Mega Man on the game Boy and like, the plus
is excellent play control and graphics challenging, the minus is
awkward diagram passwords. For Pilot Wing sixty four, which was

(51:15):
a big launch title, the plus was an amazing flight experience,
great graphics and play control. You don't even have to
achieve a goal to have fun in this game Minus
missiles don't leave any permanent damage, so you know, I
think that like honestly, this is where you get a
little bit more of the actual like criticism SimCity, which

(51:38):
is like one of the best Super Nintendo games of
all time. You've got the positive is one of the
most involving and creative Super nes titles. Excellent interface, unbeatable
price at an MSRP of thirty four to ninety five.
The minus is unstructured play may leave some people confused
or bored, and so like we'll get to Supremoor year

(52:00):
sixty four, but like even then, even the criticisms are
sort of like, eh, yeah, you know, this can be
kind of hard to do or this is kind of like,
you know, awkward or whatever. It's not really like they're
still sort of like, you know, dulled a little bit.
I would say, yeah. And it's also it's also it's

(52:21):
really interesting like some of the theoretical you look the
critique when you go through it, awkward diagram passwords, very
simple gameplay like Disney's Pinocchio. Very simple gameplay. It's like
very simple game play, Like you know, it's a game
Boy sides licensed side scroller. It's it's probably terrible, it's

(52:45):
not very simple gameplay, it's probably garbage. None of the
negatives will stop somebody from behind the game, right right, right.
And then also it's this false balance aiden, this is
the original both sides, because we're sitting here going one
of the most involving and creative super nas titles of
unbeatable that at an incredible price, all as one positive

(53:07):
but then negative. Yeah, unstructured play may leave some people
confused or bored, like, yeah, okay, SimCity, Like, if all
you want is shooters, you are not going to love SimCity.
This is a false This is a false balance. These
two things are not exact thing exactly. And like the
fact that every game has to have a positive and

(53:28):
a negative lends to the idea that it's just this
even playing field, right. It just homogenizes everything into one
sort of valuation, which I just think is was obviously intentional,
but also you know, like not very helpful. Let's get
into the Super Mario sixty four review. It's not the

(53:51):
first review, so they do these alphabetically. So Super Mario
sixty four is actually kind of worried. About two thirds
of the way through the review section, it starts halfway
down the page. It's a two column page, so halfway
down the page is a bunch of text. At the
top of the column. On the right hand side, you
get two screenshots from fairly early in the game, and
then you get the plus and the minus. The features

(54:13):
touted in Super Mario sixty four are one player mode
designated by a guy wearing a backwards cap or side
forwards cap, ball cap, and a safe feature. The reviews
in this magazine are broken into two pieces. The main
one are these capsule reviews. Then if you switch to
the end of the now playing section, so that's on

(54:33):
page ninety seven, there's a table here. It doesn't really
stand out. It is color coded, which is handy, but
it's obviously buried right Yes, each game here, so it
covers every game in the same games that were covered
by caps' reviews. Every game here is rated on like
a fifty point numerical rating system because there scores out

(54:56):
of five, but you can have one decimal point, so
I believe that breaks down to like a fifty point
numerical system. Yeah, it's not really explained, you know, anywhere
what the difference. So like, for instance, the bugs Bunny
Crazy Castle two got a three point five in Graphics
and Sound and a three point six in play control,

(55:18):
three point zero in Challenge, and then the final category
is Theme and Fun and it got a three point four.
What's the difference between a three point four three point
five and a three point six. There's like, that's so
granular and there's no explanation, which is just hard to
take two seriously. So each game is rated on each

(55:40):
you know, those four categories gae Graphics and Sound, play Control, challenge,
and Theme and Fun. Each game can also be awarded
an editor pick from one of the six quote unquote
pro players. This seems to be made up from magazine staff,
though like no last names are given. The explanation text

(56:01):
just calls them pro players. Yeah, there's a Leslie. Hard
to believe that's yeah, as presumably Leslie's right, but the
fact that they call them pro players, they don't call
them reviewers. The reviews, like everything else in the magazine,
does not have a byline, so it's impossible to say
who reviewed it, whether it was one of these pro

(56:22):
players or whether it was somebody else. We don't know.
Each of the pro players can give an editor pick
Star to any of the games. The stars are represented
by your favorite wing Dings of course, which were all
the radio yeah, which was great, and each pro player
who was designated by a different wing Dings star also

(56:45):
beside their name or underneath their name, it lists their
preferred genres. So Leslie's were RPG's, puzzles and adventure. Henry
liked fighting action in sports. So the idea was if
a pro player liked games that you like and they
gave an editor's pick, then you were probably gonna you know,
like it as well. But again, really soft, really like dull,

(57:07):
the edges of like, hey, just because it doesn't get
an editor's picker, just because you're a favorite editor and
pick it doesn't mean it's not good, right, and it's
it's giving you technically the same information as game Fan
where we talked about where all these editors have, you know,
they all review the games. You have four different scores,
you know, you have this it's like a panel review
type situation, but the scores are divorced from the copy

(57:29):
of the game. You have to go looking for the
scores and then you have to go match the scores,
and the editors picks biographical icon instead of their their
iconic you know, chivvy quasi anime, Gonzo edgy drawing caricature.
It's just oh, okay, so the white star inside the
black circle is Scott Scott like sports simulation and adventures equally,

(57:50):
and no other genres. And so I know of that.
I'm looking at these stuff. Okay, there's the star with
no circle. Okay, that's the black star with the white
circle inside no circle. Then there's the snowflake, you know,
and you're trying to like line this. So it's like
it's so hard to actually get to what are these
people's opinions, And there's like like like technically it's all there,

(58:10):
but it's it's clearly obfuscated to divorce it from the
actual reviews that people are and there's no like consistency
to the order of the stars. Also, so like for
the Pinocchio game, they got two stars, and it looks
like Paul stars first and Scott's second. But then if
you go down to SimCity, which got four stars, Scott's first,

(58:31):
then Paul's comes second, and so like, and that's not
alphabetical because Dan's is in there and it comes later
in the SimCity review. So like like you said, very
clearly obfuscated. Uh, to you know, prevent people from really
looking to this as like an identifiable way to you know,
understand radiant reviews. Uh. It's about as reductive of a

(58:55):
review system as you can get before they just become previews.
I think this is like the barest minimum of what
you could call a review. It's got a very unclear
rating scale system. Numerically, it's got these editor picks that
it doesn't really tell you how that's determined. It's just yeah,

(59:18):
it's not very useful, and it wasn't intending to be useful.
I think is the most important thing. But now let's
dig deep because we're going to get into the review
Super Mario sixty four, which is like genuinely like game
changing game. It changed the industry. Yes, let's see what
Nintendo Power had to say about it. Mario comes to

(59:39):
life in the premier title for the new Nintendo sixty four,
which will be released at the end of September in
North America. Super Mario sixty four pulls players into a
true three D world where they have virtually no limits
to their movement. Mario's mission is to save Princess toadstool
from a prison in a painting. Once again, Bowser is
behind the Shenanigans. The magic of Shaguru Miam Photo's game

(01:00:00):
design can be felt everywhere, from the stunning graphics to
the variety of worlds and events. Players may find fewer
enemies to stomp and more amazes and puzzles to solve
than in previous Mario games, but the action is just
as demanding as ever. Mario leaps, climbs, swims, flips, does handstands,
and glides with one of three special caps. It's pure magic.
Nintendo Power goes in depth into Super Mario sixty four

(01:00:23):
this month. Positive is a new standard for action games,
incredible graphics, sound, and variety of play. The negative is
shifting camera angles take some getting used to. Pretty good
summation of what Super Mario sixty four is, I think
at the end, so if we flip forward to forward
to that table, Nintendo Power awarded Super Mario sixty four

(01:00:45):
with a four point five and graphics and sound, which
like is bananas because that game was transformational and still
looks good. Three point eight in play control, which is
interesting because I think that's Super Mario sixty four remains
one of the best controlling three D platforms period. It
just still feels like a delight to play. But the

(01:01:07):
camera in the original is a pain. It is a pain.
It is a pain. It got a perfect five point
zero challenge whatever that means. Does that mean it's really hard,
really easy? I don't know, got a four point five
and theme and fun, which again I just like, at
the time, contextually seems crazy to me not to give
it a perfect score and theme and fun sim City.

(01:01:30):
To me, sim City, sim City is one is four
point six, one tenth of a point more thematic and
fun than I'll be honest, I would probably do that.
I love sim City on the Super Nintendo. But this
is kind of like actually kind of more critical in
terms of review scores than most magazine reviews at the time,

(01:01:51):
Like Mario sixty four is racking up perfect scores. Yeah,
and so like I was surprised by these numbers in
Nintendo Power. Yeah, what did you think? What do you like?
What do you think? What's your take on this? This
is yeah, no, and I mean they're they're clearly standouts,
but like you know, still a three point eight for
play control. It's like Sim City gets a three point six, Like,

(01:02:14):
it's it's stunning to think what that would even mean.
Mega Man gets a four point three, and hey, yeah,
I it's a Mega Man for game Boy. Yeah, I
imagine that a Mega Man game at this point in
nineteen ninety six has some pretty fine tune platforming mechanics
that are going to feel slicker and easier than the
first Mario sixty four. Well, no, just I mean in

(01:02:35):
terms of you know what you're doing right, like Mario
sixty four feels good, but like running around in three dimensions,
the stop turn, flip jump, you know, mastering those moves
take some time, and you can miss platforms, you can,
you know. I mean it's and like you said, the camera,
maybe that's where they're kind of digging the camera the
most with play control. Yeah, that's probably a big part
of it. But it's it's the flattening, and it's the

(01:02:56):
both sides. Where you know, Pinocchio for game Boy gets
three point five three point one two point seven three
point three and Super Mario gets four point five three
point eight five point h four point five, you would
not really be And I guess Pinocchio did get two
editors picks, which is funny because Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle two,

(01:03:21):
also a licensed property for game Boy, got slightly better
scores across the board and no editor's picks, you know,
So it's like, you know, for the Game Boy got
more editors picks, and Mega Man for the Game Boy,
which got four's four plus in every category, four plus
scores in every category. So it's like you think, here
and it's this flattening right when you're disembodying everything from
everything else. It's so hard to tell it. It's so

(01:03:42):
hard to genuinely go. Super Mario sixty four is a
landmark and rod and they say it in the they
say it in the text. It is a huge stand
it's a breakthrough, it's a standout, incredible and they're not wrong.
But it's so hard to see from this scoring system
that a bunch of completely forgotten games for game Boy
and Super Nintendo. I just don't even hold a candle

(01:04:03):
to what's happening here with Super Mario and Pilot Wings, frankly,
which is a great grain as well. And I think
sim City also sim City, like you said with Super Nintendo,
I also think that's a classic, that's a great game.
It does not there is no daylight between it and realm,
which I don't even remember. There's no daylight between them
is yeah. Yeah, and the and like the one really

(01:04:24):
truly putrid game here, War thirty ten the Revolution still
is two point eight two point eight and three point three,
which is still like, oh yeah, basically a three on
a scale of five, and that is like clearly garbage.
So you just go like six out of ten. Yeah, yeah,
tie right, and this is what it should be. It
looks like it should be a three or a four
out of ten. So it's just flattening everything to the

(01:04:46):
point where nothing means anything. Yeah, exactly, that's right, And
it's just unuseful because you can't contextualize any experience against
another War thirty ten The Revolution, Like you know, sometimes
you can see a game and you just know it
going to suck based on the name. Oh yeah, I
feel like that game just like never was ever going
to you know, have a chance. But I do want

(01:05:07):
to touch on some of these positives and negatives because
I've been going through again and reading them and like
in relation to the looking at the scores, The editor
picks Donkey kong Land too on the game Boy, Uh
is a pretty good game Boy platformer. It gets a
plus of excellent action, play, control, and graphics. The minus
is stages are basically the same as those in Donkey

(01:05:29):
Kong Country two for the Super As the fact that
that like that is listed as a negative for that
game when it got five editors picks. I'm not even
going to try to figure out who didn't give it
an editor's pick. But like, replicating super Neis gameplay and
level design on the game Boy is a remarkable achievement, right,

(01:05:51):
And the fact that that's portrayed as a negative here
that is equal in like weight to realms negative which
is no same feature and unbalanced levels of difficulty, Like
that sounds awful, like a game that's too hard and
doesn't have a same feature. It sounds like an old
exploit of arcade game right. The fact that that is
given the same weight as stages are basically the same

(01:06:14):
as those in Donkeyong Country two for the Super rantings
like that to me is an achievement, but it's put
alongside something that's like genuinely, it would turn me off
a game, and that's so hard to contectualize. I get
if you've already played DKC two and you go back
to this one. You go, oh, I've basically already played
this game. Why are you buying this game? Why are

(01:06:35):
you buying what's essentially the game Boy port of a
Super Nintendo you already gave? But like, all I wanted
was to play console games on the go too, right,
Like I ate up the game Boy Advance versions of
Final Fantasy because I was like, holy, and I can
play Final Fantasy six, yes, on a game Boy right
on the ferry in my car, like you know, like yeah,

(01:06:56):
Like I was happy to keep experiencing games. I think
like as adults, we're kind of like overrun by a
lot of options, right, But as a kid, I was
okay replaying games. I only had access to so many games,
but reviews also allowed me to understand, like where should
I put my money? Yes, where should I take? You know,

(01:07:16):
like if I can get one game every six months,
or I've saved up my allowance and I can buy
a game, Like what should I buy from this list
of games in you know, Nintendo Power, Like you should
buy Super Mario sixty four, Like that's the game you
should buy. That game is by far the best game here.
But it's not presented in that way at all. SimCity

(01:07:39):
is a fantastic pickup, and if you have thirty four
to ninety five, you can buy a game Boy version
of Donkey Kong or Pinocchio or SimCity. Like you should
buy SimCity because it's so good. Those games are such
a step up above everything else that they should in
some way stand out, but they just don't. It's just
this like flat even homogenized playing field because this review system, right,

(01:08:01):
but it's not the dog wagging the tails, the tail
wagging the dog because it's not. Oh, this review system
flattens all the scores, so you can't tell what's good
and what's bad. It's we need to make sure that
you can't tell what's good and what's bad. So what
review system are we going to come up with? Because
we don't want to exactly. We don't want to give
Super Mario fives across the board because people will accuse

(01:08:22):
us of bias. And at the same time, we don't
want to embarrass our third party publishers who are publishing
I mean, obviously also they're publishing great games, but they're
publishing crap, and then we have to put it next
to our great games, and we can't say our great
games are better than there, and we also can't say
our crap is better than their great g you know,

(01:08:43):
so we just have to kind of all wash it
and give us appearance of objectivity. And it's it's literally
aiden it's literally, Elon Musk says. However, critics can tend
like it's it's literally. On the positive side, super Mario
sixty four is an all time classic right out there
the gate and a definitional reason just to buy Super Mario.

(01:09:03):
On the downside, the camera controls are a little wonky,
and that's not false, but they are stretching for negatives
and stretching for positives all across this, and it's palpable
to me, and like, I don't even care that they're
nice to the bad games right right. That does a
disservice to players. But okay, I get it from marketing perspective,

(01:09:25):
but what it really does a disservice to is Super
Mario sixty four and SimCity and Tetris Attack and Pilot
Wing sixty four, like the genuinely good games that should
be recognized as as such, that should have, you know,
a place of elevated position because they are so good
and separating that is important. And you know, I've worked

(01:09:47):
for two decades as a critic and understanding why things
are successful and why there is a spectrum of quality
and how games can achieve that is an important part
of you know, criticism and games media and culture writing.
And it's just obviously and for reasons, everybody understands this

(01:10:09):
falls apart as any sort of like usable criticism because
of the flattening between realm and Super Mario sixty four.
Absolutely so, Aiden, I gotta know what's your score? Oh man,
I'm gonna give this. I can't go easy on this.
This is gonna get a This is going to get

(01:10:30):
a two point two out of five out of five,
two point two out of five, because I do think
it doesn't two point five uh, winging stars, two point
two point two out of five wing ding stars. I

(01:10:52):
will give it credit because I think it does accurately
identify what's good and what is you know, a flaw
in Super Mario sixty four or like objectively it it's fine,
but just the whole thing here is just a bit
of a mess. Yeah, I'm gonna go even harsher. I
think I could have given it two point two out
of ten. Uh so let me go, uh go one on? Yeah,

(01:11:16):
I think I think I'll give it one point four.
How about that we'll use the granularity of the system
they've provided us one point four out of five winging stars, because,
like you said, most of the what little text there
is is mostly your Super Mario. You save the Princess
as you expect, he runs and jumps and stuff. Uh
and like again, they do manage to communicate. It's great,

(01:11:41):
but the false positivity and negativity, the burying of the scores,
the burying of the editors picks, the illegibility of the
whole thing just sets my teeth on edge. And it's
why by the time this magazine had been published long
since stop breading and tendo power. Yeah, you've convinced me.
I'm going to I overshot. I'm going to lower our score.
I'm gonna go from a two point two to two

(01:12:02):
point one. Okay, h fine grades of scale? All right, everyone?
What do you think that is? Our review of Nintendo
Powers review of Super Mario sixty four. If we get
it right, did we get it wrong? Leave our reviewer
review at Apple Podcast. Post it as a comment on YouTube.
We'll read the best ones on air, and hey, go

(01:12:22):
ahead and pass this show around to all your friends
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fun Factor Pod Special thanks to Millennium FALC for all
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dot com. Unlike all these old magazine do you won't
have to wait a whole month for your next installment.

(01:12:44):
We're dropping new episodes every two weeks. Let's go at
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(01:13:07):
will have a maximum score in fun Factor in the

(01:13:43):
nineties like these are the people I'm thinking of and
they were directly involved in the magazine, which I think
is impressive. Sorry say that again. I got a d
M from something like, oh geez, what so yeah say
that again? Oh okay, yeah, oh I just said so, Like,
you know, when I think of Ninten in the nineties,
this is the group of people I think of, and

(01:14:03):
the fact that they were like directly involved in Nintendo
Power is impressive. As the editorial staffers and with the
editorial staffers of this magazine, it's really something. Yeah, really
impressive stuff. Now it's a segue. If you want fiddle sticks,
fiddle sticks, Okay, here you go. But h okay, we've

(01:14:27):
talked about the cover, We've talked about the mass hud.
It is a huge game, right, Sorry, lost my train
of thought again. Okay, yeah, it's like the big game.
It remains a huge game. It's a water mark, water mark.
That a word high water high water mark. It's like

(01:14:49):
a high water mark. This is a good time to
just respond and then for sure. Yeah, sorry, I skipped
the head and then I got myself losties. So uh yeah,
so do do you want me to respond and then throw? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
just respond and then throw or just throw yeah, you
don't have anything? Whatever works? Okay, well no matter how ty,

(01:15:16):
the review is not very long, will you give it
a read for me. Yeah, sure we can. We can
get this one all in one go. I think Mario
comes to life. You know what, hold on, hold on,
there's a whole section that I forgot to talk about. Sure,
let's see what Nintendo Power had to say to it.
Mario comes to Life. What Oh sorry, I already said

(01:15:38):
that part, So go for it. Yeah, Mario comes to Life.
In the premieer title for the New Mario Leaps, climbs, swips, leaps, climbs, swims, flips,
does handstands, and

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Nintendo Power 88 - Super Mario 64 [S1E8]

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Nintendo Power 88 - Super Mario 64 [S1E8]