Nintendo Power Review: Issue 1 - July/August 1988

Here we are, issue number one, and it starts off SUPER strong with the iconic cover art! Mario looks fantastic, but let's take a moment to appreciate the impressive clay rendition of Wart. They really nailed it! In another decade most game magazines would just be using official artwork for covers, and it always seems so bland to me. I love when artists in these old magazines were allowed to go weird and wild. And as we'll see inside, boy did they ever!

Nintendo Power magazines are still one of those huge ways I can get a dose of pure nostalgia so quickly, especially those old issues. From the unique art they used on their covers to the very Japanese style of layout they employed. From the sometimes weird illustrations they would have in their pages to the oh so beloved comics like Howard and Nester. I'll sometimes just grab a random old issue and flip through it, reliving a time when this was my one connection to the latest video gaming news and strategies for beating the toughest games.

I meant to write this post up exactly a month ago, when I went to the movie spoken of in the title. But maybe this is good too, as I've now had time to think about the movie a little bit more since first seeing it.

I thought this was kind of a funny coincidence since the Tetris movie had just happened and everything. So I and some friends and colleagues have a Tetris high score board going. We play the NES game on game A, and for a while I was in second, then eventually bumped down to third. Last week I hopped in for a round, not really planning on doing much, but just playing to play. And I…

The Tetris movie released on Apple+ this past weekend, so of course I had to see it day one. I'm happy to report that while I was a little nervous going into it, overall the movie was very enjoyable, the actors were great, and most things didn't feel embellish too much, just enough to heighten what was already a really crazy story to begin with.

My first experience with VR (well modern VR anyway) was three years ago, and I instantly fell in love. I think I was shown the archery game in Valve's The Lab first, which was pretty amazing. Then I played Beat Saber, and thought to myself that no matter what, I had to have more of this. It took a bit of time for that to happen, but when the Quest 2 had a price drop,…