Has anyone gotten their copy of the May Nintendo Power? I haven't gotten mine yet and it's almost May.

Wait, people still read that mag?

Unfortunately I received mine yesterday. I only signed up for it to get the Zelda Bonus disc. I even asked the NOA rep if I could just pay the $19.95 to get the disc and them not even bother sending the magazine....she said, "no". Oh well.

may? i have the june one already - w/ Tales of Symphonia on the cover.

Well I'll probably get my issue today since I posted a topic about it and requested the issue be resent from Nintendo. I certainly don't want to miss out on their great uh...well they've got good...well, I'd hate to have a break in the artwork that's on the spine of the magazine

Recieved issue 180 June Today (4/28/04).
Has the very interesting Tales of Symphonia cover.
I believe Nintendo only puts out like 10 of these a year.
Anyways.....For all the bashing this rag gets. I enjoy
the freebies and reading material.

Plus I have won 2 items since I have been a member.
Though I have yet to recieve my 2nd place Sword of
Mana Medallion award........2k of us of so I guess
it will take time.

Beats Gamepro.

I got mine. I love the bit in the awards section where Zelda won best graphics and they say "Now please stop emailing us if you can't even spell "the" or "suck" properly!". I died laughing from that.

One thing I noticed in this issue is that they're planning to release Donkey Konga in the US later this year.

We have a subscription just for the Zelda discs, but it still makes decent bathroom reading material.

An interesting editorial change I've noticed is that they are allowed to acknowledge the existence of other game systems, albeit only dead ones. In the Shining Force article they mention the Genesis and I think I saw a mention of a Dreamcast once. So they're not totally isolated anymore.

i've had my copy of the issue for a while now. interesting Tales of Symphonia article, i wonder if the game will be any good though. they always hype up every game so much, that you end up thinking every game is awesome.

Regardless of the accuracy of this statement, it isn't saying much.

That WAS pretty funny, and quite out of character for NP. Maybe they're moving in a better direction. In general I thought the awards were well done and I didn't really disagree with any of the picks.

As a magazine copyeditor myself, I'm often appalled by what NP passes off as editorial content. But I remind myself that their target audience is young teenage boys and they are essentially a long-form advertisement for Nintendo. Working within those constraints, I think they do a decent job. I'm primarily a Nintendo fan, so the exclusion of other systems doesn't bother me that much. Honestly, I just get depressed when I read about some of the good games on other systems because I have neither the money nor the time to play them.

I use NP as a supplement to video game news gleaned online, which is where it's freshest anyway. They also provide good-looking strategy guides, a nice RPG news section, and occassionally do inform me about a good game that I would have otherwise overlooked. But I don't consider it great journalism by any stretch.

And OXM.

Both of which I unfortunately get free. I thought they'd be worth it for free, but in reality they're both just more junk mail to fill up my trash can.

Oh, I'm well aware...

I kind of like OXM just for the demo discs and nice screenshots. Granted their "reviews" are a little scary but nice screens and demo discs. Plus after i'm done i throw them in the back of my classroom for the kids to look at when they have free time.

I got a subscription about 2 years back as part of a Super Mario Sunshine bundle. I must say it was a much better magazine back in the earlier days when there were no ads, or maybe memory was just being kind to it. With the new ones, I was pitching them into the trash as soon as I brought them in with the mail.

Unfortunately the free OXM subscriptions don't include the Demo disc. :-(

I don't really care about screens, there are tons of screens online so mags are pretty useless for that anymore.

True, but waiting for screenshots to load on IGN is like slow death, so sometimes it's nice to be able to see them with less effort.

Nothing beats the Nintendo Fun Club newsletters - NP can't even get close to the excitement of waiting for the next issue to come with it's 8 pages of content!

But those screenshots are tougher to look at while taking a bath or sitting on the toilet.

I haven't read an issue since the one with the clay Mario on the cover that looked like it was scuplted by a 5 year old.

That was the very first issue, roughly some 15 years ago.

I just got my June issue last week, but my May issue never showed up.

Tom: Go to Nintendo's website, log in and go to your subscriptions page. You can tell them you never got your May issue and request that they send one to you. That's what I ended up doing...I'll probably get it sometime this week.