The End Of An Era: A Part Of My Childhood Disappeared This Month

December is usually a happy month, with all the Christmas parties and New Year events, but this year, a little part of me is sad. This month marks the end of an area in videogame magazines; Nintendo Power is no more. NP was the first magazine I had a subscription to, I remember when my mom decided to get us a subscription, we found this ad in a game we just bought and saw that if we subscribed for a certain time, we would get a free game. So, we did and we got Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest) for the NES. We were so happy! Started to play and it was unlike any game we'd ever seen! If it wasn’t for NP, I wouldn’t have started to play RPGs and I may have passed a great game genre.

I remember, every month around the time we usually received the magazine, I checked the mail box to see if it was in. The mail box was under a lock and my dad had the only key. We poked in the little hole to see if there was a magazine and oh god, when we felt it was there, my brothers and I were impatient for my father to come back home. The first thing we did when he crossed the door was to jump on him for the mail! Good times...

This is what I miss the most, the anticipation. These days, we have all the information at the tip of our fingers. With the internet, we know months in advance what will come out, how it will be like, how it will play. Everyone knows. But, when the only source for our Nintendo information was Nintendo Power and you were the only one in school who had a subscription, YOU were the source, you could tell your friends what new game was coming out! And they didn’t know. You never knew what to expect when you bought a game and played it, because its content wasn't all over the internet. You could feel the magic, the excitement. Also, with Nintendo Power you had exclusive bonuses coming with the magazine or subscription. 

I may be nostalgic right now, but I will miss the magazine dearly. A part of my childhood disappeared this month. Long lived Nintendo Power...

[Edit by Lanarchy: Damn that was beautiful. That could have been written by me, word for word. I remember too, poking in the mailbox just to see if maybe, maybe my Nintendo Power had arrived ! I guess we all did it. It's one of these things that whoever you are, if you're a gamer, you've lived the same moments and we will forever remember and cherish them.]