Player's Pulse

[Nester the Lark]

Sometimes I like to go back through my old issues of Nintendo Power, and it's always fun to read the mailbox section called "Player's Pulse." Some of them are pretty entertaining, and I thought I'd occasionally post them here for fun.

Unfortunately, my back issues only go back to volume 20, because that's when I subscribed. If anyone would like to add letters from issues before that, be my guest!

This first letter is from volume 20, and was actually sent by Steve "Woz" Wozniak of Apple computer fame. He was a huge Tetris fan back then, and was always sending his scores in to Nintendo Power.

This is to update you on a couple of my recent Game Boy Tetris scores. On July 8th I achieved a score of 404,599 with 200 lines while flying at mach 2 and 53,000 feet in the Concorde between London and New York. This was my first score in excess of 400,000. In one sense, it will always be one of the "higher" Tetris scores ever -- 53,000 feet high!

My first score in excess of 500,000 was 507,110 on July 26th, even though I had only 167 lines. Photographs of both scores are enclosed. I will write again when I score 600,000

Steve "Mr. T" Wozniak
Los Gatos, CA

P.S. My "lines" record is 202.

The Woz actually did break the 600,000 mark a few months later, but the magazine stopped printing his scores. So Steve decided to outsmart them by sending them in under the name "Evets Kainzow" -- his name spelled backwards. It worked, but when the score was printed, Wozniak had forgotten about it, and when he saw it in the magazine, he thought, "Hey! That guy got a higher score than me!"

I'll type up some more letters in the coming days and weeks.

[nocturnal YL]

What? My line record of GB Tetris would be somethere around 140, and my high score... I don't have records for that.

It's a shame that modern Tetris games have a guideline to follow, because games complying that guideline would be too easy.

[Boo Destroyer]

I haven't looked at Nintendo Power in years. I wonder how letters in these current issues must be like?

[Koopaul]

Nintendo Power has become incredibily biased and asinine.
Shouting out that they hate certain characters for no reason, and always picking on DKC series.

[Boo Destroyer]

Mar 29, 2009 14:47:57 GMT -5 Koopaul said:

Nintendo Power has become incredibily biased and asinine.
Shouting out that they hate certain characters for no reason, and always picking on DKC series.

Any particular examples of these?

[Koopaul]

Let me dig through my pile...

Ah, look at issue 235 on page 8. "Country Fan". Look at how they completely ignore Sonny's respect for Country as they show their preferred love for Arcade/ Gameboy DK.

Okay, try this, issue 226 page 20 under DKC3
"In spite of the series' increasingly lame character design"

Now on that same issue flip to page 83 in their reveiw of Smash Bros.
"I even enjoyed playing as Diddy Kong- I've alway hated that guy."

[Boo Destroyer]

I also recall Miyamoto saying he wasn't satisfied with DKC. Just because he wasn't so interested in it, they have to blatantly follow his lead in that respect? Or something.

[Koopaul]

Miyamoto was dissapointed that people would "buy a game with poor gameplay because of good graphics"

I don't know what Miyamoto is thinking, DKC had great gameplay.

[Arcadenik]

I don't think Miyamoto meant that DKC had awful gameplay, I think he meant he didn't like people buying games with awful gameplay just because they have computer-generated graphics like DKC's and that was why he made Yoshi's Island to look the way it does now... to prove a point - that even games with great gameplay and crayon-drawn graphics can be as good as games with great gameplay and computer-generated graphics.

[somemannerof]

My understanding is that Miyamoto was harsh on Donkey Kong Country in an interview because Nintendo was pressuring him to make Yoshi's Island in the same visual style as Donkey Kong Country. He apparently apologized later, but I've never seen citation of that fact.

[Nester the Lark]

Here's another letter from volume 20. Keep in mind that this is the January 1991 issue. The Internet was not a common household thing, so in general, people didn't get to hang around on message boards like we do. But this shows the kind of community and innocent enthusiasm that Nintendo fans had back then. I wish I had a club like this. It sounds like it would've been fun!

I am president of a club that goes by N.E.S.A. Our motto is "That was easy." The other members and I are 17, and all together, we have finished more than 150 games.

Members Jason and Daniel have Game Boys that we play through big speakers during lunch -- the teachers love that! I've gone as far as hooking Game Boy up to a guitar amplifier. At first it sounded pretty obnoxious, but after a few adjustments, it sounded awesome. Sometimes we get together at a members house and hook the NES up to a stereo.

Some of the games I've finished are Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, Shadowgate, Snake's Revenge, Ninja Gaiden, The Guardian Legend, and Ultima.

I've videotaped most of my game endings so I can see them and show them to my friends without spending mega-hours completing them again. I also taped the cinema scenes and exciting conclusion to make my own "Ninja Gaiden -- The Movie."

I love playing my NES, but it doesn't take over my life. My first love is beating percussion, and I've even won some soloist awards at jazz festivals.

A tip for Final Fantasy: Some weapons and armor have magical powers; be sure to take advantage of them.

T.C. Christensen, Agent 2112
Midway, Utah

[nocturnal YL]

Ah. I do sometimes plug computer speakers to my DS too. And that actually feels nice.

And I like the ending taping thing. I would use my digital camera to record my gameplay sometimes, but that's subject to a quiet environment and hundreds of MBs. Could have used a normal recorder, but I don't want to downgrade my very nice component cable output.

[TV Eye]

Wow...even though I never experienced the kind of life that guy did (I wasn't even a year old ) it still brings back memories of me playing my Gameboy with my friends.

[Nester the Lark]

Here's one more letter from volume 20 just because I thought it was funny.

I am 20 years old and a member of the Theta Chi Fraternity at Eastern Michigan University and I'm writing to tell you about one of our spring breaks. In March two of my fraternity brothers and I decided to drive to South Padre Island, which is in the Gulf of Mexico off the southern tip of Texas. It took us a little over 20 hours to get there driving straight through. The Game Boy came in really handy in passing the time on the way there and back, but that's only the beginning.

When we arrived, about 14 of our fraternity members were already there. We ended up spending about half of our time playing Game Boy in our hotel room! Tetris and Super Mario Land were the big hits that drained our vacation time.

The humor in this is that even though the weather was nice and the girls were gorgeous, we still spent a lot of our vacation playing Game Boy. It just goes to show that you don't have to take a vacation to have a great time. Next time, just pull out the old Game Boy and save some money!

Mark Preston
Ypsilanti, MI

P.S. Since Luigi doesn't get much recognition, we're making him an honorary Theta Chi. As you can see, he's very happy!

They included a fan art of Luigi holding a Theta Chi flag. But the funny part is Nintendo Power's response:

We're seriously worried about you guys. Game Boy also works OUTSIDE.

[Nester the Lark]

This is a cool letter from February 1991, volume 21. I loved reading things like this back then, because I believed the idea that Nintendo wasn't just for kids. It definitely isn't now, and I'm glad, even if it's not quite the way "core" gamers would've wanted it.

"Old Lady" Scores

I wanted to drop you a line to let you know what a help Nintendo Power is. The Super Mario Bros. 3 Strategy Guide was my first issue. It arrived just in time -- with its help, I beat Koopa.

I had purchased a few back issues at a local toy store. I'm writing because I noticed that most of the items were about young kids. When I got my hands on the November/December 1989 issue, I was delighted to see the poem by 75-year-old William Convery. I don't know Mr. C, but he's my kind of grandpa! I want you to know that all my friends are in their mid-twenties and older, and those of use who have kids play NES video games more than the kids do! A lot of you readers are adults and proud of it.

A funny thing happened to me when I received Tetris for Christmas last year -- I became "Tetrisized." One day I stopped at the corner store to get a Pepsi. I saw the arcade Tetris game there, and I couldn't help myself -- I dropped in a quarter and began playing, not really noticing the kids playing next to me. After I completed four or five tetrads in a row, the boys began watching my play. I set a high score on the machine by the time I finished. One boy turned to the other two and said, "Wow, check out that old lady's score!"

I'm 34 and have two kids of my own. Move over, children, Mama's on a roll!

Gail Gillit
Manteca, CA

As hard as I tried, I was never able to get anyone else in my family hooked on video games.