from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 114 (March 2002)

An excerpt from an otherwise mundane preview of Turok Evolution. Most of it is taken up with glamour shots, but this one in the top corner is striking. Why? There’s FOG! Yes, it’s the feature that defined a generation of Turok titles, but the finished release of Evolution finally had the hardware to let you see more than five feet ahead of yourself. It does lose a lot of character without the mist, though. It’s not The Lost Land if you can actually see the land ahead of you!

Also, I guess there’s not a lot of bare, flat plains in the finished game either, but, shit, who wants to hear me talk about how level the ground is?

from N64 Pro issue 4 (February 1998)

What else could it be? This amusing little ad appeared in a couple of mags at the time, spread across two pages, and was probably one of my first experiences with the little white and blue terrorist.

All the Nintendo magazines were sort-of-but-not-really hyped about the upcoming game, which meant lots of previews, in-depth features and other snippets to get me chewing at the bit for it. I’d never even known of the series before, but I was excited like you wouldn’t believe. My brother and I were churning out all sorts of outrageous fanart and fanfiction to tide us over ’til the game’s release, including a lavishly-copied recreation of the first episode of Robotech… with Bombermen. It’s all gratefully lost to time, though.

Being my intro the series, I’ve a big soft spot for Bomberman 64… even though the game is hokey as all hell. It’s got some really lovely sprawling levels, but over half the area space is dedicated solely to bonus items, and there’s little to no direction regarding your objective. There’s some really inventive usage of bombs for exploration and puzzle solving, but the game is way too touchy to pull them off comfortably or consistently. I have warm memories of the game, and respect it in a lot of ways… but holy cow, replaying it can be an ordeal.
It did act as a jumping-on point for myself and a lot of other fans, and while its reception remains a bit iffy, it’s still widely popular in the fanart and fanfiction circles… so mission accomplished, I guess!

Wait for it…

from N64 Pro issue 4 (February 1998)

from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 92 (May 2000)

I sincerely have no idea what’s going on here. Either that Pikachu is karate kicking the camera, or the jumble of polygons that comprise it are waging a desperate battle for independance.

Well, that about does it for Pokémon Week. We’re back to business as usual on Tuesday, though this won’t be the last we’ll see of the colourful critters – this is a Nintendo column, for goodness sake! YOU’RE NEVER SAFE.

from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 95 (August 2000)

I hope I got the date wrong on this issue, or the printed date is later than its actual street date… otherwise by the time kiddies picked up this issue, they’d have missed damn near every venue. They only waited TEN WHOLE MONTHS to legally get their paws on a Mew, and now they’ll have missed their only chance! THIS IS HOW YOU BREAK YOUR FANS.

I was still a Pokémaniac at this time, but I don’t think the tours ever appealed to me. Even at that age, going to a place stuffed to the gills with obsessed fans must have sounded a bit much for my liking. And after dragging my dad to see Pokémon: The First Movie with us, I think I knew I couldn’t make him suffer any more.

That said, I was mad about getting Mew. Another issue around this time had a contest where you had to describe Pokémon to a kid who’d never even heard of the franchise before, all in 200 words or less. Explain successfully (I can’t remember if you had to actually win them over into the Pokémon frenzy, or just allow them to understand what all this fuss was about) and you could win a Mew! Even as an incompetent adult, I wouldn’t have a clue where to start on a task like that. That contest would’ve gotten its own entry, but, well, I’ve no trace of it. The page had to be cut up and sent away! C’est la vie.

I was going to say that the combination of Ant, Dec, and a chicken-footed misshapen Pikachu would be the worst way of promoting your video game tour… but then I remembered that before they devoted themselves to hosting every single terrible variety show ITV has to offer, they devoted themselves to hosting kids shows and getting into stupid Pokémon-themed antics.
… my god, that was fourteen years ago, wasn’t it?

from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 89 (February 2000)

Of all the phoned in how to draw tutorials I’ve seen, this definitely ranks up there. This isn’t how to draw, this is disabling layers in a vector art program!

from N64 Magazine issue 10 (December 1997)

Official Nintendo Magazine may have tried to explain what this Pokémon malarkey was all about, but those fuckers didn’t even play the game, never mind know what a Pikachu looks like. The heathens! Thankfully, N64 Magazine went all-out in covering the franchise: Max Everingham, their go-to guy for anything new in Japan, gave readers of the British Isles an in-depth look at what this strange sensation was all about.

The accuracy of the information is arguable, but you gotta admire Max’s gusto. He doesn’t just churn out a dodgy summary of the game and remark, “boy, isn’t this a popular franchise?” He gives a blow-by-blow of picking up the game for the first time and slowly coming to grips with it, and how accessible it would be for import gamers. And then he hunts down and catalogues heaps of exclusive merchandise, complete with further explanations of not just the Pokémon Trading Card Game, but also the Pokémon Combat Stickers! Which I swear he’s gotta be making up. Combat Stickers? Come on, surely the ’90s weren’t that dorky, right? Not even Japan ’90s.

Also, just for amusement’s sakes, they include a Japanese popularity chart for the colourful critters. Surprise! Nobody likes Drowzee.
When will people wise up and learn to respect the baddest tapir in town?

from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 91 (April 2000)

JESUS CHRIST
AAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAA
…

Every month in the Pokémon section, fans could submit their “Ultimate Poké Warrior”. Not just a made-up Pokemon – a made-up hybrid Pokémon! Cram all the best bits of other Pokémon into one super warrior! Some were intelligently thought up and had some mild degree of pleasing aesthetic, while some of them…
AAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAA

from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 89 (February 2000)

Oh, the Pokémon sections. Judging from the sheer amount of reader-submitted content, it must have been one of the most popular features in the mag (though that’s hardly an accomplishment – I think kids everywhere were just seeking outlets for their letters of love or fanart. Even Viz’s translations of the various manga crammed a few pages of fan stuff into the back pages!). Even when I was a Poké maniac, I admit I found these sections a bit boring. Looking at the teams other people used in competitions was mildly interesting (if a bit pointless; the Pokemon and its level were all that was shared. the movesets are everything, man!), but I didn’t care to read about how cool Charizard was or how you put Pokémon wallpaper on every article of furniture in the house.

Every month a “Pokémaniac” would be highlighted; anything from kids with lots of tat, to mums, to babies, to cosplaying adolescents. Pretty humdrum stuff, though the littlest cosplayers were tempting to scan if just for the “har har look at that ludicrous hair” factor. I figured I’d spare them the embarrassment; I mean, I’m no better. I dressed up as a Worm for a birthday party once. The costume consisted of a headband and red pyjamas. It required a bit of imagination, to say the least. Or a serious lack thereof.

Dumb anecdotes aside, let’s celebrate the only publicly recognised chinchilla to have fallen victim to Pokémon fever. God speed, little critter.
(I wonder why its name wasn’t printed – don’t tell me the chinchilla wanted its privacy respected?)

from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 64 (January 1998)

It’s almost scary to believe that at one point in human history, a gaming magazine (for video games!) had to ask what Pokémon was. Welcome to 1998! The two pound coin was redesigned, Pogs were on the way out, and a fat percentage of the planet Earth was still bloody clueless about what all this Pokémon guff was about.

Any time the Ninty mags talked about what was hot in Japan, good ol’ Pocket Monsters and its raging popularity was always given a brief mention… though without competent writers, it’s hard to really convey why it was such a red-hot property. It’s very humble looking, isn’t it? Without the reader playing it for themselves or the magazine actually knowing what it was talking about, there was no decent way to prepare the world for the incoming onslaught. Who knew that pokey little Game Boy would set the world on fire?

Also YOU FATHEADED IDIOTS CAN’T YOU READ