ONM Remembered – #70
“Is your card a Mega Mario or an import also-ran…?”
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 63 (December 1997)
Last week I talked about the source of the Nintendo All Star Battle Cards… now here’s the source of the other Nintendo All Star Battle Cards!
It wasn’t just the cards themselves they put love into, there’s a lot of text and colourful graphics here for a game that basically amounts to “compare numbers.” Heck, they even used the cards as an incentive to get people to subscribe! Oh, foolish readers of the mid-90s. How they believed they would ever get a free gift as memorable and as treasurable as this! Enjoy your crappy tips and tricks books, suckers!
(or were those from N64 Magazine? gosh, i can’t remember.)
What I’m surprised to see is that the magazine accepted comments and critique on the cards! I shouldn’t be surprised, given how much love and fun the magazine gave to reader submissions during this period (before it devolved into sensible things like asking for release dates), but I think that’s a really sweet gesture. I sincerely wish I knew about this when the cards weren’t fifteen years old. Holy shit I’m suddenly depressed.
I played the heck out of these cards, wouldn’t you know, and I would’ve loved to have had more variety. Even just sending them a “THANX VERY MUCH!” letter in scribbled crayon would’ve been enough to convey my gratitude.
Although once in a while ONM Remembered covers something that legitimately stuck in my mind ever since I read it all those years ago, more often than not it’s just something daft that caught my eye as a cynical adult. For all my snarkiness, bitterness and I-can’t-stand-this-Ragey-fucker-ness, I just want to say that I really appreciated these cards. I got a lot of play time out of them (but I couldn’t have done it without my good ol’ dorky friends!), and they’re still sitting on the shelf next to me as I type this.
Thanks very much, Official UK Nintendo Magazine, and Merry Christmas.
Is it bad that I care more for poor Reptile in the corner there?
The poor dude stinks and sucks at the same time. He looks like he’s deciding whether this is worth being proud of or not.