HuguesJohnson.com: Game Player's Nintendo Strategy Guide

Yeah I'm kind of a nerd. I actually enjoy looking at old video game magazines and assume there must be others who do also. For no other good reason, I've decided to start scanning and posting a few highlights from ones I find for 25¢ at garage sales or wherever. I'll start with magazines that are defunct because it's unlikely I'll receive a takedown notice for them. The Game Player's series seems like a safe one as there's another site posting scans from them already.

In their early days, the folks at Game Player's published a couple of Nintendo strategy guides. In general they're a bit on the light side. The focus was more on quantity than depth. They offer a few decent tips but obviously an entire game can't be covered in 2-5 pages. In a sign of how times have changed, the screenshots all look like they were taken by camera. I have no way to prove this statement other than they just look that way.

These are not full magazine scans. I don't enjoy this enough to scan 200+ pages so I only did a few favorites. Look, if someone really wants to see the Amagon guide I guess I'll post it. Otherwise, just enjoy what's here.

Here are the front covers.

Let's start with the mini-guide for Blaster Master. It's so disappointing this never translated into a stronger franchise. It had a sequel on the Genesis which was alright. I assume they also made a crappy 3D version for Playstation but am too lazy to check for sure.

If you couldn't figure these three tips out on your own then maybe video games aren't the right hobby for you.

Faxanadu had to be the first Falcom game I played.. sort of. It was part of the Dragon Slayer series but developed by Hudson Soft. Although it is kind of a stretch to call the Dragon Slayer games a "series" since the games bare little resemblance to one another.

The guide jumps right to the last boss, who was one of the easiest I can recall.

The first page of the Gauntlet guide contains a couple handy passwords.

They sure hopped through the rooms quickly.. 45, 65, and 80 are on the second page.

The Metal Gear guide goes through the opening section of the game in some detail. First up, getting through the jungle..

..then making it to the first building..

..getting through the first two screens in the building..

..and finally getting to the gas mask.

I noted in another article that I was a big fan of the Kemco-Seika games but somehow totally missed out on Rescue: The Embassy Mission. Looking at this guide it appears to be a darn cool game.

This page is going over how to setup snipers.

Then we've got this breaking and entering mode.

Now it's in the view mode from the other Kemco-Seika games.

I gotta find a copy of this game, really looks like it could be great.

Speaking of Kemco-Seika, here's the strategy guide for Shadowgate, easily one of my favorite NES games.

The death messages, like the one on this page, were hilarious.

The tips on this page are pretty weak.

Rumor has it there was at one point a way to clear the rubble and enter the room behind.

Like a couple previous ones, this guide jumps directly to the end of the game.. although it doesn't tell you anything particularly useful about winning.. unlike another Shadowgate guide.

The last two are sequels that get hated on a lot. Did I just use the phrase "hated on"? What the hell is wrong with me? If I can work in "not so much" then I've officially covered the two most annoying phrases of this decade. Anyway.. hey look, it's Super Mario Bros. 2!

I'm pretty sure the first of these three tips was copied and pasted from the Nintendo Power preview for SMB2.. at least it's giving me that Déjà vu feeling.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is at least partly responsible for most video game sequels being uninspired. Nintendo made a sequel that wasn't like the original and people complained. Yeah it's different, get over it. It's actually a good game and in many ways superior to the original (although I do prefer the original overall).

Looks like they took the shotgun approach to game tips.. these come from four different points in the game and aren't in any particular order.

A few generic tips about exploring palaces.

Whoever's playing this game isn't very good. Even with the shield spell they're about one second away from losing to the first boss.

And let's wrap things up with a few things to do after clearing the first dungeon.

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