Ultimate Nintendo Magazine Review - 6/10

Ok, I’ll admit it; I’m kinda new to the world of Nintendo gaming magazines.
In fact a few months ago if someone had referenced to Nintendo Power, I would have thought they were asking me how I charge my Wii Remotes…

So it’s no surprise that as I wandered the shelves of the local newsagency, I didn’t recognise a lot of the magazine titles. But, considering there aren’t a lot of Nintendo related mags out there these days, this one leapt out at me, and immediately after seeing the words “All New Aussie Magazine” stamped across the top of THIS mag, I was naturally intrigued to pick it up and see what this new kid on the block had to offer.

$8.95 later it was mine, the first edition of the ‘All New Aussie Magazine’ – Ultimate Nintendo.

While its been clearly stated on the cover of this magazine that it’s 100% unofficial Nintendo business, this doesn’t bother me at all, and once inside the covers I’m happy to say that this mag proves to be a nice light and easy read through.

Clearly though, when you take on something like the Nintendo name, you instantly have two areas of console entertainment to consider; that being the Wii, and the DS.
The writers have done a nice job in covering content for both of the consoles, although I find that currently, the Wii has a lot more out there to write about.

When you first glance at the ‘contents’ section of the magazine, you may feel that the DS has been somewhat under represented. The contents to the ‘review’ section outline more then 10 Wii game reviews, but only 3 DS ones, however when you stumble into the review section of the magazine for a closer look at the head count, you’ll see that things really do even out, and in total there were in fact 11 Wii reviews and 9 DS ones, all of various lengths.

The idea of encompassing both the Wii and the DS does have its areas of confusion from the start. While the larger sections of Ultimate Nintendo have been clearly separated in most areas between Wii and DS, every now and again while you’re glancing at an article in a smaller section (for eg the news columns) you find yourself having to do a double take to check that they are in fact talking about YOUR console.



Ultimate Nintendo wouldn’t be described as ‘epic’ in size but this seems to be a given when it comes to paying for any magazine these days.
The thing I liked though, was that the magazine wasn’t full of ads either, well not that I noticed.
I mean you don’t pic it up and see a tonne of non gaming content, so if there were adds for games, accessories or companies etc, they just seemed like part of the scenery.

The graphics are standout! They are smooth and crisp in all areas, and the general indigo colour theme is easy on the eyes. I was quite impressed with the quality of the print job, and while we’re on the topic of graphics, this magazine has one feature that I was particularly tickled pink about: Gaming Posters.
I love that they added posters in the mag, what a cool old school feature! It’s something magazines no longer do enough of these days and I think that’s a shame.
In your first edition you have a funky double-sided poster with an option to display Mario and Sonic at the Olympics, or the team from Final Fantasy Crisis Core.



Basically, Ultimate Nintendo covers all the standard areas of any good magazine. There’s a bit of the latest gossip and news, some fun tidbits and a bunch of feature articles.

What do we find specifically inside the first issue? I'm not going to give out all the details because that wouldn’t be fair to these guys who’ve spent their time and money on delivering it to you, but I will give you the general run-down on some of the content genres found in Ultimate Nintendo

Open to the first page and you have the standard editor meet and greet, but beyond that we have a tonne of reviews and previews, including a preview of Star Wars, The Force Unleashed.

There are a few fun little competitions towards the back of the magazine, and there are also some impressive cheats for Wii games such as Wii Sports, Super Paper Mario, Resident Evil 4 and Guitar Hero 3. For the DS you will find cheats for Mario Party DS, Pokemon Pearl, and Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, to name a few.
There’s also a Virtual Console guide and a list of the coming new releases for both the Wii and DS.

This issue also features a number of standard starting out articles: an accessories guide and section titled ‘The Wii Doctor Is In’, which shows off a number of the most notorious Wii injuries.
I must say though, that I’ve long ago seen these damage reports around the web. Who could forget this poor girl who’s broken face is now pasted into the feature article.



Something cool I noticed was the highly decorative 12-page Super Mario Galaxy play guide, which gives you a simple little guide through all the stars and stripes of SMG.

All of the articles are written in a nice lighthearted fashion. They are of standard quality and seem to have a general amount of information. I like that, as the spirit of gaming equals fun, there is a nice amount of fun in the mag and I have to say, I lolled at the two-page visual spread commemorating the death of the Game Cube.



In the end though, as good as the effort is, one cant help but remember that a lot of gaming magazines have fallen by the wayside due to the influx of internet addiction.
If I am to compare this magazine with a site such as ours, I think that both efforts have some standout features but I still find the content a lot more rewarding over the web, not to mention that the speed of delivering information to the public is tenfold.

In Summary:

The Good: Great graphics, a general lack in annoying advertising, and of course the posters!

The Bad: The Information can be easily outdated by the time it comes to buy the mag which is offered quarterly.

The Unfortunate: The unfortunate thing about this is that we’ve seen a lot of gaming mags die off due to today’s Internet culture – and there is a chance that the flailing appreciation of this type of media may make it hard for these guys.

The Final Score

I’ve got two scores for this review because the magazine breaches into two different categories.

For one, it’s a magazine in general, and for this I’ve gone for a nice score of 7.5/10.

Secondly, I'm judging this as a gaming information source. There’s plenty of fun and information, but as far as a gaming source, there are a lot of other sources out there to compete with.
So for this part I’m going to give Ultimate Nintendo a 6/10.

For any of you interested in nabbing yourself a copy of Ultimate Nintendo on its next release, issue two will hit the stands on the 13th of July 2008.


I hope you all enjoyed the review,
Thanks for reading!
Magickstar

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