Nintendo Magazine System began as half of another magazine. In September 1992 EMAP announced that Mean Machines, its console magazine, would split in two, and the following month Nintendo Magazine System (NMS) went on sale alongside Mean Machines Sega. It came from the same team at Priory Court in London’s Farringdon Lane, it kept “all your favourite regular MEAN MACHINES features”, and it called itself “the official Nintendo magazine”. It ran under that name into 1996. Then, with its issue numbers unbroken, it became Nintendo Magazine and later Nintendo Official Magazine.
Issue 1
The first issue, dated October 1992, ran to 116 pages, “miles bigger than any of the other Nintendo magazines”, its editorial boasted, and came with a free gift. It covered the Super NES, the NES and the Game Boy. Inside were news, previews, a five-page review of Super Mario Kart, a head-to-head test of two scrolling beat ’em ups, Final Fight and Rival Turf, a tips section, charts, letters, and a “Nintendo Index” of short reviews of “just about every game of true significance”. Julian Rignall reviewed every sports game available for the three machines in one feature. Because it was “the official Nintendo magazine”, it also kept an official Nintendo high-score table.
The masthead gave each member of the team a joke nickname. Rignall, who had edited Mean Machines, was managing editor. Gary Harrod was art editor, Steve Merrett deputy editor and Andy McVittie production editor, with Radion Automatic as senior staff writer and Paul Davies and Angus Swan as staff writers. EMAP’s publishing director, Graham Taylor, had helped plan Mean Machines two years earlier. The launch was celebrated at the Benihana restaurant in London with games publishers’ “top people”, the news pages reported.
Editors
Rignall did not run it day to day for long. In the December 1992 issue he announced that NMS was “getting a new editor”, Tim Boone, who had edited Computer and Video Games for the previous year, while he became a “fully-fledged managing editor” who would still write reviews and news features. Boone was editor through 1993 and into 1994, with McVittie as his deputy by 1994. In January 1996 the letters page was answered by “Dave your new Editor”, who explained that “Andy’s been pensioned off” to a rest home for retired magazine editors; a 1997 issue names “ex-editor Dave Upchurch”. By then McVittie was the magazine’s publisher.
What “official” meant
The small print in issue 1 set out the arrangement:
“Nintendo of America Inc. and its associated companies are the owners of the copyright in certain of the characters, artwork, logos, scripts, trademarks and representations used in this publication. These are under licence to EMAP Images Limited.”
EMAP owned and published the magazine; the copyright line was “(C) EMAP IMAGES 1992”. Nintendo supplied a licence for its characters and marks. That is a different arrangement from Club Nintendo, which Nintendo of Europe published itself. By 1994 NMS was advertising itself as “endorsed by Nintendo themselves” and “the only official Nintendo magazine available in the UK”.
New names
The magazine kept counting as its name changed. Issue 46, in April 1996, still called itself NMS. By issue 57, in June 1997, the masthead said Nintendo Magazine, “the Official Nintendo Magazine”, still copyright EMAP Images and now published from Millharbour on the Isle of Dogs. By issue 70, in July 1998, it was Nintendo Official Magazine, and it was still using that name, and still published by EMAP, at issue 126 in March 2003.
According to Wikipedia, the magazine passed to Future plc in the mid-2000s. Future relaunched it with new staff as Official Nintendo Magazine in February 2006, and it closed in October 2014.
The Australian edition
A Nintendo Magazine System was also sold in Australia. Its August 1993 issue, number 5, was published in Sydney by Trielle Corporation of Pitt Street. It had its own publisher, editorial director and managing editor, Michael Mohi, Gerard Reynolds and Rod de Martin, who were also given joke nicknames. It carried a Nintendo copyright notice of its own, naming Nintendo Co., Ltd. as the owner of the characters and trademarks used. Its reader pages were local: letters came from Adelaide and Queensland, and one reply explained that Australia looked unlikely to get the beat ’em up Tuff E Nuff at all, because Mattel had said it would wait for Street Fighter II Turbo before launching another high-profile beat ’em up there.
The masthead’s list of reviewers links the two editions. It names Julian Rignall, Steve Merrett, Radion Automatic, Angus Swan and Paul Davies from the British team alongside Australian writers, and its designers include Gary Harrod. Neither edition’s colophon explains the arrangement. From at least 1996 the Australian magazine was published in Melbourne by Catalyst Publishing, with its own editor, and it was still called Nintendo Magazine System in March 1998.
Sources
- Mean Machines issue 24, September 1992, p. 7: editorial announcing the split.
- Nintendo Magazine System (UK) issue 1, October 1992: cover; contents; masthead and editorial (“Welcome to this first edition”); team profiles; news report of the launch at Benihana; the “official Nintendo highscore table”; copyright and licence notice.
- Nintendo Magazine System (UK) issue 3, December 1992: masthead; Rignall’s note “So long but not so long” on Tim Boone becoming editor.
- Nintendo Magazine System (UK) issue 4, January 1993; issue 17, February 1994; issue 20, May 1994: mastheads.
- Nintendo Magazine System (UK) issue 25, October 1994: house advertisement (“endorsed by Nintendo themselves”).
- Nintendo Magazine System (UK) issue 40, January 1996: Q&A page with the new editor, Dave. Issue 46, April 1996.
- Nintendo Magazine (UK) issue 57, June 1997: masthead, copyright notice, and a photograph caption naming “ex-editor Dave Upchurch”.
- Nintendo Official Magazine issue 70, July 1998, and issue 126, March 2003: mastheads and addresses.
- Nintendo Magazine System (Australia) issue 5, August 1993: masthead, colophon and letters. Issue 11, February 1994: competition rules naming Trielle Corporation. Issue 37, April 1996, and issue 60, March 1998: masthead and colophon naming Catalyst Publishing.
- Wikipedia, “Official Nintendo Magazine” (web, secondary): the move to Future plc, the relaunch in February 2006 and the closure in October 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Nintendo_Magazine