Even as a seven-year-old subscriber, I knew to take what I read in Nintendo Power with a grain of salt. It's not like I didn't know the whole thing was basically a big advertisement for what was then the only console manufacturer worth talking about. It was more that I didn't care. In those dark, pre-Internet days, I was so hungry for any and all video game information that I was happy to pay for what I considered a video game version of the Sears catalog.

The gaming world has changed quite a bit since 1989, and Nintendo Power has been relatively slow to change with it. A long overdue redesign and editorial overhaul last year was a step in the right direction, but with the shutdown of the Official PlayStation Magazine and rumors of a similar fate awaiting Nintendo Power, the question becomes: Is there still value in a magazine published by a console manufacturer? Let's find out how the magazine is doing as it approaches its 20th year.

Cover
As with any official magazine, Nintendo Power's chief strength has always been its ability to use close ties with the console maker to grab cover exclusive before other magazines. I'm sure plenty of other multiplatform mags would kill to have the return of NiGHTS sprawled across their cover this month, but Nintendo Power was the only one in this country that was actually able to do it.

As so often happens, though, the strong visual of NiGHTS' titular jester is hampered by a bad case of too-much-text syndrome. Mario and Sonic and Ninja Gaiden definitely deserve mention, but does a movie-based games feature really need to be sold on the cover? Is the phrase "Square Enix Delivers Mana for RTS Fans" going to compel anyone to open up your magazine? No? Then leave it out.

Front Matter
Good god, that is one packed letters section. I count 25 distinct missives squeezed onto three pages, and there's still room for the masthead and an editorial. How do they do it? Tiny type helps, as does a good passel of short, interesting letters and concise, witty responses. It's everything a letters page should be – well done.

I have a pet peeve about News sections that are really just extensions of the previews section, so this issue's "News" rubs me the wrong way. Besides a short story about Castlevania action figures, every article is pretty much a preview of a game that's too early along to do a real preview. News space in a magazine should be used primarily for industry analysis and cultural trendspotting, not for more previews.

The one-page "Game Watch Forecast" is a neat idea, outlining the near future release schedule with a simple, thee-stage progress meter for each game. Less useful: a full-page fan service shot of Zero Suit Samus promoting Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I know the whole magazine is just one big Nintendo ad, but most of the other pages at least try to obscure this fact a little bit.

Previews
Speaking of ads, Nintendo Power can at least use the magazine's marketing milieu as an excuse for previews that read like advertising copy. What there's no excuse for is how uninteresting that ad copy is. Laundry lists of features and dry, plodding gameplay descriptions are the order of the day, as are tired superlatives like, "It's a bigger, better Fire Emblem than ever before" and "It all looks completely awesome..." Quotes from series creator Ed Boon help the Mortal Kombat: Armageddon preview. As for the rest, just look at the pretty pictures and move on.

Features
The cover feature of NiGHTS shows off the great page layout that has been common in Nintendo Power since the redesign – great jump quotes set against some beautiful, multi-page spreads. The text also delivers, getting past the gameplay basics and touching on the Jungian philosophy behind the game – pretty heady stuff for a magazine still aimed primarily at the teen and tween set.

Movie-based games don't usually make for scintillating reading, but some clever sidebars and the summer blockbuster theme hold the package together decently. A four-page feature on developing for the Wii is also mildly interesting, mainly because it includes some actual mildly negative comments about the system.

Unfortunately, the rest of the features pretty much fall flat. Longish "strategy" features on Pokemon, Paper Mario, Heroes of Mana and Harvest Moon impart little useful information and feel like filler. A three-page interview with the pair behind Space Station Tycoon comes off as much too polished for a candid meeting. Even the interview with Miyamoto manages to disappoint, mostly rehashing tired stories everyone already knows about the master designer.

Reviews
For a magazine that is usually so glowingly positive about everything, Nintendo Power's reviews are surprisingly fair. Short eviscerations of mediocre games like Bionicle Heroes and Cake Mania are highlights in this issue. Plodding, page-long love fests for Paper Mario and Pokemon are less interesting, but they do their job in pushing Nintendo's first-party games hard. Props to Drew W. for including a Borat reference in a review of Konami's flying shooter Time Ace.

Community
In what's quickly becoming my favorite section of the magazine, Community takes a few pages to look at the fans rather than the games themselves. There's the obligatory fan art, of course, but also subscriber-created Miis, a caption contest, an article about Koji Kondo's appearance at Video Games Live and an interview with a Game Boy musician, among others. These kind of ancillary human interest stories help add a personal side to the sterile reviews and previews that dominate the rest of the magazine. I wouldn't be upset if other magazine picked up on this trend.

Other Things
The Player's Poll/contest is not only a great incentive for subscribers (everyone wants to believe they can be a winner) but also a great market research tool for the magazine itself. This month's poll includes two questions about readers' feelings on interviews with game developers. This kind of data is invaluable to editors – I'm surprised other magazines don't give away their swag in exchange for such information.

Oh, for the days when Nintendo Power could get away without running outside ads. Putting over fifteen pages of ads in a magazine that is basically one big Nintendo ad is a little sleazy. Then again, it's hard to fault Nintendo for squeezing more revenue out of their substantial subscriber base. Hey, they don't have billions of dollars in cash reserves for nothing.

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Media Coverage is an opinion column. The opinions expressed in this column are solely the opinions of the columnist and are not necessarily the opinions of GameDaily.com.