Playing With Power: Nintendo NES Classics (2016)

Playing With Power:

Nintendo NES Classics (2016)

Authors: Garitt Rocha / Nick von Esmarch | Page Count: 320

'If you imagine the Game Pak as a cook book, the CPU would be the cook who follows the instructions — for every dish in the book at the same time.'

The best thing about Playing With Power is its presentation, specifically the hardcover edition (214 x 291 mm) that fits snugly inside a sturdy embossed slipcase that is itself designed to look like an oversized classic NES Game Pak. It's clever and it's beautiful. The paperback is much less interesting.

The editorial content of both, on the other hand, is as flimsy as the cardboard box that an original NES Game Pak would've been housed in when bought.

Some of it is reprint from old issues of Nintendo Power magazine. I know a lot of video game fans in America have a great nostalgia for NP, but it's not a publication that I ever even saw as a kid living in the UK. Therefore, I don't have the rose-tinted glasses that would be needed to fully enjoy it. From an objective PoV, the writing isn’t very good, even when taking into consideration that it seems to be tailored primarily for a teenage audience.

After a brief look at the hardware that was hidden inside the iconic grey, white, black and red coloured plastic of the NES, and an explanation of the software that made it all work, we get a rundown of the launch titles that accompanied it in NA, all seventeen of them.

Subsequent rundowns split the games into eras, namely Early, Middle, and Late periods. But the vast majority of the book is walkthroughs, including maps, character and enemy art and profiles.

It'll likely be useful to folks who collect and/or enjoy walkthroughs, but the blurb on the back promising a 'journey through three eras of NES history' seemed to me to suggest content that was more than just game-guides and filler.

I don't have any use for such walkthroughs, so 90% of PWP was utterly useless to me. I bought it at sale price (£4.00), but had I paid the RRP of £24.99 ($44.99 / $55.99 CAN / $69.95 AU) I'd have been very pissed off at both myself for impulse buying and the publishers (DK/Prima games) for their intentionally deceiving wording.

In conclusion, if you want walkthroughs of seventeen early NES titles — including the classic The Legend of Zelda (1986) and it's non-classic sequel Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (1987), and the first three numbered entries in the Big N's flagship Super Mario Bros. franchise — then it might be a good purchase. But if you want anything else, such as a decent history of Nintendo, then you sure won't find it in PWP.

It must've sold well-enough, though, because a follow-up book about the SNES, titled Playing With Super Power: Nintendo Super NES Classics, was released the following year with an identical RRP. Needless to say, I'll not be picking that one up, even at a vastly reduced price.