The Official Nintendo Player's Guide
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Paperback - USA - 1st edition. |
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The Official Nintendo Player's Guide is a video game strategy guide and advertisement created for Nintendo and published by Tokuma Shoten in June 1987. The book's concept was made by Work House, the publisher was Tatsumi Yamashita and the producer was Tsutomu Otsuka. The chief editor is Yukio Yamashita, and senior editor is Ichiro Koike, with the American staff including Howard Phillips as chief editor and Pam Sather as the senior editor. The Official Nintendo Player's Guide predates the first Nintendo Power issue by several months and was written when the Nintendo Fun Club was still in production. Later, in 1991, Nintendo began a series of hint books with a similar style called the Nintendo Player's Guide. A later Basic Set bundle of the NES included a copy of The Official Nintendo Player's Guide instead of a game.
The book focuses on 24 select games where it describes the game, provides detailed maps, strategies, and cheat codes. Although the cover boasts a complete review of over 90 games, the book only gives a brief description with a single screenshot and the box art for the remaining games, which was pretty much every game that was available for the Nintendo Entertainment System at the time.
The in-depth reviews include the following games:
Contents
Personal
| Own? | Paperback, USA, 1st edition with stickers still intact / Badly worn copy. |
| Read? | Paperback, USA, 1st edition. |
| Finished | 1990. |
My brother acquired this book at the end of the 1980s, and it became a sacred relic to me. I used it extensively to help me beat those games I owned which were in the book, and I carefully studied all the games I didn't yet possess to determine which ones I should get in the future.
Review
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Overall: |
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Good
- The book has a nice easy-to-follow layout.
- For the bigger reviews, about the first half of each game is covered in great detail (and in some cases the entire game). For each, it's more than enough to get a player well-into the game.
- The maps are particularly useful.
- In some cases, the reviews are more helpful at describing the game than the original game's manual.
- The book comes with a page of Nintendo-themed stickers.
Bad
- For a book meant primarily for kids, the binding isn't very rugged. The cover fell off our copy pretty early into its use, and shortly thereafter, the pages began to fall out as well.
- Most of the maps are hand drawn rather than screenshots. Granted, they match the game very accurately, but line art filled with water colors is not the same as actual screens.
- The cover says it includes a "complete review of over 90 games," which is false for two reasons. First, it covers only 90 games exactly, and second, 66 of those games are only briefly described.
Ugly
- Nothing.
Gallery
The Official Nintendo Player's Guide.
Nintendo Fun Club, 1988-06 - Advertisement.
Individual Page Scans
Credits
| Role | Staff |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Tatsumi Yamashita |
| Producer | Tsutomo Otsuka |
| Published By | Tokuma Shoten Publishing Co., Ltd. |
| Concept | Work House Tokyo. |
| US Editor and Chief | Howard Phillips |
| US Senior Editor | Pam Sather |
| US Photography Coordinator & Lead Game Counselor | J.C. Appel |
| US Editorial Coordinator | Lynn Griffes |
| Cover Design | Geers Gross Advertising |
| USA Artwork | Griffes Advertising |
| Japan Editor and Chief | Yukio Yamashita |
| Japan Senior Editor | Ichiro Koike |
| Japan Editorial Staff | Yoshio Tsuboike, Yoshihiro Orimo, Hiroki Endo, Osamu Kasai, Koichi Nebekura, Katsuyouki Asanuma, Kenji Orimo, Goblin Takagi, Kohei Nomura, Teizo Osaki, Toyotaro Shibao |
| Game Players | Kozi Orihara, Tadato Kawano |
| Japan Artwork | Kazutoshi Imayama, Reiko Nishina, Kiminobu Iwama, Suzuko Sato, Toshimichi Mizoguchi, Yuikhiro Kinoshita, Sho Uragami, Hiroyuki Bussho, Emi Koyanagi, Kan Fuse |
| Finish Designer | Ohbunseikosha Co., Ltd. |
| Printed and Binded By | Dai Nippon |
Links
