Posted
by
Bob Mackey
Seeing as I spend most of my waking life on the Internet, reading/writing about video games, it's hard to remember a time when I couldn't just hop online and waste countless hours indulging in my hobby. But this time did exist, and despite not having the Internet, even as a small child I still managed to read more about video games than actually play them.
This is where Jeff Rovin's How to Win at Nintendo Games series of strategy books comes in. They truly are a product of their time--that clunky, overly-literal title would never fly with the cynical children of today. But throughout the late-80s and the early 90s, books like Rovin's were all we had; hell, the very idea of a book about Nintendo was so novel, the existence of Rovin's series alone was once cause for excitement.
Because the How to Win at Nintendo Games series was completely unauthorized, and totally cheap--I swear, the paper on these things started yellowing long before the books left the store--there were no pictures. Essentially, the content of the books consisted of narrated walkthroughs of various games; and since this was a first attempt at the format, Rovin didn't worry about the reader-friendly layouts that would later become mandatory for all guides on GameFAQs. If you flipped through the pages not knowing what these books were, you'd swear you were looking at novels--and that's exactly how I read Rovin's series.
Yes, I was a weird little kid. But you have to understand that outside of Nintendo Power, the only way to find out about Nintendo games during this time was to either rent/buy them, or find some other source outside of the one kid in your class who swore he had a relative that worked at Nintendo. Rovin's books were a source of endless information about games you never played; and even if a game later ended up being crappy, his text could make it way better in your imagination. I took these books everywhere, which is why I wasn't able to hold onto my copies--they disintegrated. And I assume many kids had the exact same experience; the How to Win at Nintendo Games series empowered kids by giving them mastery over a domain that was totally theirs. I'm sure this wasn't Jeff's goal, but I don't think I'd be as obsessed with games if it wasn't for books like his.
Rovin's actually had a pretty varied career as a writer; if you look at this bio, you'll see that he's moved on from writing video game books and has since become an authorized Tom Clancy fan-fictioner. I have to wonder if he'll ever make the logical career move of creating narrated versions of speedruns for the blind. I'm sure he could do it.
Related Links:
Where I Draw the Line With Retro
The Impetuousness Of Youth
Don’t Call It Retro: Mega Man 9 and Design Resurrection
About Bob Mackey
For a brief period of time I was Bull from TV's
Night Court, but some of you may know me from the humor column I wrote for Youngstown State University's
The Jambar, Kent State University's
The Stater, and Youngstown's alternative newspaper, The Walruss. I'm perhaps most well-known for my bi-weekly pieces on
Something Awful. I've also blogged for
Valley24.com and have written articles for EGM,
1UP,
GameSpite and
Cracked. For all of my writing over the years, I have made a total of twenty American dollars. It's also said that I draw cartoons, which people have described with words such as "legible." I kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby and am looking to do so again in the future.
If unsatisfied, please return unused portion for partial refund.
