Poor Nintendo Power, how I miss thee I haven't been around long enough to be a life-time subscriber, but I still have 150+ issues of it. But when they got bought by... who ever it was who bought them, I felt like the quality went way down, and the number of ads went way up. I tried to give them a chance, but I ended up not renewing.
They weren't "Bought out" or anything. It's still owned and ran and published by Nintendo. You're right though there was what they called a "Format Change" a few years back. They started running more adds and cut some of the more in depth coverage. They said they did it to "Update the look and feel" and "take the magazine in a new direction". Like you I also think it went down hill some when they made the change.
If you don't mind my asking, why don't you like to have your consoles on-line? I can understand with the 360, you are pretty much forced to buy a $100 wireless adapter, but the Wii's is built in. I've had mine connected since the beginning, although I admit I don't go on-line very often.
I don't mind you asking at all, my friend. It's hard to explain though. I guess it goes back to my family being either some-what poor during parts of my childhood or has to do with growing up in a area that didn't have adequate Internet access. All my life until I got a computer all I had were consoles and console games. Up until the current generation of consoles, console gaming was a solely Off-line experience. They didn't have things like down-loadable games and DLC and on-line miltiplayer. If you were playing multiplayer it was because a friend was over and he or she was sitting right next to you, playing the game with you.
I've had a Wireless adapter for my Wii for years. It's a little USB cable with a receiver on the end for sending wireless signals from your Wii to your Router. It came with a small disk which had to be installed on the PC that was hooked to your router for it to work. I could never get it to work though. I opened ports, everything was installed and configured correctly, but still my Wii wouldn't get On-line. As of now my Wii is On-Line with a hard line cable I.E.Firewire. It's not running wireless. I could of ran the cable and plugged the Wii up like it is now a long time ago, I just never did.
My X-Box360 sits pretty close to my router and has a built-in Fire-wire plug in the back. I put it on-line for a while so I could buy a X-Box Arcade game called "Shadow Complex" which is AMAZING. It's like old school Metroid and Super-Metroid. Probably one of the sweetest platformers I've ever played. Aside from that though, I've never had my X-Box360 on-line either.
Again, thinking back to when I lived in the middle of no-where when I got my computer when I was 18, even then I kept my computer off-line. To get it on-line I would have to run a phone cord (a 100 foot phone cord) from my bedroom at the back of the house, to the phone jack in the kitchen because my room didn't have a phone. Getting my PC on-line was a pain in the ass and it was only on dial-up as my cable company at the time refused to run Internet Cable in that area as it wasn't "cost effective". Because of where I lived I had a pre-built dislike of anything "on-line" as my on-line capabilities were very limited and the experience of being on-line was slow and plain old lousy.
I never fully appreciated what could be done on-line until I moved back to where I live now in the city/town. Then I experienced what it was like to play Unreal Tournament on-line. Then I started playing other "on-line" games. I graduated high-school and started college. Straight out of college I got incredibly lucky and ended up being employed by Origin Systems Inc (the makers of the first Real MMO, Ultima On-line). During my college years I was a UO player and part-time Staff Volunteer. When they shut down the Volunteer program I was one of only 2 volunteers (that I know of) that they hired on instead of letting go. Most of the other volunteer staffers were so dis-heartened by the closing of the Volunteer program they stopped playing UO all together.
Still, even today, I just never got into on-line with consoles. The experience of being "on-line" is so much better and easier to accomplish with a PC that doing it with a console seemed lame. For me it's like the difference between watching a movie on a small 15 inch screen, or watching a movie on a large 52 inch screen. Sure, you could watch your movie on the 15 inch screen, but why bother when you have a 52 inch screen sitting right next to you? That's why, for me at least, I've always enjoyed on-line gaming on the PC and not so much on consoles. Consoles also don't always give you the options that PC's do when on-line. Some games you can't even turn off built in chat or talking programs. I don't want to hear a bunch of 13 year olds talking about "kill that noob, kill him!!!..Oh fuck you and your Mom too you nade throwing assphinkter!!!" and crap like that when I'm playing Counterstrike or Unreal Tourney.
Sorry that's such a long explanation. I hope it answered your question though, my friend.
