Family Computer Magazine Issue 006 (January 1986)

I started out thinking I'd just do the ads for the gallery and then ended up editing the whole thing.  This is probably the earliest Nintendo mag that's been scanned yet, but it's mostly interesting to me seeing how Famimaga itself evolved over time.  This issue has large b&w sections, quite a bit of which is manga, while by a couple of years later, Famimaga will become 100% full color and drop most of the manga, setting it apart from Famitsu, which at this point was still half a year away from launching.

Another interesting thing is noticing that some of the manga is based on Famicom games published by Takuma Shoten - which is also the publisher of Famimaga.  Famitsu had the same deal - it was published by ASCII, who also published tons of Famicom games.

How this worked and they were able to maintain any sense of credibility with Japanese consumers I have no idea.  Imagine if EGM was published by Electronic Arts and GamePro was published by Activision - who could trust them to treat the games they covered fairly?  Or if Nintendo Power was published by Nintendo?  Oh wait, it was.  But that proves the point - no one read Nintendo Power expecting honest reviews and uncompromising criticism, they just expected lots of colorful pictures and maps, and that's what they got.

In that sense, I guess Famimaga could be seen a bit as the Nintendo Power of Japan, since, like Nintendo Power, it was published by a game publisher, was probably the most colorful gaming mag on the stands at the time, and took the high road by abstaining from reviews for the most part.  It also seems to be the most beloved nostalgic mag for Japanese gamers of a certain age despite its lack of any strong critical/editorial stance.  Add a Japanese Howard Phillips to the mix and they'd be twins.

***Oh yeah, forgot to mention - as usual, Family Computer Magazine is printed Japanese-style and is read from right-to-left.  Your CBR reader must be set to Japanese/manga mode throughout the entire issue if you want facing pages to be oriented correctly.

Also, the color manga sections were actually a pullout with narrow landscape-aspect pages.  I recommend setting your reader to "fit height" during that portion of the mag, which will basically fill your screen with the entire page and make it easy to read.