Back in September I ended my post about the closure of Nintendo Gamer magazine with the small comfort that they would be able to continue their particular brand of irreverent nonsense through the website. But just over three months down the line it's been announced that even that's now shutting its doors as of next week. As a consequence CVG will apparently be upping their Nintendo coverage, while Nintendo Gamer frontman Chris Scullion will be moving over there as Reviews Editor, but it I can't help but feel a little gutted at the news. Combined with the recent loss of PSM3 and Xbox World magazines, it's a depressing indictment of Future's strategy of bringing all its titles under one roof, with a strong digital focus.
As a magazine Nintendo Gamer, in all its guises, was an excellent source of witty and often hilarious coverage of all things Ninty. While the website was a one-man show, it was still a brilliant source of interesting and funny features, and it'll be a shame to lose that. What's more sad is that the Nintendo Gamer brand really is gone this time, bookending twenty years with a bit of a whimper rather than the bang it deserves. Well, we'll always have the flood of tributes from when the magazine shut down. The sentiment is still touching.
But one of the more jarring aspects of this closure is that it'll also mean the death of the magazine's forums, which have been going for a good seven years or so. Future pulled the same stunt when Edge redesigned its website last year. The old old Edge community famously became rllmuk in 2003, after Edge closed the forum down, and this time around the community went to form the Bear and Badger once we realised that the re-designed place was a broken mess. It's never nice when to see the online community suffer along with the website, and I hope the Nintendo Gamer forumites are able to land on their feet somewhere nice.
But I guess that's it. Farewell Nintendo Gamer, and thanks for all the laughs.
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