LucasMThomas

Nintendo has been incredibly supportive, helping us out with art assets, review codes for games and invitations to press events as with any of the other Nintendo-focused journalistic outlets out there. And why not? Our team is made up of the people who cover the company for those other outlets too, from GoNintendo to Nintendo World Report to Destructoid and many, many more. They were familiar with all of us as individuals before – now, we've simply come together to join forces and offer our coverage of Nintendo's games in a different format.

I think it's important to point out, too, that the people who work directly at Nintendo and Nintendo's PR were just as bummed when Nintendo Power was unplugged – maybe even moreso. These are individuals that love the Big N so much that they rearranged their lives and moved to Seattle (or elsewhere) to be able to work directly for the company. They're huge fans! And we've heard from many of them, on a personal level, that they're happy that coverage of the company is continuing in magazine form. :)

I was recently interviewed by 4 color rebellion and offered an answer there. I'll repost it here:

My inbox is filled to overflowing with writers asking that very question, and while I can’t accommodate everyone, I have begun working with at least one new writer per issue to feature some new, unique articles. In our most recent issue (Issue #7, with Shovel Knight on the cover), we printed a piece called “Building a Better Nintendo Kid,” in which new contributing writer Justin Baker told the story of his relationship with his brother, his brother’s struggle with autism and the role Nintendo video games have played in their relationship over the years. In our upcoming Issue #8, we’re debuting the premiere installment of an article series called “Peripheral Vision,” which will run in our Retro section and shine the spotlight back on older Nintendo games that will probably never have a chance to be re-released because they were made specifically with old peripherals in mind. (Like the NES Power Pad, Power Glove, Zapper, etc.) That article series was pitched to me by a writer named Kris Randazzo, whose email had been sitting in my inbox unresponded-to since last August. He was surprised to finally hear back from me, and to be given the green light to jump into working on the series!

So, yes. I’m always on the lookout for new writers with new ideas, and anyone who’s interested in contributing to NF Magazine can use the Get in Touch form on NFMagazine.com to introduce themselves, pitch me some article concepts and link me to some examples of their past work. I’ll pick at least one new person to contribute to each new issue going forward – it’s a promise!

Yep, this is my job. I'm still a part of IGN too, as I continue to contribute a couple of regular columns there as well. But NF is my primary focus.

Video game journalism started off as mostly a hobby for me. I worked on my high school's newspaper back in the '90s, and I was such a huge Nintendo fan that I'd find any excuse I could to work in game reviews when I could. I had the benefit of having an awesome journalism teacher who was just as much a gamer as I was, so he allowed that sort of thing pretty freely.

Going off to college, my goal at first was to become a creator of games – so I majored in Computer Science and spent the majority of my time through my freshman and sophomore years hanging out in dimly-lit computer labs, typing away at lines of code into the wee hours of the morning. It was drab. I needed something more life-giving. Something that let me see the sun every once in a while.

So my Computer Science focus got bumped to just be a minor, and I found my new calling in the Journalism building. Rewinding the clock back to my days with the high school newspaper, I joined the college newspaper team and, again, started working in articles about Nintendo games any time I could. I was primarily the movie review guy, since that was the existing beat, but by golly if I didn't push through a full-page combination review of Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion and explain to every person on the University of Kentucky campus exactly how the two games could be linked together to access a new costume for Samus.

The next step was helping to launch a game review site called Gamerz Edge back in 2003 – it started to get my name out there a bit as I became one of regular reviewers tackling Nintendo titles through the GameCube and Game Boy Advance era. That gig got me to my first couple of E3 Expos, and going to your first E3, let me tell you, is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. (The show becomes a drudgery for many who've attended it over and over again, but that first time is magical.)

Gamerz Edge is still active today, by the way – just under the name "Digital Chumps." Check them out at http://digitalchumps.com/

I'm being a little long-winded with this reply, aren't I? Sorry about that! I'll try to wrap it up and move on to another question.

Anyway, after a while working with Gamerz Edge I moved back to my hometown and landed a job at the Evansville Courier & Press newspaper, once again reverting to my old ways of working Nintendo reviews into a publication previously devoid of them. That only lasted about a year, though, as in the summer of 2006 I was reading a column on IGN called Retro Remix. Mark Bozon had been writing it on a weekly basis, and each installment looked back at an old title from the NES or SNES era and imagined if it might be re-released through the Wii's Virtual Console service. (The Virtual Console was still a nebulous thing that summer. Everyone was speculating about its scope and potential library.)

I noticed that a few weeks went by without Retro Remix being updated, and I emailed Bozon to volunteer my services. I told him I'd pick up writing duties on the column, do a new installment each week for free, and just see if anybody clicked to read my stuff. If they did, great! If not, well, they weren't paying me any way.

But the clicks came. People liked Retro Remix, and I kept cranking out installments in that article series all the way up to the launch of the Wii later that year – by which time my name had become so linked to the Virtual Console service on IGN that Matt and Bozon let me become the reviewer for all of the re-released Wii VC games. (And they started paying me at that point. :p)

I've then continued contributing to IGN's Nintendo coverage ever since, transitioning to working for Craig Harris and then Rich George after Matt and Bozon left for Apple. And it was during Rich's tenure in 2012 when Nintendo Power announced it was shutting down, which brings our story back to where we are today.

What was it like when I first got started? It was fun! It was always a thrill when I got a "yes" to my requests to run Nintendo-related articles in the various publications I worked for, and it was fun taking those first steps into new outlets with larger reaches along the way. It was risky, too, particularly in the span of months I went without pay just to prove myself at IGN – but it paid off. It got my foot in the door.

How do I manage to find the time to live my life, play games, and write about them? Truthfully, I don't play a ton of games for the purpose of writing about them any more – with the Nintendo Force surrounding me and supporting me, I'm able to hand the baton to other talented writers to craft the reviews that appear in NF Magazine's pages when I'm too busy changing diapers to be able to sit down and dedicate hours upon hours to playing through the latest releases. I do make it a point to play through at least one major new release per issue we do, though. Often it's the game from the issue's cover, just for fun. But I sometimes write the review too. My next big review will be for Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, which I've somehow managed to complete even amidst the running of a Kickstarter campaign and the birth of my second son.

This is my day job, yes. But it started out as my hobby, and I still have fun every day. That's how it manages to fit in with everything else that makes up my life.

. . . OK, so that was still a little long-winded even after I said I'd wrap it up. :p

Wrong? The name. Right? The GamePad. Wrong? Not having enough games that prove the GamePad was something they did right.

A regular Editor-in-Chief at a normal magazine? Probably a normal eight hours a night when a deadline isn't looming. Me, with a five-week-old baby here at home and running a Kickstarter too? I was already up at 4 a.m. eating Honey Bunches of Oats.