Issue 145 holds a special place in my heart. It was my first issue to call my own...most of my collection was bought or inherited, with only the post-2005 stuff I have (my collection is not complete, with only scattered outages and most of the biggest missing stuff between 2002 and 2005). As of this writing, my print copy of Issue 145 is about 200 miles away so I have to rely on Archive.org's version. Player's Pulse, the "mailbox" section, features a chart with 12 characters/games that have never appeared on the cover of Nintendo Power, as well as another spiel about emulators and ROMs (they claim that backups are illegal since the game data is inside ROM chips...but that does mean GameCube games are okay, since they weren't?).

I think a few of these did show up later but many did not. John Madden outlasted Nintendo Power but never got a cover feature.

Game Watch features a few previews of Rare games for Game Boy Advance, all of which were delayed and/or changed beyond recognition. Puzzle game Donkey Kong Coconut Crackers was eventually released by THQ in late 2004 as It's Mr. Pants, with the Donkey Kong license replaced with an original character. A GBA spin off of Diddy Kong Racing, entitled Diddy Kong Pilot and featuring an option to tilt the Game Boy Advance (this being a few years before WarioWare: Twisted!) to control wasn't released until January 2005 as Banjo-Pilot and by that time the finished game resembled little of the 2001 title. I don't have a lot of experience with Sabre Wulf (which was called Sabrewulf in the 2001 preview) but it also got severely cut down by the time it was released in 2004 (multiplayer options were planned but got cut).

Game Watch also features a bit of how Nintendo Gateway was adding Game Boy games to upscale international airlines (that looks like it would be a good emulator front-end). There's a few pages on Nintendo's online sites, including their recently redesigned website, which had dedicated pages for every game (far less information for legacy games, but they were still there) with the features, what NP reviewed it as, etc.

Nintendo also ran a monthly ad (this month on page 29) for the latest Disney Channel Original Movie, the one for June 2001 was Jett Jackson: The Movie. There's also a two-page Wal-Mart ad immediately following.

The big features this month included:

Additionally, there are game strategies for pages for Super Mario Advance, Rayman Advance, F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, Pinobee: Wings of Adventure, and Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure. There's a combined The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons / The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages guide that follows from last month, with dungeons two through five of Ages and the fifth from Seasons. Effectively, it is a condensed version of the Official Player's Guide, and unfortunately, that's where it ends. You'll have to get the guide for the last three dungeons of both games.

There was also "Counselor's Corner" (I think this was dropped in the magazine before the phones went offline for good) which had a few tips for The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons. The two tips were the alternate pets (not well explained in the guide--the dance studio gives you Dimitri's Flute and the Horon Village Shop gives you Moosh's Flute). They also explained the statue puzzle in the third dungeon...that the guide DOES explain well and at the rate of phone calls ($1.50 a minute) it might've been good to fork over the ~$14 or so clams for the guide Wal-Mart advertising it for earlier in the magazine. (Coincidentally, I got MY copy of the guide at Wal-Mart)

The Player's Poll Contest this month was focused on the Game Boy Advance and playing with friends. Rather than a single grand prize winner, 30 winners would get four Game Boy Advance systems, three link cables, and their choice of four copies of F-Zero: Maximum Velocity or Super Mario Advance. The second prize was 150 winners of Super Mario Advance and a link cable, and the third prize was a t-shirt (50 winners, as usual).

I wonder where these people are today. Unless that's a surprisingly mature-looking 10-year-old, that is not the same Andrew Fraticelli who killed a 12-year-old in a 2011 drunk driving accident.

"Game Boy a-Go-Go", a Game Boy-focused section they had during this era (didn't last too long) had sections on recently-released Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games. These included Earthworm Jim for the GBA, Konami Krazy Racers, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2, Super Dodge Ball Advance, Fire Pro Wrestling, Iridion 3D, Top Gear GT Championship, Spider-Man 2: The Sinister Six, Hands of Time (which they weren't kind to, even in this section—they mention that the game is "propelled along by a bizarre plotline involving time travel, purple tentacles, and lots of white-clad scientists"...which sounds an awful lot like Day of the Tentacle, except for "lots of" white-clad scientists), and and Atlantis: The Lost Empire (based on the film—it well underperformed Disney's expectations, though I did see in theaters that summer).

"Now Playing" gives The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages a 5/5 across the board...while the cover feature Super Mario Advance only averages 3.5/5. Other games covered include Rayman Advance (4), F-Zero: Maximum Velocity (4), Pinobee: Wings of Adventure (4), Super Dodge Ball Advance (4), Konami Krazy Racers (3 1/2), Earthworm Jim (3), Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure (3), as well as smaller mini-reviews: Iridion 3D (3 1/2), Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 (2 1/2), Top Gear GT Championship (2 1/2), Fire Pro Wrestling (1 1/2), and Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2 1/2). Note that there are no Nintendo 64 games reviewed, not even smaller ones, which makes sense. Between May 2001 (Dr. Mario 64) and September 2001 (Tony Hawk's Pro Skater II), not a single N64 game was released in the United States. Better luck next console!

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