I used to write for the official Nintendo Magazine in Brazil, that was called “Nintendo World”. For more than 15 years, the magazine was published down here as the official paper publication for Nintendo. It was Brazilans’s Nintendo Power - for more than a decade this publication also had articles from the US counterpart as well.
For some reason I’m not familiar with, the official US content stopped to be shared to Brazil and the local team needed to come up with 100% original content for the mag. It was a big challenge since around that time, circa 2009, the magazine sales weren’t so big and the team very small - around 5 editors in the company + 5 or 6 freelancers.
On November 2009, we were editing the January issue that would be a vacations special. No big announcements, no Nintendo Power content, all the big holiday games were already featured in the latest issues and we also use to edit the January issue almost 2 month in advance due the editorial team vacations.
The scarcity of content lead our editor to suggest something wild: what if we ask a artist to create a image with Mario, Peach and the gang in the beach? You know, January in Brazil is summer. And Brazil is HOT in the summer.
Nobody thought that it would be approved - since the magazine still carried the Nintendo official seal and had relationship with the Japanese company after all.
But somehow the crazy cover art hit the streets.
It was all over the place. Unofficial art in the cover of the official Nintendo Magazine in Brazil. Peach in Bikini, Fire flower sunscreen, Bowser surfing... god, looking back I still don’t know how we were able to print this.
Hope you enjoyed this piece of Brazilian magazine history. Use masks!
