The other day, against all expectations, I bought a one year subscription to Nintendo Power. I was a subscriber from roughly 1992 to 1997 but stopped when I ditched the Nintendo 64 for a PlayStation. Now almost 10 years later I'm subscribing again. What gives?

Well what gives is that they have a darn sweet deal of a free Twilight Princess player's guide and a bonus soundtrack if you subscribe. All that for 27.95$ CANADIAN. When I opened my copy of TP for the GC and saw that I couldn't resist.

Now a friend of mine was also interested in the deal, but when he realized that the soundtrack was uncomplete he told me it wasn't worth it. Sorry, what? I thought about it for a very little while and my conclusion is this:

He's full of crap.

From my standpoint it's an awesome deal. I was already shopping for a game guide for Zelda before seeing the deal. In fact I had ordered the Gamecube bradygames guide for Twilight Princess on amazon.ca. Since you get free shipping if your order equals 39$ before taxes, I added a couple of novels to get my order to that point. So for a guide, I had just spent 40$ Canadian. So when I saw the offer for a guide, a bonus mini soundtrack and A FULL YEAR of Nintendo Power for 27.95$, I thought it was a much better deal than the one I had on amazon.ca. Granted, the Nintendo Power guide isn't as good as the bradygames guide (at least it looks like it). Even worse, it's a guide made for the Wii version so everything will be mirrored; quite annoying but I can deal with that. But it just doesn't change the fact that it's one hell of a cheap deal.

Look at it this way. 27.95$ Can is already cheap for the subscription WITHOUT ANY BONUSES. For canadians it does seem like the cheapest gaming mag you can get. And then you had a free player's guide and a mini soundtrack. That's almost like getting a free subscription to Nintendo Power.

Of course, the thing is I was already looking for a guide so the deal was awesome to me. From his perspective what he wanted was the soundtrack so when he found out that it was a mini soundtrack he was very disappointed. He probably doesn't care for the guide (heck he doesn't even have the game and even if he wanted it he doesn't have either a Wii or a Gamecube) and he probably doesn't care that much for Nintendo Power, at least not to the point of paying a full yearly subscription for it. The way I see it, even if the cheap guide is worth 10$ can and the mini soundtrack 5$ can, that still means I'm getting a year of Nintendo Power for a measly 13$.

There's no losing in this deal, and that means I'm a winner. All hail that Grahf dude!