How to Win At Nintendo Games by Jeff Rovin

[7800Knight]

Does anyone here remember the "How to Win At Nintendo Games" series by Jeff Rovin?  

 

Launched in 1988, these were four volumes of mass market paperback books that were all text (no pictures) that gave tips, strategies and walkthroughs for various NES titles like Super Mario Bros (all 3), Castlevania, Zelda, Bart Vs the Space Mutants, etc.  I believe there was also a How to Win At Super Mario Bros as well as a title for both Super NES and Sega Genesis titles.

 

This was back in the late 1980s and through most of the 1990s before the rise of the Internet and the explosion of strategy guides (official & unofficial) being sold in stores.  By the end of the 1990s, Rovin's books were obsolete thanks to the rise of online strategy guides like GameFAQs.

 

My brother and I owned the 3rd and 4th volumes and we used these for the Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy and the Castlevania games.

 

As much as we loved them, they weren't perfect.  Some of the information was outright wrong!  A specific example was Chip'n Dale Rescue Rangers on the NES - Rovin's strategy against the caterpillar/centipede boss late in the game tells you to let the red ball hit you after it collides with the boss.  Supposedly, you'd be briefly invincible from the caterpillar's body parts which would go flying all over the screen.  I tried this and IT NEVER WORKED!!!  Also in the back of one book (either the 3rd or 4th volume), Rovin claimed there was a chocolate factory level hidden in the original NES Super Mario Bros.  To this day, nobody has ever found this and Rovin never explained in any book how to access this level.  What's the story with this chocolate factory from Rovin?

 

Anyway, anyone else own any of Rovin's books?  What did you think?  Were they useful to you?

[godslabrat]

I'd seen them circulating around school libraries back in the day.  Between the lack of pictures, and trying to cover several large games in one small book, I never thought they looked worth a read.

[NE146]

I had the 1st one circa 1987.. I do remember enjoying reading it but it didn't work too well trying to get through Metroid through his not-too-clear text directions.  

[fiddlepaddle]

Guess I had four of the 5 volumes I got somewhere. I enjoyed reading them, though I skipped parts and didn't try much out.

[atarilovesyou]

Read them all back in the day. Hey, you took what you could get, lol! 

[Tanooki]

He did more than four, even on the NES, but they got some other varying names beyond the 4 volume 'How to win at...' series for NES.  I used to have up until somewhat recently (year back?) a couple of those original how to win books.  They're terrible as far as so called winning or help work, but his goofy weird summary/story almost like writing style for the reviews are pretty fun just to glance over.  Sometimes it made me wonder if the dude ever actually played every game or some kid gave him some notes to go by at times.

 

And, yes, you're right there were ones for the SNES and Genesis, more from there too if I remember correctly as he kept busy for years in the 90s with that racket.  I'm sure the internet killed his business, that's for certain.  I'm kind of surprised someone like him didn't take his weird style and stuff it on an early internet (mid/late 90s) format setup for people to dig into once he saw the writing on the wall.

[Reaperman]

as a kid I had the green one.  It had some good codes, and a couple of 'how do I start the game' paragraphs.  Its brief tips on tetris were actually pretty valuable and memorable. Not high-level play, but they got me better. I briefly just thumbed through the pink 'best of' one, that I have fairly handy, and don't remember that level of detail for specific games from my childhood one, but I probably never had the 'proper' games as a kid.

 

When I looked him up years later I was surprised at the number of other books he'd written on a wide range of subjects. 

 

What's really shocking is when I looked him up in wikipedia just now to confirm Rovin was the author I was thinking of above, I was reminded of the odd 2016 'october surprise' political stuff on tv. Not trying to be politics-guy, I just I vaguely recalled seeing him on tv, and this must have been why.

Edited November 25, 2020 by Reaperman