Pondering the orbs

In the summer of 1990, Nintendo Power magazine featured a Final Fantasy tie-in contest with quite the prize assortment: Exclusive "Power decals" for your NES controller, 500 "treasure packs", 50 or 100 "crystal orbs", 4 "power staffs", 2 suits of authentic armor, and 1 adventure vacation to Tortola for 4 nights with three of your buddies. On this vacation you would dress up as Light Warriors and engage in some form of treasure hunt, all with Nintendo Power professionally orchestrating and recording everything.

This contest also introduced a bonus task: the infamous Warmech Challenge to photograph Warmech and get your name in a game. We know what happened with that: The Chris Houlihan Room.

The topic at hand is, well, what happened with the other prizes? We have some evidence that they kept at least some of the promises they made. This wasn't some one off text blurb. They doubled down repeatedly with full spreads and across multiple issues that the fans would get real gear and a real adventure. And they weren't lying about this stuff being highly collectable. So. What happened, and where is all the stuff?

Such items, or even just valid information about them would be worth a lot these days. One of the most nostalgic of all gaming magazines, one of the most famous gaming franchises, a genuinely great set of contest prizes, but there's essentially no history of what happend. It seemed pretty clear Nintendo would want to use this as a big promotional thing. It was all going to be recorded and everything. Well, that's the mystery people have been wondering about for the last few decades. I figure I can at least collect the known information here.

Notes:

• The May/June contest (Issue 12) guarantees all entrants will get a set of exclusive power decals for their NES controller and that four will win a "power staff." It states that the September contest will feature 100 crystal orbs.
• Power decals or power overlays for the NES controller were very much something Nintendo Power distributed and originals and replicas can be bought on Ebay, however I have located no evidence of the exlusive Final Fantasy themed ones.
• The Power Staff is a complete mystery. If it's the one from the game it would likely have been modeled after a green shepards hook or similar. Whatever the case, be it a crappy toy or a very nice one, we do not know.
• The July/August contest (Issue 14) indicates there are 500 "Treasure packs" up for grabs, as well as two authentic suits of armor.
• We have plenty of evidence as to what the treasure packs were, including a youtube video from a winner. They were magenta waist pouches and came with about 30 chocolate gold coins and a shirt. The chocolate coins were modeled after 1852 20 dollar gold coins. One such pack can be seen in issue 14's promotion for the contest.
• The armour, like the power staves, I have never found anything about.
• The September/October contest (Issue 16) now states that the number of crystal orbs will be 50, down from 100. It reiterates that the power staffs and armor from the previous months were real.
• We have photographic evidence of the orbs being as described, with an engraved sword and axe based on the game art. They are stated to be crafted by Kusak Glass in Seattle. This is plausible since Kusak explicitly make trophies and awards.
• The contest states the vacation will happen at Tortola and involve Fort Recovery. Perhaps they had an original adventure created, but perhaps Tortola simply had a "pirate adventure" package that they were planning to re-tool around the character Bikke.
• Nintendo Power repeatdely and explicitly states they will record everything and that they will be permitted to use this for pomotion.
• Nintendo went on to do other similar contests, such as a trip for a winner and three friends to FASA's Battletech thing.

Gallery

This gallery includes some of the promotional materials and evidence of the contest. It is bodged together, sorry. The images should be of readable quality, but you may need to open in new window or image viewer. This gallery only exists because none other does.

Sources

• Nintendo Power, Issues 12,14,16
• Mr Reaper
• Ebay

Conflicts of Interest

The author declares no interest in conflict