Written By nester925
14 February 2003
Originally, the Top 30 was three pages long. The first two pages contained the actual NES games, ranked in order, with total votes and one screenshot (plus a brief caption) for the top 10 games. In the beginning, NP used a color-coding system to show the relative popularity of the games. A pink game was new to the charts; a blue one was "on the move"; a green game was on that had "maintained [its] popularity".
The third page of the Top 30 showed detailed lists of the Players', Pros', and Dealers' picks with the votes for each game by voter category.
Another feature of the original Top 30 was the colorful hand-drawn pictures that decorated the top border of all three pages. Sadly, these banners disappeared when the Top 30 became the Top 20.
One other feature of the Top 30 that remained long after its source had vanished was a circular logo with Nester's picture. Nester was NP's mascot and star of a comic, "Nester's Adventures," that appeared from the magazine's beginning until December 1993. For a year after the comic's retirement, Nester still graced the Top 20 logo, until 1995, when the Top 20 became the Power Charts.
In November 1990 (Volume 18), NP expanded their coverage of the new handheld system, the Game Boy. They introduced the Game Boy Top 10, a small section like the Top 30, only with the Top 10 Game Boy games, as voted by the Players, Pros, and Dealers. For this chart's entire existence, it was dominated by Super Mario Land.
In January 1991 (Volume 20), NP became a monthly magazine. The Top 30 and GB Top 10 remained part of the magazine, but the Top 30 started keeping track of the number of months a game had been on the chart. This feature was helpful in comparing the games' popularity (and relative age).
August 1991 (Volume 27) saw a change in the color-coding system in the Top 30. This new system was based on the number of months a game had been on the Top 30. Pink was still a symbol for a new game; green signified a game that had appeared between 2 and 9 times; a blue game was one that had been around over 10 months. This system, however, only remained around for 5 issues.
MORE TO COME...