Issue #59: The Sport Report – May/June 2022

Did you know my Dad was almost an NBA star? He just missed out because of two things: He was a foot too short and had no talent!

Yes, that's a favorite joke of my father's, but it does ring true for a lot of us -- some people are born with natural potential for athletic achievement, while most of the population will never get the chance to score a touchdown in front of a crowd of millions, or sink a winning putt to claim the coveted green jacket. But that's where video games step in! Through the power of virtual versions of these same athletic events, anyone can go pro in nearly any sport imaginable.

Nintendo has presented dozens of incredible sports video games over the decades, and as we head to press with this NF issue, they're in the midst of doing it twice more: an all-new sequel to the global phenomenon, Wii Sports, has just gone on sale for Nintendo Switch, and in June we will also get to gear up for a third installment of Mario's personal soccer series in Mario Strikers: Battle League. To support both releases, we've crafted this sports-spotlighting NF issue!

Our central feature, The Sport Report, is a big collection of retrospectives going sport by sport to chronicle the individual histories of basketball, baseball, tennis, golf and many more through their decades' worth of adaptations on Nintendo systems. We've got an interview with the creator of Golf Club: Wasteland, a review of the Switch debut of MLB The Show and even a look back at the Famista baseball franchise from our own Tony Ponce . . . whose father actually was a pro baseball player! (I guess some Dads don't have to just joke about hitting the big leagues!) If all that sounds good to you, then let's play ball!

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Digital subscribers, keep an eye on your email this upcoming Monday, May 2. That's when the PDF edition of this latest issue will be sent your way!

Print subscribers, your physical copies are in production now and will ship to you soon. Most subscribers should receive their copies in mid-May or so -- my apologies for our production cycle running a little later than normal for this issue, but we wanted to wait for online servers to go live for Nintendo Switch Sports in order to finalize its review and get that included in this sports-themed issue. We won't be this late in June when publishing our July/August issue!

And one more note that I'll expand on in an upcoming post: The magazine industry is currently being hit hard by supply chain troubles. Every production industry has been negatively affected by the coronavirus pandemic, and luckily the company we use to print and ship our magazine issues was able to avoid any significant rate increases for nearly two years! But it's catching up to them now, as the costs of the paper used to print the magazines and the postage used to mail them have both risen sharply just in the past two years. In order to cover the increase and be able to keep NF rolling on as it has been, we will likely need to separate our magazine production costs from our costs for the other components of getting NF delivered to you, like poster production and postage. But like I said, I'll offer more details in an upcoming post.

For now, business as usual: A new NF issue is heading your way!

~ Lucas M. Thomas