While it was very status quo, Nintendo Power put some serious effort into making a great magazine beyond what they needed to do. Compare it to other magazines of the time: GamePro was lazily written, talked down to the reader, and took bribes/threats from advertisers; yet they created the template for most gaming magazines at the time. EGM might have been the one exception, and yet despite being good journalism (to the point of openly calling out the bribe/threat model), they lacked the thoroughness, artistry, and tangential interest writing that Nintendo Power had.
That's not to say NP was perfect. They excluded a lot of games (obviously for competing systems, but also for arcades and potential port-overs from the Neo-Geo et al), barely covered the import scene (because daddy NOA didn't like that), hyped up some games that didn't earn it, and were massively biased in favor of whatever NOA wanted promoted at the time. But within those limits, they did pretty well at making a very comfy and likeable magazine.
