Posters, Postage, Paper Supply & More: 2025

The end of July has arrived once more, so it's time again for our annual update on the state of the physical magazine printing industry. As in years past, this post has a one-time charge attached that helps us to offset the increased costs of postage, buying paper to print the magazine and especially the extra items – our wall posters – that we've been able to continue to offer with the help of this once-a-year extra bit of support from our patrons.

The wall posters we've been able to provide over the last year include both modern masterpieces and retro throwbacks! Alongside the introduction of the new Switch 2, we've been able to pack in printings of the key art for games like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza to help you kick off the newest chapter of Nintendo history in style.

We did a double printing of double-sided posters alongside our Switch 2 Launch Guide issue, and took that opportunity to bring you all the epic key art from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. (That art wasn't available in time to print as a poster eight years ago, so we've finally circled back around to correct that omission in 2017!) We dipped a bit further back into the Zelda series' past, too, with classic art from The Wind Waker – since it relaunched on Switch 2's launch day too.

In recent issues we've shifted to a 16:9 ratio for our posters. This may not be a permanent shift, but I made the decision to adopt that ratio in order to match Nintendo's provided artwork. Nintendo PR has been very kind to us and given us exclusive print access to super high-resolution versions of the marketing artwork being made for games like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza, and the files they've provided are in that same 16:9 format. Rather than crop out any bit of their art or add big blank bars on either end to fill out the rest of the paper, I figured we'd just go with 16:9 posters for at least a little while to perfectly match what Nintendo is sending us. We've had lots of different poster sizes over the years, though, so things may very well change again in the future.

Speaking of change, tier pricing here on Patreon is something that hasn't ever changed – but we may need to make some tweaks in the near future, so fair warning there! Postage rates have continued to climb – there was just another increase a couple of weeks ago – and it's resulted in our old 2016-era tier rates getting even more out of date. The subscription tiers for patrons in Canada are out of sync in particular – we're basically losing money to continue to send issues just across the northern border! So please be understanding if and when we need to modify things in order to keep NF afloat and moving forward!

As in past years, I'll be pairing this once-a-year update with a digital delivery of back issue download links for all of our active patrons. If you've been with us for the last four years, this should bring your digital collection to near-completion! (But if you're missing any of the older digital issues, they're on sale in cheap bundles over at NintendoForceMagazine.com, as always!)

Exciting things are coming in the year ahead, NF fans! Work is 99% complete on our next book, Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man, and it'll be going into print production soon. (I'll include a free HDGG Mega Man Art Card alongside a future NF issue, so look forward to that!) We'll then have new officially licensed works to share with you in the future, so stay tuned!

Thanks as always for your ongoing support!

~ Lucas M. Thomas