Table of Contents
Features
- Top Ten Most Talked About Items in Neopia
- Neopets is Now in the Cards! Grab a Partner and play the new Neopets Trading Card Game by Hugh Murphy
- Beginners Guide to the Trading Post How to use the Trading Post to your advantage
- Perfect Neopets Products An impressive list of prducts to purchase by Doug Kale
- Gallery of Evil Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of Neopians?
- How to Draw: Illusen A step-by-step process on creating the cover by Jeff Amano
- Plushies on Parade Your comprehensive guide to Neopets plushies
- Discover the Secret of the Volcano! The game begins…
- Character Guide to Petpets
- Neopets the Trading Card Game Card pictorial featuring cards 1-120
- Neopets TCG Checklist
- NeoQuest II Mr. Insane answers your questions.
- Jelly World
Columns
- Neopoints to Ponder Take a dip in the Rainbow Pool by Alison Wainwright
- Surfing Neopia Fan sites are a great way to obtain helpful tips on becomming a true Neopets expert! by Ron Evry
Departments
- Editor’s Note
- Neopets Trivia
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Anatomy of a Card
- Neopets Comic
Fun & Games
- Neopets Art Gallery
- Poster
- Contest: Win Thinkway Toys
- Contest: Win a Box of Neopets TCG
- Marketplace
A few initial thoughts
The cover of this magazine is pretty nice, a foil background with embossing to emphasize the image of Illusen and the Logo.
There are a lot of full page merchandise ads inside, one for the trading card game, one for Pocket Neopets, One for
Dave and Adam’s Card World, which includes info on Neopets TCG and Yu-Gi-Oh cards, one for voice activated plushies, one for voice activated neopets (which include different colors of the already released ones, as well as an usul, gelert, acara, ixi, and grarrl), a center insert encouraging you to subscribe, a page to preorder issue 2, a gamus.com ad with an extensive listing of shops at which to buy the TCG, and a final page encouraging you to subscribe. So, you are paying Neopets $10 to be beat over the head with ads to encourage you to buy more. Those aren’t including the several “articles” that are really just more merchandise ads.
I feel this magazine would probably be worth about half of its cover price, especially if you are really into neopets, and don’t want to miss the slightest thing. That would make the yearly subscription rate of $6 an issue not seem too insane. But, otherwise, I’d encourage you to split the cost with a friend, skim it in the store, or borrow it if you can.
Features
Top Ten Most Talked About Items in Neopia
The format of this list is a picture of an item, its Name, Type (i.e. battle magic or petpetpet), Current Approximate Worth, and Description, followed by a paragraph of further information.
Most of the items in this list are the items many people wish for, but could never afford (Moltenore, Wand of the Dark Faerie), but inexplicably, there is also a bonus item (number 11, I suppose): Pile of Dung.
Six items have a Current Approximate Worth of 3 million NP or more, up to a guesstimated 100 million NP for WOTDF. Five have Apprx. Worths of more than 10 million. The lowest approximate worth, other than the “bonus” is 45,000 NP for a Hand Painted Scarab.
Apparently the crux of this article is that people talk mostly about items that are uber-expensive, and only the richest could ever hope to have.
Neopets is Now in the Cards!
Most of this article is devoted to teaching how to play the new TCG, the rules of the game. This doesn’t do anyone much good without the cards, which I imagine come with a listing of rules, anyway.
The most useful explantaion (to me, anyway) is a page where they describe the different types of cards in the game: Basic Neopet, Experienced Neopet, Hero, Villain, Equipment, Something Has Happened!TM, Item, and Location. Location cards will not be released until future expansion sets.
Beginners Guide to the Trading Post
This is very much a “Beginner’s Guide”, listing information that you are very likely to already know if you are enough into Neopets to be interested in the magazine. I am sorry it didn’t include a section on Trading Post ettiquette; while it did mention anything that isn’t an unbuyable is better off sold in a shop, it didn’t mention people will hate you if you use the trading post as a gallery, keeping others from seeing what items that are for sale are in the post…
Perfect Neopets Products
Very sparse information about neopets merchandise, although the two pages do show some large drawings of Neopets in different poses than we’re used to seeing them. Oddly, though, they include in a grouping of four pets 3 black-outline cel-shaded pets (Grundo, Tonu, and Kougra), and one soft-shaded (Eyrie). The Kougra’s butt has been chopped off hastily (not as visible in this picture as it is on the real page), making me wonder even more about the production team of the magazine. I know the Neopets’ artists do better work than this, and it is a shame to see their work shoddily thrown together through poor editing.
But onto the “article” (aka “advertisement”), they mention Neopets PlushiesTM, Pocket NeopetTM, Neopets Voice Activated Pets, and Neopets: Trading Card Game. Most of the information is repeats of what has already been stated in the Neopets Merchandise News on the site and/or the Trading Card Game website.
Gallery of Evil
Feature on a few of the 1-player battledome challengers from the Gallery of Evil: Shadow Usul, Spider Grundo, Meuka, Commander Garoo, Count Von Roo, and Vira. A brief story on the character, Location to get as a challenger, Hit Points (original, and how many additional per win), Abilities, Attacks With (which icons the character’s weapons and attacks give), Defends With, and the weapons the character uses with images.
How to Draw: Illusen
Ah, finally, an interesting article, and surprisingly one that isn’t trying to sell us anything! The cover artist, Jeff Amano, walks us through the process of creating the cover with a nice sense of humor: “After the fine folks from Neopets decided on Illusen for the cover subject, I did about 2,000 sketches. Well, Okay, maybe only about 6-7. I was just trying to get a raise.” It doesn’t so much live up to the “How2Draw” part, in that after reading the article, you probably will not be able to draw Illusen any better than you can now. However, it is an in-depth look at the process used by a professional artist to create such a work.
Plushies on Parade
Large pictures and several pages, devoted to all the plushies that have been released by Neopets. No, not the Number Six plushie, we’re talking Neopets Merchandise here. Along with each pet or petpet type they have released in plushie form, they have smaller images of all the colors of that plushie that have been released, and date of release for all the plushies. Interesting, I guess, if you need a checklist to make sure you’ve gotten every single neopets plushie ever made, and/or you don’t feel like looking back through the on-site merchandise news.
Discover the Secret of the Volcano!
It seems we’re in store for a new game like Neopets V2 or the Coltzan’s Crown Quest. A blue Acara named Mora goes to get her fortune from the Island Mystic, and instead learns the dormant volcano is coming back to life. We are given a link,
http://www.neopets.com/island/mystichut.phtml to begin the hunt, and The Clue: “The first clue is the Volcano card. This is your starting point. See that symbol at the bottom of the card? That’s a rune from the ancient language of Mystery Island. Do you recognise it? Have you checked your Har codestones lately? This rune represents the sound “r.” We can say no more. Study the card. It will lead you to where you need to go. Good Luck!” Oddly enough, there is no card pictured on the page, there is no Volcano listed in the TCG list in the magazine, and there is no Volcano collectable card. I guess we need to wait…
Character Guide to Petpets
Six petpets, their pictures, names, official description, miscellaneous info, rarity, and approximate cost. Not much to it.
Neopets the Trading Card Game
If you’re really into the trading card game, this is the only reason I might suggest buying the magazine rather than skimming it at the store. There is a full color picture of every trading card from the game, in the 1-120 range.
Neopets TCG Checklist
Going along with the pictures, this is a list of all of the trading cards, 1-234 plus the 6 special hologram cards (cards 1-30 are holographic as well).
NeoQuest II Mr. Insane answers your questions.
I can’t say that “Why are you called Mr. Insane” was on top of my burning list of questions about NQII, but apparently it was on someone’s. There are more interesting answers and information about the upcoming game, however, such as “What new features will be in NeoQuest II? The biggest change is that you’ll be able to have up to four characters in your party, and fight up to four enemies at once. The combat system is completely redesigned in this game. The maps are bigger, and there’s a lot more artwork.” Well, sounds good to me!
Jelly World
Hahaha! Isn’t Neopets so witty?! The Jelly World feature is said to be on page 80, but the page after 79 is page 81. Makes me want to pee my pants from laughing so hard!
Columns
Neopoints to Ponder
An article about all the different ways to change your pet. Includes sections on paint brushes, morphing potions, magical plushies, and the lab ray. Also, a mention of the Fountain Faerie. Very concise article, not really any information you probably didn’t already know.
Included on the same page is a small box of “Hidden Gems”. Now this is information you may not have been aware of. I had it emailed to me recently, but refrained from posting to the PPT news, because I was worried about how “cheating” these cheats are. It tells about two cheats within games: to get more time in Carnival of Terror, type “custard”, and to get in Whack-a-staff a bigger mallet (according to them “for slightly easier play”, according to me “for tons more difficult play”) type “a5paragu5”. Included with the information are six of the staff cartoon images from the game (and elsewhere on the site), all of which look like they were hacked with nail clippers to get them an approximate shape to be included on the page. Poor Adam (Number Six) lost an ear to the crazed barber. I’ve been thinking for awhile now that Donna is unprofessional for not running her editorial through a spell checker before posting it, this is such an obvious hack job it makes that look like nothing. For as much money as they are charging for this magazine, I can not imagine what would posess them to let something this poorly done through.
Surfing Neopia
This was actually minorly interesting, as I had heard of but never visited two of the sites, never heard of one, and use the other site all the time.
The sites featured are
Neoaddicts, Clare’s Blumaroo Site, Neoitems, and Soup-Faerie.
If one of your favorite sites wasn’t included, there is an address for submissions, neopets@beckett.com. They say they can not answer every submission, but promise to at least visit every site suggested.
Editor’s Note
Just a little blurb that explains the magazine’s format, that it is bi-monthly, and urges you to subscribe. Also includes the submissions email, which is the only email mentioned in the magazine (in several places for several reasons), which leads me to believe they are going to be spending a whole lot of time wading through email, or using the delete key a lot.
Neopets Trivia
Seven trivia questions, an homage to the old Lenny Trivia on the site. I wouldn’t have gotten a couple of them, because I wasn’t around the site at the beginning. Apparently the first neopet created was the Grarrl, and the first world created was Mystery Island. Learn something new every day
Frequently Asked Questions
Reminiscent of the Neopian Times Editorial, these are the kinds of questions usually only asked by people pretty new to the site. Nothing new or of much interest to hard-core players
Anatomy of a Card
A nearly full-page image of the Red Lupe card, with arrows pointing out the Card Name, Card Type, Keywords, Faerie Symbol, Strength, Agility, Magic, and Intelligence Stats, Text Box, Rarity Symbol, and Card Collector Number.
Neopets Comic
Last of the Grundos, Part 1. Begins with a grundo explaining about how they became enslaved, and ends with an Ixi in a grundo suit appearing as part of a liberation force. To be continued
Fun & GamesNeopets Art Gallery
I guess the user submissions they asked for will be saved for subsequent issues, as this time featured professional artists. It’s hard to describe, so you’d be best off borrowing someone’s copy to look at. My favorite is the mad kacheek from Eliv Thade done by Jeff Amano, the same artist who did the cover of this issue (and the article about the cover).
For future issues, send the form in the magazine (or it’s info which includes Name, Age, Address, City, State, Zip, your signature and date or your parent’s signature and date if you’re under 18) along with your picture with your name, age, city and state written on the back to:
Neopets The Official Magazine
Attn: Art Gallery
PO Box 800868
Dallas, TX 75248
Poster
A center fold-out poster, apprx. 16 by 20 inches with Illusen from the front cover on one side, and Jeran surfing on his shield while slaying a tentacle beast from the back cover on the reverse.
Contest: Win Thinkway Toys
Six questions to answer, and a form with which to send in your answers as an entry to win voice activated toys. Grand prize winner gets a full set of the plushie VA toys, 6 first prize winners get a single VA toy
Says to turn to page 76 for full contest rules, but that is the TCG checklist, and includes no info. Great editing. The info is actually on page 74. The page does say photocopies are accepted as entries, so I guess it would be best to get a friend to let you copy their magazine to enter. Only open to US residents tho, sorry guys.
Contest: Win a Box of Neopets TCG
For this contest entry, you need to answer a bunch of questions, such as which parts of the magazine were your favorite, where you bought it, and whether you plan on buying the next one. Once again, photocopied entries are accepted.
Marketplace
More merchandising opportunities, I almost confused this “Fun & Games” article for one of the multiple merchandise ads in the magazine. It lists a few different toys (plushies, TCG accessories, starter set and booster packs, and voice activated plushies), and an order form. You can only order if you are in the United States, unfortunately.