See that trope that says no sign of stopping?
http://www.gamespot.com/news/nintendo-power-shutting-down-report-6392330 - I'll unfortunately leave this here.
In Volume 264 (February 2011) NP published a letter from a guy named David who showed them a new potential commercial song; we could put the old theme song above the new song on the main page: It goes like this:
Eight Point Eight: In the early days, the magazine was more blatantly a sales pamphlet, often giving good "reviews" to games that were being trashed in other video game magazines. They gradually got away from this in later years, although no "official" magazine for a company can ever escape it completely.
I heard the opposite from interneters, actually - that with the harsh console war of the N64 era, reviews were perhaps 'boosted' to help...
.
Edited by saintdane05