I'm familiar with Nintendo avoiding questions and acting cheesy in their answers, so I'm not surprised by that response.
But they seemed to care in the early days. They would include interesting articles such as how games are made, how games should objectively be judged (don't blindly buy on brand alone, look at reviews, rent them, give obscure games a chance (there was once an article dedicated to obscure great games), what matters most is whether it's fun to you, etc.), and even a look at Japanese games that didn't make it to America - Mother 1 being one of them. But I also recall seeing a few letters printed that criticized Nintendo and games. Like complaining about the comics Nintendo included, or saying that the graphics for Star Fox for SNES are terrible and that they should wait for the SuperFX chip to mature or go to a new system before attempting 3D again. Nevermind that Nintendo didn't respond to those particular letters. Though they did print a lone letter from someone defending the comics.
In perspective, though, as a kid I would have found the articles on behind-the-scenes games and game philosophy to be boring, and I remember not caring for the comics save for the Star Fox one. As an adult, they're amazing. Amazing to see them talk about the SNES and N64 before they came out, how the SNES audio worked, offering people to create their own paper Arwing, arguing against holding out for games (basically that if you wait for the next console, expecting more fun, you're going to miss out on a lot of great games now), debunking the Sega Blast Processing rumor by saying it's a marketing term for good programming practices, and warning fans ahead of time that the Super Mario Bros. movie would be a LOT different than the games. I don't think Nintendo was entirely enthusiastic when talking about it, so at least that combined with talking about the differences tells me that Nintendo used to be honest.
There was also one time that when Nintendo offered the next topic for people to send letters on, to be displayed in a future magazine (they did that every issue, show letters on a certain topic, then display the next topic), the topic was to discuss games you had high hopes for but turned out to be terrible. Why was the game terrible, what did you want to see to make it more enjoyable for you. I don't recall what the answers were, I'll have to find them sometime, but it warms my heart to think they used to be more in touch with gamers.
Maybe I'm an old Nintendo fogey, but there's such a big difference between the Nintendo Power magazines of old and the new ones it's just embarrassing. I want my Power Player cards, dagnabbit!
