My friend and I were subscribed to Nintendo Power for years. I remember my subscription ending on the cliffhanger issue of The Legend of Zelda comic (back then NP had two continuing comics in their magazine, one based on Super Mario World and one based on The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past) when Zelda gets zapped by Agahnim, and for the longest time I thought she was actually dead. That's one hell of a bombshell to drop on a kid, it affected me more than the death of Superman (seriously, who cared about Superman in the early 90's). It wasn't until later when I actually played the game and read my buddy's copy of the following issue that I learned all was well.
Of course I never renewed my subscription because a few years later the Sony Playstation came out frankly I was tired of paying hard-earned money on three pages of gaming info wrapped in a $10 magazine. Though I did pick up one or two issues of that old PSM or Playstation Magazine. The guys running that one were pretty funny, but by then it was just for the laughs, never for any real gaming lore. As Bob said, the internet happened, and magazines have swiftly fallen out of fashion.