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Howard And Nester Comic Archive
Via Press the Buttons, a page that has scans of the classic Nintendo Power comic series Howard and Nester. From the page: "Anyone who has read Nintendo Power since its beginning has, obviously, at least glanced at the little comic strips in a couple of pages of the magazine called "Howard & Nester", which chronicled the adventures of bowtie-wearing Howard Philips (who was an actual employee of Nintendo and president of the Nintendo Fun Club at the time) and a stubborn redheaded teen named Nester." I, um, recall them being a lot funnier when I was a kid. The Maniac Mansion comic is still pretty cool, though.
There were also references to Howard and Nester in Star Tropics.
Well not so much skipped, but elected to read Nintendo's other comic section first. Back during the early to mid 90s, Nintendo started to publish comics related to their actual games. The Link to the Past comic was probably one of their best. I managed to find it on Suprnova sometime ago and found out an actual manga artist was responsible for it. There were also comics for Metroid, Star Fox, and even Mario, but eventually they stopped comics all together. Thats about when my subscription stopped. The magazine was not all that informative anymore and the quality of games went into a slide for a while. At least for me.
I'm pretty sure that's the same guy. IGN has run a few articles in which Howard Phillips was asked about the current Nintendo scene. I remember distinctly that there was one regarding Mario 64. They quizzed him on what he thought about the game, and he said that while it was good, "it could have better" because "the earlier games gave you a better sense of empowerment." Apparently he was into the idea of the fire flower and the hammer in the earlier Donkey Kong games - he felt those items endowed the player character with more virtual power than caps that let Mario fly, etc.
Other than that, I think he's made a few more comments since the initiation of the Gamecube. I get the feeling that he likes Nintendo, but Microsoft seems to give him the same sort of position. Since both are in Redmond, I think Howard once said he's basically down the street from his former employer.
On the subject of the comics, there was a Nester comic very recently. Maybe in the 100 or 150 issue, I can't really remember. But it was very recent and I remember the art style being much closer to anime than the initial comics (which were kind of a pastel anime).
Memories from the comics:
Ninja Gaiden: Howard was Ryu, he killed a bird, flipped around, and found a 1-up. Nester was "directing" the movie, which was based on the game.
Street Fighter: Nester walks around with Guile making smarmy remarks. There's a comment in there along the lines of "I hear that's illegal in 6 continents and 146 countries" or something like that.
Out of this World: Nester bums around with the big oaffish guy from that game. They end up in a hot tub or something.
Lastly, the other comics were great - from what I remember, there was Starfox, Zelda (2 iterations?), Metroid, and some occassional one-issue ones, like one were Mario tries to get Peach a Samus doll for her birthday.
I've got all the NPs, I suppose if I really wanted I could scan them or something....heh.