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.

Comments

The Pope dies...

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

And 10 of the day's 10 posts are about gaming. Must mean something, I just don't know what...

Re:The Pope dies...

[Xenkar]

The pope dying is news for religious people, not nerds.

Re:The Pope dies...

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

You missed the nexus. I can't recall a day when every slashdot post was about gaming.

Thanks for biting though... br.

Re:The Pope dies...

[KDR_11k]

The (former) pope has declared that if he falls into coma he will be resigned from his post and a new pope can be elected.

Re:The Pope dies...

[TheGuano]

So just one blue screen and he's out, huh? Harsh.

The real question is

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have scans of all the "special" comics that they used to put in Nintendo Power? Like the Zelda and Mario ones when Super Mario World and Link to the Past came out? Or the Star Fox comic or the Super Metroid comic? Those were rather quality.

News?

[Mekabyte]

While this is a cool site, I don't know how this qualifies as news. A quick check of the last modified date shows: Monday, December 02, 2002 04:40:17.

Slashdot linking to copyrighted material?

[Sancho]

This is pretty surprising.. I looked around for a notice that Nintendo or the artist had approved the mirror.. I didn't find it. Not that I think linking is wrong, but in the past, it seems like Slashdot tried not to do.

Howard Phillips

[MilenCent]

Once upon a time Howard Phillips ("President of the Nintendo Fun Club" and the real-life inspiration for one half of the Howard and Nester comic) was the public face of Nintendo to its primary customers. He was a bow-tie-wearing emblem of an era when Nintendo gave away free newsletters (Fun Club Times, the free predecessor to Nintendo Power), when Nintendo Power itself didn't suck (their articles were sometimes as complete as a full player's guide these days - NP published full maps for Metroid and the original Zelda) and ran a fully-staffed "game councilor" hotline that was an ordinary toll call instead of one of those 1-900 things.

After he quit, sometimes Nintendo Power would publish a blurb whenever he changed jobs. I got the sense that there was some real fondness for him behind the scenes at Nintendo. What he's doing now, however, I have no idea.

As for Nester... when Phillips left Nintendo, the strip was retitled Nester's Adventures and continued, but it didn't last long. (Thankfully... the H&N comics, while not awful, weren't actually what I'd call good, either, and they didn't improve after Phillips left.)

There were actually a grand total, to my knowledge, of two video game references to the strip:
1. When Nintendo published Dragon Warrior in this country, they also handled the translation job from the original Dragon Quest. They actually rewrote some of the dialogue, including renaming two slightly-hard-to-find characters "Howard" and "Nester," each looking for the other on the outermost, opposite corners of one of the towns. (Don't try looking for them in the GBA release of
the game, as it was completely retranslated.)
2. One of the few titles released for the ill-fated Virtual Boy system was a Nester-starring game, Nester's Funky Bowling. I've never played it, but even if it was pure gaming gold, it still spiraled on down the commode when the Virtual Boy tanked.

Re:Howard Phillips

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Double entendre

[EarwigTC]

I think the great example of Nester as a poster child for Bad Gaming Attitude is lost on a lot of people who only read these when they were young. He's the original joke at the expense of the obnoxious, narcissistic gamer who cares only about showing up peers and finishing the game first. The earliest commentary on the asshole gamer.

Best tip ever from this comic

[freqres]

The best tip for life in general comes from this comic. Check out the Sept/Oct 1988 Strip. Here's the tip for you lazies:

Carry the magic potion to the place with the most grass before you use it.

Brilliant, just brilliant.

I usually skipped Howard and Nester

[AbsurdProverb]

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.

Microwave?

[Dwedit]

So it's okay to cut off a chicken's head with a chainsaw, yet it's NOT okay to put a hamster in the microwave?