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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.
And 10 of the day's 10 posts are about gaming. Must mean something, I just don't know what...
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
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.
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.
Rampant Ninja related crimes these days...Whitehouse is not the exception
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.