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It's funny. Laugh. Entertainment Games

Howard And Nester Comic Archive 38

Posted by Zonk from the totally-80s dept.
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.
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Howard And Nester Comic Archive More

Howard And Nester Comic Archive

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  • When I was a kid, we named our pet parakeets Howard and Nestor because the blue parakeet (Nestor) had a feather that stuck out like Nestor's hair. After a few months, Howard died, (probably from biting on some metal ornaments) and then Nestor went soon after. That sucked. But the comics were cool.

  • The Pope dies... (Score:4, Funny)

    by HotNeedleOfInquiry ( 598897 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @02:18AM (#12124947)
    And 10 of the day's 10 posts are about gaming. Must mean something, I just don't know what...

  • The real question is (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 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? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Mekabyte ( 678689 )
    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? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sancho ( 17056 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @04:44AM (#12125446) Homepage
    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 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MilenCent ( 219397 ) * <johnwh AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday April 03, 2005 @04:53AM (#12125472) Homepage
    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 [n-sider.com]. 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 (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What he's doing now, however, I have no idea.

      I had forgot about these comics completely, but seeing this slashdot story reminded me of how confused I was how the Howard character just left so suddenly and cryptically (i was still a kid).

      Anyhow, was very curious to see what happened to this guy.... a quick googling shows that he now works for Microsoft Game Studios. Unknown what his signifigance there is though. It could be a completely different guy just named "Howard Phillips".

      • Re:Howard Phillips (Score:2, Informative)

        by 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 pl

    • Re:Howard Phillips (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      There were also references to Howard and Nester in Star Tropics.
  • Anyone got some more info on the artist? I think his/her interpretations of the game characters are excellent, especially the Solar Jetman stuff! Nester looked pretty accurate as Link too.
    I couldn't see any Blaster Master or Metroid stuff, too bad.

  • Double entendre (Score:3, Insightful)

    by EarwigTC ( 579471 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @09:18AM (#12126123)
    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 (Score:4, Funny)

    by freqres ( 638820 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @10:37AM (#12126481)
    The best tip for life in general comes from this comic. Check out the Sept/Oct 1988 Strip [iodized.net]. 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 (Score:3, Informative)

    by AbsurdProverb ( 831079 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @10:48AM (#12126543)
    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.
  • Anyone know a site that has scans of Nintendo Power? I'd love to read the Nintendo 64 article in Issue 85.

  • Microwave? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dwedit ( 232252 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @06:57PM (#12129407) Homepage
    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?
  • Not that anyone cares, just thought I'd share.

    Still, nifty to have them all in once place.
  • From my memory of reading Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and EnslavedYour Children [amazon.com] about 10 years ago, I recall that Howard Phillips first joined Nintendo in Washington State as a young man (somewhere between 18 and 25, I'd say). He had the resemblance of Alfred E. Newman and was hired to help test the new batch of machines that were being brought in from Japan. In particular, they wanted to make sure that the conversions they were doing to their unsuccessful Rad [klov.com]

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