If you cut your teeth on the Nintendo Entertainment System (not literally, I hope), the name “Howard Phillips” should sound familiar; he stood as the smiling American face of Nintendo’s corporate monolith for a solid decade, and did everything from running the company’s warehouse to editing Nintendo Power, in which he appeared as himself in comic form for several years. Phillips wasn’t just a soulless PR lackey, though; the guy definitely knew his stuff, and Nintendo paid him in part to evaluate and master games — hence the title “gamemaster” on his Nintendo business cards (he claims to have finished all 500 games that passed by him in his time with the company).
Now, if you’re a crusty old fan of retro gaming like me, the story of Nintendo — the parts not shrouded in secrecy, anyway — has already been told hundreds of times; heck, my plane trip down to Vegas involved digesting a solid chunk of Jeff Ryan’s Super Mario, which dished most of the dirt Phillips did himself during his brief speech. But Phillips did give a few brief anecdotes during the Q & A session of his panel, and while none of them will change your opinion on Nintendo significantly, his small collection of stories provided a unique perspective into a much different era of gaming.
