In 1988 when Bill O’Reilly was about 39 years old, Inside Edition did a special on the Super Mario Brothers for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Enjoy the video, you’ll get a kick out of the hair styles and the call center where they give level tips. Bill O’Reilly still looks like the same disgruntled guy he looks like today. WE’LL DO IT LIVE!
The video also features Howard Phillips who was “Fun Club President” at the time. I wrote about Phillips last month when he joined Chair Entertainment. Phillips is wearing his signature bow tie in the video which was the inspiration behind the Howard & Nester comic.
Howard Phillips was an early employee of Nintendo of America. Phillips helped form the Nintendo Power magazine and became the face of the “Howard & Nester” comic series. Phillips moved from Nintendo to JVC to LucasArts to THQ to Microsoft. His latest position was the founder and head of Howard Phillips Consulting. But now Chair Entertainment Group has lured Phillips to their company.
“Howard has a remarkable history in the video game industry, and we expect the talent at Chair Entertainment to thrive under his leadership,” stated Epic President Michael Capps. “Howard’s brainchild, Nintendo Power magazine’s ‘Howard & Nester’ comic, left a lasting impression on many of us. Howard’s continued inspiration, as well as his expertise in product development, will be a tremendous asset to Chair as the studio continues to grow and create ground-breaking games.”
Phillips will work on growing the Chair Entertainment studio in Provo, Utah. He will be working with founders and lead developers Donald and Geremy Mustard. Chair Entertainment was bought out by Epic Games in 2008. The reason why Epic acquired Chair Entertainment was because of their ability to compress Epic’s Unreal Engine down to 40MB for Xbox Live Arcade.
