Howard Phillips (born January 23, 1958) is an American video game consultant and producer who was an early employee of and spokesman for Nintendo of America in the 1980s.
Initially a boat painter, Phillips started his video game career as manager of Nintendo of America's first Tukwila warehouse in 1981. He managed relations with the retail sites of the 1985 test launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System, gaining insight into which games were popular. Because of his gameplay aptitude and formative experience in Nintendo's then-nascent expansion in North America, his roles grew to spokesperson, manager of the Game Counselor hotline, and co-editor of Nintendo Power magazine. After leaving Nintendo in 1991, his video game work included Microsoft, Chair Entertainment, and GameDuell.
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Early life
Howard Phillips was raised to make his own fun, saying "we weren't poor, but back then parents didn't bury kids in toys ... so we were constantly making things to play with, on, in, or around." With industrious use of neighborhood scrap materials, he made and remade forts and treehouses. He made an electromechanical "arcade game made from clock motors and an old world globe".
Initially a fan of pinball, he was an adolescent video game fanatic through the golden age of arcade video games, about age 13 with the advent of Pong (1971) and entering his twenties at the time of the Atari 2600 home console (1977) and the Space Invaders (1978) arcade game. He would later summarize his favorite thing about video games: "Play. Simple play. And the ability to share play with others either cooperatively, competitively, or just sharing game experiences, such as tips, news and rumors."
But after you play a bunch of [novelty Atari 2600] stick figure baseball games with your buddies, you realize well, OK, we kind of exhausted ourselves pretty quick on that. And then it's on to the next arcade game, as opposed to the next crappy Atari game that's coming out. ... [Atari 2600 adaptations] were not even close to what they were in the arcade. And the arcades were interesting and cool and, you know, what's new and hip.
He graduated from the University of Washington and continued living in the Seattle area. He was a trade painter, including boats. He had some experience in restaurant management.
Career
Nintendo
Phillips was in between jobs when he saw a Nintendo job listing in The Seattle Times that read: "Have Fun And Play Games for a Living". Phillips didn't apply for the job, instead being invited by former college friend and current Nintendo employee of one month, Don James. This began his video game career in 1981 at age 22 as the fifth employee of Nintendo of America by managing its first warehouse in Tukwila, Washington.
Already an avid gamer, as manager of the 60,000 foot warehouse he eagerly took a privileged first look at each new product from Nintendo's headquarters in Japan, in a receiving and testing process which he considered "a little bit like Christmas". He recalled, "I really love games of all types so every day was really fun." These first arcade games include Sky Skipper (1981), Popeye (1982), Donkey Kong Jr. (1982), Mario Bros. (1983), Donkey Kong 3 (1984), Punch-Out!! (1984), VS. System (1984), and the smash hit Donkey Kong (1981). He was personally involved in receiving from Japan and delivering to American arcades the 60,000 cabinet machines (4,000 per month) of Donkey Kong alone that made the first fortune of Nintendo of America, totaling $180 million in the game's first year. At age 24, he was "the largest volume shipping manager for the entire Port of Seattle, having over 100 40' shipping containers full of games arrive every day and needing to be shipped out by late in the night." Running the warehouse hand truck like a competitively timed game to unload 11,000 pounds of 44 arcade cabinets in 9.5 minutes, he then reloaded, delivered, and repaired machines in the field, such as "behind the hotdog machine at the 7-Eleven".
He managed the test sites of each arcade launch, so along the way, he took the liberty of gathering owner feedback and observing the gameplay of audiences, especially children. He said, "I took it as a chance to watch kids play and see what they liked and didn't like so I could pass that information on to Mr. Arakawa. I would also give them pointers on how to improve." He was regularly and candidly consulted by Nintendo of America's cofounders—salespeople Ron Judy and Al Stone, and president Minoru Arakawa, all of whom rarely played video games—about the players' preferences about Nintendo's and competitors' games, and the daily cash intake from each Nintendo game.
At his warehouse, Phillips excitedly discovered the Japanese import of Nintendo's new arcade-capable Famicom home video game console in mid-1983. His avid gameplay skills, intuition, and market research made him a primary advisor to the Japan-based Shigeru Miyamoto and company, on how to approach and develop the nascent American market which was suffering the disastrous 1983 video game crash.
After Nintendo
Phillips was recruited to leave Nintendo and join LucasArts in 1991. There, he served as either producer, executive producer, designer, or creative director for each of approximately 167 educational games, some of which were published by JVC. He said, "The GM at Lucasfilm games Steve Arnold offered me a compelling role running both their nascent Learning Group as well as launching their Videogame Group (they had been exclusively PC games)."
Phillips in the mid 1990s had been in discussions with Sega of America's CEO Tom Kalinske about joining former employer Nintendo's longtime rival as their new spokesperson. While initially interested, he decided not to join Sega.
He then worked for THQ, Absolute Entertainment, and Splash Studios. In 1997, he was hired by Microsoft to be the playtest manager for the entertainment division. In 2009, he joined Chair Entertainment as a studio director.
In 2012, he launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund a new independent project, a mobile application called Know-It-All. It was inspired by the cognitive and learning sciences behind gaming, to help people to memorize and learn information. The project did not meet its US$50,000 fundraising goal.
Phillips was hired as the head of game design and user experience for GameDuell in June 2015.
Personal life
Howard Phillips has a wife Dayna and two daughters, Alexandra and Katherine.
His all-time favorite video game system is the NES. His favorite arcade games are Donkey Kong (1981) and Robotron: 2084 (1982). His favorite console games are Super Mario Bros., Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda—the latter being his single favorite because it made the game industry's historically biggest leap forward of "depth, progression, and surprises".
Legacy
Kotaku called Howard Phillips "one of the company's most high-profile and best-loved employees, his trademark red hair and bowtie making him as much a mascot of Nintendo's early success as any plumber or kid in a green tunic".
Nintendo Power functioned as a podcast until 2023, having discontinued the multi-million-subscriber magazine format as an industry legacy.
Phillips remains an industry luminary—making event appearances, interviews, and showcasing his extensive vintage collections of Nintendo memorabilia. He has parted out some of this collection. He has pledged to donate part to the Video Game History Foundation, to which he recruits and facilitates other major collectors from his decades of substantial industry contacts. Some of the collection such as Nintendo brochures, advertisements, and internal memorandums, are photographed on his own Facebook display and in media articles, and some have been sold. In 2013, he sold his 1990 Nintendo World Championships package for US$17,367 on eBay, hoping to reach an enthusiastic collector.