and Snake Rattle 'n' Roll (1991). He was promoted to director of Game Creative in 1989. He "managed the game evaluation system which reviewed all the games using professional game players, the game counselors, and real players who came in to our lab to play new games". He helped to translate Nintendo's incoming Japanese Famicom games to the NES. He advised them on the renaming of characters, and adjusting the difficulty of game progression and the amount and type of in-game help. He had frequent faxes about incoming shipments from the Japan headquarters, and from Shigeru Miyamoto with game questions. He made public relations appearances at events such as Nintendo World Championships, press interviews on television and phone, monthly week-long press checks in Tokyo, and occasional product presentations such as the prototype of the Nintendo Knitting Machine proposed to Toys "R" Us. He constantly played new games for hours on any given day. Leaving Nintendo In 1991, the parent company Nintendo Co., Ltd. was Japan's most successful company, the Super NES was being launched in America, Nintendo was on track to soon become more singularly valuable than all Hollywood movie studios combined, and there were more than 1 million Nintendo Power subscriptions bearing the celebrity of Howard Phillips. At this time, he left Nintendo of America after 10 years and at age 32. Nintendo Power ran an official farewell to Phillips in the final episode of the Howard and Nester comic strip, in which Howard hands his bowtie to Nester and rides his horse into the sunset. He explained this: On the disturbing new wave of ultraviolent video games afforded by 1990s technology, and the disruptiveness of his celebrity status, he said this: "I had a totally different feeling watching a 7-year-old play Killer Instinct than I did watching a 7-year-old play Super Mario. ... I wanted to spend more time working on games themselves, and making people happy because of the games, not because I would leave my wife and kids in the car at the gas station while I talked to [a fan] and their kids for ten minutes." 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