Howard Phillips is an American video game consultant and producer best known as 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. 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". 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." 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 Warehousing and testing 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,