Nintendo Power - Nester

Nester was the long-time teenage mascot and comic strip star of Nintendo Power. Nester was created by Howard Phillips, "President" of the Nintendo Fun Club and a former editor of Nintendo Power, to be the supporting character in his comic strip, Howard & Nester. The comic strips generally advertised new games, often by dream sequences where Nester was actually a given video game character. From 1989 to 1993, The Nintendo Power Awards featured Nester-shaped trophies and were referred to in the magazine as the "Nesters" as a reference to the Oscars.

In the June 1991 issue (Volume 25), Phillips was written out of the strip after his real-life counterpart left Nintendo to work for Lucasarts. The strip was retitled Nester's Adventures the following issue and continued publication until Volume 55 (December 1993). Nester, now as a college student, appeared in Nintendo Power issue #100. He would be seen again in issue #231, the magazine's twentieth anniversary, here a grown man with a son new to Nintendo.

Nester has also been featured in a few video games that were released while the character was still featured in the magazine. His first appearance was as a commentator in NES Play Action Football. Other appearances include the ending of To the Earth. Nester was the main character in Nester's Funky Bowling for the Virtual Boy, which also introduced his sister Hester. The character of Lark in Pilotwings 64 for the Nintendo 64 was based on Nester. Several games for the NES featured the name "NESTER" as one of the pre-set names on high-score lists, or a default character name like in To The Earth for example. The original NES release of Dragon Warrior references both Howard and Nester through character dialog, however this was removed in the later Game Boy Color version. A DLC microgame in WarioWare D.I.Y created by Nintendo Power called Funky Boxing (a loose reference to Nester's Funky Bowling) does not have any apparent references to the character, but if the game is opened in the editor, the player's boxer is named "NESTER."

A prominent NES emulator has been named after him.