Andy Hartpence

Q. What were the requirements of your job as a gameplay counselor?

I was hired as a gameplay counselor for Nintendo in November of 1997, so actually it's hard to remember! I have a BA in English, but I think the job only required a high school diploma. Believe it or not, hardcore gaming skills were not a prerequisite. All applicants had to show the basic ability to play video games (my group was tested on Super Mario Bros. 3), but it was more important to be able to quickly look up the proper information about a game than it was to actually play the game.

The position required basic computer skills, but I think the most important skill was the ability to speak clearly and to quickly determine what the caller needed. Callers were paying for the service, so I remember feeling the need to answer their questions as quickly as possible.

Q. How did you feel about your job at the time? How do you feel about it now?

When I landed the job, I felt like I had won the lottery. I remember being shocked that, as part of our training program, we were required to play The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. That blew my mind. I remember being very proud of my job, and I was always happy to have a chance to tell someone what I did for a living. I was new to Seattle at the time, and Nintendo's Call Center was a great place to meet some new friends.

Looking back, my job as a gameplay counselor was an excellent way to get my foot in the door at Nintendo. I think I only served as a gameplay counselor for about eight months or so before I took another position within the company. I would have never had a shot at the job if I weren't already working in the Call Center.

Q. Were you tasked with knowing specific games or all of them? What happened if you were unable to help?

As a full-time gameplay counselor, I was required to take calls on every game ever made for all Nintendo systems (at the time, Nintendo 64 was the latest console). That sounds like an impossible task, but Nintendo had an ace up its sleeve. All gameplay counselors at Nintendo had access to an incredible database that contained complete walk-throughs for almost every game.

Whether the caller was playing Eye of the Beholder for the NES or War Gods for the N64, I was one quick search away from all the answers I needed. All I had to do was ask a few questions to quickly narrow down exactly what information the caller was looking for.

We've all had questions about Ren & Stimpy: Fire Dogs at one point or another.

If the caller had a particularly difficult question, or one that was not covered in the database, we would arrange to have a gameplay counselor call them back for free. For example, let's say that I took a call on Ren & Stimpy Show Part II: Fire Dogs for the Super NES. If the caller stumped me, I'd enter their name into the database to arrange for a callback. If there happened to be a Fire Dogs expert on hand at the time, he or she would call the person back with the answer. If not, then anyone with free time would borrow that game from our library and figure out the answer by playing the game.

When new games came out, you could sign up to be an expert for those games. It would then be your job to handle these callbacks. I remember that the first game I was an expert on was GoldenEye 007. I remember being stoked about getting to play that game before it came out.

Q. Where did you work from? What tools were at your disposal?

All gameplay counselors at Nintendo work in the Call Center, located at Nintendo of America headquarters in Redmond, Washington. We were strapped with the awesome database I mentioned earlier, a phone, a headset, and a library of Nintendo Power Magazines.

Q. What kind of calls did you get?

The vast majority of the calls I received were requests for codes. I was working when Diddy Kong Racing was released, and it seemed like I was handing out DKR codes for weeks. There were also a lot of requests for special moves in fighting games, so I gave out plenty of fatality combos.

The other calls came from people stuck in adventure or RPG games. The most common questions were based on The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, which is probably why they made us play the game in training.

Q. Can you tell the story of one (or a few) particularly memorable phone calls you received and how you responded?

The tricky thing about being a gameplay counselor was that frequently the callers didn't know what they needed. For example, I took a ton of calls from people playing A Link to the Past who thought they needed to find the hammer. They saw a few posts that needed pounding, and assumed that they needed something with which to start poundin'. In fact, they usually needed to find the moon pearl. It was sometimes tough convincing callers that they were barking up the wrong tree.

The Adventures of Lolo games each had around 150 devilishly puzzling levels.

My most memorable calls were those based on either Adventures of Lolo or Adventures of Lolo 2 for the NES. When I asked "What game are you playing?" and the answer included "Lolo," I began to sweat and I knew that I was in for a 20-minute call. Our database contained information on how to solve every level in these action/puzzle games, but the solutions were so complex that we had to cross-reference hand-drawn maps housed in massive three-ring binders. I don't know who made those maps, but it must have been a massive task.

Q. Did you ever want to go on to do anything else?

Once I was in at Nintendo, I knew I wanted to stay here. Despite the vicious commute from Seattle to Redmond, I still look forward to coming to work every day.

Q. What did you do after gameplay counseling?

I spent some time in a group known as "Mario Club," where my job was to evaluate upcoming games. That really was a dream job for a gamer--I just played games and let people know what I thought about them. Eventually, I decided to make a move to the online department, where I started out as an online writer for Nintendo.com.

Currently, I'm the supervisor of web content for Nintendo.com. I helped to coordinate the recent redesign of Nintendo.com, and I work with the staff here to create the editorial plan for the site. I also manage the Nintendo NSider Forums, where I'm known as NOA_Andy. I'm on the forums just about every day, reading what Nintendo fans are talking about and posting news about recent site updates.

I still write game reviews from time to time, and every Friday I publish an editorial on the home page of Nintendo.com. My 10-year anniversary at Nintendo is coming up before too long, and I have to say that it's been a great decade playing games.

Q. What was your favorite original NES game?

Super Mario Bros., no question. I can't resist listing some runners-up: The Legend of Zelda, Ghosts 'N Goblins, Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3, Contra, Metroid, Rush 'N Attack, Ice Hockey, Castlevania, Mike Tyson's Punch Out, R.C. Pro-Am Racing, Dr. Mario, Double Dragon.

Beth Llewelyn

Q. How did the idea for the NES come about? What was the ideology behind it?

The NES was, of course, the US version of the Japanese Famicom system. In Japan, the idea was to capitalize on Nintendo's success with its Game & Watch games and to mass-produce an affordable entertainment machine with new and interesting types of games. In the United States, the goal was to capture the entire consciousness of players and immerse them in the games by bringing arcade-quality games into the home.

Q. What gave you the impression that the NES was (or wasn't) going to catch on in the United States?

We knew that the system was terrific, but convincing retailers and the public was another story. At the time, the once-booming video game business had collapsed. The Famicom did extremely well in Japan. Great games are great games, no matter who is playing them.

If a few virtual ducks had to die to bring your family closer together, so be it.

Q. What was the target audience for the NES?

The actual target was the whole family. If you look at the first commercial featuring R.O.B. the Robot and the Zapper, it had a mom, dad, and kids.

Q. How did the NES meet or exceed your expectations?

We had a tough but successful launch in New York City, then moved to Los Angeles and really kept pushing. It wasn't until our national launch in the fall of 1986 with Super Mario Bros. as the bundled lead title that things really took off. Once the NES got a foothold and people got drawn into the experience of the games, it became a phenomenon.

Q. Who were the early enthusiasts of the NES (in or outside of the company), and can you tell us any anecdotes?

It was our warehouse workers who had the privilege of playing through the entire library of Famicom games to determine which ones would be appropriate for the US market. Incidentally, one of those guys was Don James, who is now an executive vice president with Nintendo of America.

Q. How quickly did the system catch on?

On an individual basis, we could see that people made a connection with the NES as soon as they got their hands on it. On the large scale, the NES caught on slowly but steadily. We had to prove that a video game system could be a viable product in a tough market. We sold about 50,000 systems for Christmas 1985 in New York as a test market, and then expanded to other major cities before taking the NES national. After a year, we had sold 1 million. After two years, we had sold 3 million. By 1990, one-third of all US homes had an NES system.

Speaking of characters with personality, we've always thought Bullet Bill deserved his own game.

Q. Did you have an idea back then about how console games would fare in the future as a result of the NES?

Nintendo demonstrated that if a company could make a compelling game with characters with real personalities, it could buck the industry trend and be successful.

Q. What was your favorite original NES game?

I'd have to go with Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros.--they are true classics.

Q. What games did you work on for the NES?

To the Earth, Tetris, Star Tropics, Punch Out.

Q. Which were your favorite or least favorite games to work on?

Favorite: Racing games Least favorite: Puzzle games

Testing on Punch-Out was difficult, as Little Mac and Mike Tyson had constant creative differences.

Q. Do you have any stories of particularly memorable bugs that were left in or taken out of a game?

Back in the day, we sometimes tested on the Famicom. It was the Japanese version of the NES that had a built-in microphone. If you spoke into the microphone, it would play your voice through the TV audio. We always ran a VCR to record the bugs at all times. One day I played a joke on everyone by having the character of a game jump up and down 10 times. I then spoke into the controller and stopped the tape. I told everyone that there was a secret move you could do in the game and the character would speak. I had everyone fooled. We all had a good laugh in the end.

Q. What did you think about your job at the time? How easy or difficult was it?

Back then we did not have as many revisions of hardware. We got to spend a lot more time playing through the games rather than compatibility testing.

Q. What did you think of the NES?

It was awesome for its time.

Q. How long was a game usually in testing?

They could be in testing for as little as one day or as long as one month.

Q. What was a typical bug, and what was the attitude toward bugs at the time?

Doing things out of order and the game locks up. Driving backward on a race track and the game locks up.

Minus World: One of gaming's infamous glitches.

Q. Do you have any stories about people you worked with or interacted with who have gone on to do other things in the game industry?

One person went on to compose music for use in video games, another went on to become a plumber, and another tried to start a rock band.

Q. What was your favorite original NES game (that you didn't work on)?

Mach Rider

Q. What are you doing now?

Working as a technician in product testing.

Q. What games did you work on for the NES?

During those years (the same is true even today), the LotCheck Department was responsible for final testing of all games released on a Nintendo platform. That includes Nintendo titles as well as licensee titles. Since there were only 10 of us, everyone had to chip in to finish the job on time.

Q. Which were your favorite or least favorite games to work on?

There were so many. Super Mario Bros. 3 and NES Play Action Football were two of my personal favorites. On the flip side, there were a lot of poorly made games during the NES times. Funny, it always seems easier to remember those games than the fun ones. I think that's because as a tester, you had to work a lot longer and harder on those games. Let's just say playing Where's Waldo and Thomas the Tank Engine for the fiftieth time can be difficult.

Golgo 13 was originally supposed to talk, but a glitch in the programming caused all of his lines to be replaced with "...."

Q. Do you have any stories of particularly memorable bugs that were left in or taken out of a game?

Honestly, we were very strict during those days. If we found a problem that would affect the consumers, we failed the game. Games would fail five or six times before being approved. The record was 26. That game was never released as a licensed title. It did come to the market, but never got the Nintendo Quality Seal. The best stories were pranks that went too far. We actually failed a game because the controls were working backward. Like, press up and the player went down, etc. Only later was it discovered that one of the testers took apart the Advantage controller and reversed the joystick of a coworker. We got in trouble, but it was pretty funny.

Q. What did you think about your job at the time? How easy or difficult was it?

I was 20 years old and playing video games for a living. I remember playing a multiplayer game with one of my coworkers, Caesar, and saying, "They are paying us for this!" He just smiled. It wasn't always fun, and the work was often tedious. I think most of us had a pretty good appreciation of just how lucky we were. The hours were long, but the work wasn't overly difficult. Product testing today is much more complicated and technical than it was then.

Q. What did you think of the NES?

I loved the NES. I still do. My first job at Nintendo was repairing consumers' NES decks. I saw how much abuse that machine could take. Everything about the NES was quality--from the processing power it had for its day to how indestructible it was. Anyone who is working in the game industry today owes a lot to that machine and the people who built it. I still have one at home, and I bet a lot of you do, too.

Q. How long was a game usually in testing?

Anywhere from one day to a couple of months. During development, programmers and game designers would play the game along the way or with a small team of testers. Many companies didn't employ testers at all. This was a time when a few programmers could still make a game out of their garage.

Q. What was a typical bug, and what was the attitude toward bugs at the time?

The most common bug was a lockup. We would receive a game that was supposed to be ready for production and it would lock up halfway through the game. There were also a lot of graphical bugs. We were pretty strict on these types of bugs. We were a lot more lenient on text. I'm sure everybody remembers the poorly localized games from Japan. "Janglish" became an accepted language for some games.

Q. Do you have any stories about people you worked with or interacted with who have gone on to do other things in the game industry?

Members of that group have been pretty successful. One makes make music for video games. Several others have gone on to develop games for companies like EA, Midway, THQ, Acclaim, Microsoft, RedStorm, and Nintendo, of course. One is even president of a large game development company. Three of us still call Nintendo home.

Q. What was your favorite original NES game (that you didn't work on)?

Zelda.

Q. What are you doing now?

I am senior manager of Nintendo's Product Testing Department.