In July 2005, Nintendo Power introduced a new design to appeal to a limited gaming audience, including a new logo and article format.

The magazine was founded by Gail Tilden with support from Nintendo's first Fun Club "President" Howard Phillips, himself an avid gamer.

Apparently very camera-shy, Averill himself never appeared in any photos; rather, he was represented by a plush toy of a Blue Slime from Dragon Quest.

Fans often clamored to see what Averill actually looked like, but the magazine continued to substitute with photos of the toy, and even claimed that Alan was, in fact, a Blue Slime.

Late in the magazine's life, running gags centered on Chuck Norris references and jokes at the expense of writer Chris Shepperd.

[11] The Dragon Quest series had been a huge hit in Japan, and Nintendo had hoped the localized North American release would also be a success and promote the RPG genre.

However, the game had not sold nearly as well as Nintendo had anticipated, leaving the company with a large number of unsold cartridges.

The promotion both helped the company get rid of the unsold merchandise, and won the magazine thousands of new subscribers.

Toward the end, it included short excerpts based on Custom Robo and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes.

It included a very short Metroid Prime comic, and another story based on the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games translated from the original Japanese version.

However, only four such issues were produced before Nintendo outsourced production of official guides to Prima Games.

[13] It ran from the publishing of the first issue publication of Nintendo Power in 1988 until June 2010, closing in favor of the Internet.

In 1989, a smaller version of the magazine called Pocket Power was distributed at movie theaters showing The Wizard.

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).

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.

[23] Later in the episode, Slate interviews the developers of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and discusses the Nintendo Switch.