In the history of video games, some people enter the record through a famous game, a major company, or a long career in development. Others appear for only a few days, caught in a moment when the industry itself was changing.
Patrick Hisel belongs to the second group.
In the spring of 1987, Patrick was still in school when an unusual opportunity arrived through his father, Howard Hisel. Howard was a longtime subscriber to Computer Entertainer, one of the relatively few American publications that had continued following home video games through the industry downturn of the early 1980s. Acclaim Entertainment, a company so new that it was still trying to establish itself as a serious Nintendo publisher, needed experienced players in the Chicago area who could demonstrate a forthcoming Nintendo Entertainment System game at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show.
Howard and Patrick volunteered.
For four days, father and son became part of Acclaim’s early public presence, demonstrating The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner to people attending one of the largest electronics trade shows in the United States. Patrick missed two days of school. Howard took time away from his job at Ford. Rather than simply standing beside a television and pressing buttons for visitors, they stayed late practicing the game so they could advance farther during demonstrations. The surviving contemporary account presents them as enthusiastic players who suddenly found themselves representing a new video game publisher at exactly the moment the American console industry was beginning to surge again. Pasted markdown
Acclaim Goes Looking for Gamers
The story survives because Computer Entertainer documented it almost immediately.
In its June 1987 issue, the magazine explained that Acclaim’s Rob Holmes had contacted the publication looking for enthusiastic Nintendo Entertainment System owners who lived around Chicago and might be interested in demonstrating a new game throughout CES. The editors supplied several names, and Holmes ultimately turned to longtime subscriber Howard Hisel and his son Patrick.
The arrangement was remarkably informal by later industry standards. These were not professional actors hired to perform enthusiasm for a product. Howard was already an active game enthusiast, and Patrick clearly had enough interest and ability to spend days learning the title they had been assigned. According to the magazine, Howard took two days away from his Ford Motor Company job while Patrick missed two days of school so the pair could complete the four days of booth duty.
The editors encountered the Hisels several times during the show and reported that they were “having the time of their lives.” More revealing was what happened after normal demonstrations were winding down. Howard and Patrick stayed late to practice, trying to get deeper into WorldRunner so they could provide a better demonstration the following day. Computer Entertainer treated their dedication almost humorously, explaining to an apparently surprised Holmes that such enthusiasm was hardly unusual among the magazine’s readers.
It was a small incident, but one that captured what the revived American console business depended upon. Companies like Acclaim needed people who understood the games well enough to make them look exciting, and dedicated players were eager for any chance to get closer to an industry they normally experienced only through cartridges, magazines, and television screens.
Four Days at Summer CES
The event itself was enormous.
The 1987 International Summer Consumer Electronics Show ran from May 30 through June 2 in Chicago. The Video Game History Foundation preserves the official directory for those exact dates, matching Computer Entertainer‘s description of Howard and Patrick completing four days of demonstrations.
Contemporary reporting estimated attendance at roughly 100,000 people. Unlike later gaming conventions aimed directly at fans, Summer CES was fundamentally a trade show. Retailers, manufacturers, distributors, journalists, and other industry professionals walked through huge exhibit areas examining products they might sell or cover during the coming year.
Video games were once again becoming one of the show’s attractions.
Only a few years earlier, the American home video game business had suffered a spectacular collapse. By 1987, Nintendo had transformed the market. Reporting in The Washington Post only weeks after the Chicago show described video game booths crowded with people playing new releases and noted that 3-D games had been displayed by Nintendo, Sega, and Atari. The newspaper described an industry that had seemingly returned from the dead, with Nintendo driving much of the revival.
That was the environment Patrick entered when he stepped onto the show floor.
He was not playing Nintendo at home after school. He was demonstrating a game in front of people participating in an industry that was rapidly rediscovering the commercial potential of home consoles.
The Game Patrick Demonstrated
The title assigned to the Hisels was The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner, a Square-developed game that Acclaim was bringing to the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America.
Its presentation made it an understandable choice for a trade show demonstration. WorldRunner placed the player behind a constantly advancing character who ran into the screen across a series of alien landscapes. Players moved left and right, altered their speed, jumped over enormous gaps, avoided enemies, and fired projectiles while the landscape rushed toward the horizon.
More importantly for CES, the game included a stereoscopic 3-D mode.
Acclaim’s original instruction manual told players to press Select to activate the effect and use the special 3-D glasses supplied with the game. Pressing Select again returned the display to normal two-dimensional play. The manual described eight increasingly difficult worlds and a combination of running, jumping, shooting, timing, and obstacle avoidance.
That meant demonstrating WorldRunner effectively required more than loading the cartridge. A player who repeatedly fell into the earliest gaps would not show potential buyers and journalists much of what the game could do.
Howard and Patrick apparently understood this. Their decision to stay late practicing makes more sense when viewed in that context. Every additional section they learned meant they could show visitors more enemies, more environments, and more of the game’s visual effects.
For Patrick, getting better at the game was not merely about beating his personal best. For several days, his ability to play became part of Acclaim’s sales pitch.
Acclaim Before the Empire
That part of the story becomes more remarkable when placed against what Acclaim would later become.
By the 1990s, Acclaim Entertainment was one of the most recognizable American video game publishers. Its catalog became associated with major licenses, arcade conversions, sports games, comic properties, and franchises such as Mortal Kombat. In 1987, none of that success was guaranteed.
Acclaim had only just begun operating. A 1995 Wired profile described the company starting from a storefront in Oyster Bay, New York, in 1987. Gregory Fischbach, Robert Holmes, and Jim Scoroposki had backgrounds connected to companies including Activision, but their new operation was funded with their own money and needed to become profitable quickly. Their early strategy involved finding Japanese games that could work in the growing American Nintendo market.
The timing could hardly have been better.
Nintendo’s expansion was creating demand for additional software, while retailers that had once considered home video games nearly dead were beginning to reconsider the category. Acclaim entered while that change was still unfolding.
That meant Patrick and Howard Hisel were not demonstrating a game for an established entertainment empire. They were helping a fledgling company look established.
Robert Holmes Remembered the Father and Son
Eight years later, Robert Holmes still remembered them.
When Wired interviewed Holmes and Fischbach about Acclaim in 1995, Holmes recalled the company’s early appearance at CES and specifically remembered recruiting a father and son from Chicago. According to his recollection, Acclaim dressed the pair in company jackets and used them to help create the impression that the young publisher was already a substantial operation.
Holmes joked that they “pretended that we were a real company.”
The retrospective contains one important chronological problem. Holmes remembered this episode as occurring at CES in Las Vegas. The contemporary evidence points instead to the Summer CES in Chicago. Computer Entertainer published its report immediately after the show, identified Howard and Patrick by name, described them as Chicago-area volunteers, and specified four days of CES duty. The official 1987 Summer CES directory dates the Chicago event from May 30 through June 2. For the location and chronology, the contemporary documentation is therefore considerably stronger than Holmes’s memory recorded eight years afterward.
The discrepancy actually makes Holmes’s recollection more interesting rather than less useful. He may have misremembered which CES it was, but he remembered the unusual father-son gaming team itself. Combined with the contemporary report naming Howard and Patrick, the later interview independently demonstrates that the pair left an impression on one of Acclaim’s founders.
Among all the hurried arrangements involved in launching a video game company, Holmes still remembered the gamers they had recruited.
The Hisels Were Already Part of Gaming Culture
Howard’s appearance in the story was not entirely accidental.
Other issues of Computer Entertainer show that he was part of the publication’s reader community before the 1987 CES assignment and remained connected to it afterward. The surviving record portrays a household in which video games were more than a passing novelty. Howard corresponded with the magazine, attended industry events, and continued commenting on games and new systems.
That background helps explain why Computer Entertainer thought of the Hisels when Acclaim came looking for volunteers.
The editors had access to readers who were unusually invested in the hobby at a time when being a serious home video game enthusiast was still a more specialized identity than it would become during the Nintendo boom. Howard and Patrick represented precisely the audience that Nintendo and its new publishers were beginning to discover in large numbers.
Their assignment also illustrates an overlooked role that players themselves occupied in gaming history. Histories of the industry tend to center developers, programmers, designers, executives, and corporations. Yet games also needed demonstrators, tournament players, testers, magazine readers, store employees, and enthusiasts capable of translating a piece of software into something another person wanted to experience.
At CES in 1987, Patrick temporarily crossed that boundary.
He arrived as a player and left as someone who had helped demonstrate a commercial video game before its wider American release.
What We Know and What We Do Not
The documentary trail surrounding Patrick himself becomes thin after the CES appearance.
That limitation matters. A modern Park Forest government source describes a Patrick Hisel who grew up in the community and graduated from Rich East High School in 1990, details that could fit the school-aged Patrick who appeared with Howard in 1987. However, no authoritative source located so far explicitly identifies that man as Howard Hisel’s son. It would therefore be irresponsible to merge the two biographies without additional evidence. The research notes underlying this article likewise flag that identification as plausible but unproven. Pasted markdown
What can be documented securely is already significant.
Patrick Hisel was Howard Hisel’s school-aged son. Howard was a longtime Computer Entertainer subscriber. Acclaim approached the magazine while looking for Chicago-area Nintendo enthusiasts. Howard and Patrick volunteered. Patrick missed two school days. They demonstrated The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner across the four days of the 1987 Summer CES, and they practiced after hours because they wanted to advance farther into the game. Years later, Robert Holmes still remembered the father-son gaming team recruited during Acclaim’s formative period.
That is enough to give Patrick a small but genuine place in video game history.
Why Patrick Hisel Matters
Patrick Hisel did not design WorldRunner. He did not program it, publish it, or build a decades-long public career in the games industry.
His importance comes from being present at an unusually revealing moment.
The American console market was recovering. Nintendo was expanding. Square Software was reaching American players through companies such as Acclaim. CES remained one of the principal places where publishers tried to convince retailers and journalists that their upcoming games deserved attention. Acclaim was new enough that recruiting an enthusiastic father and son through a gaming magazine could become part of its trade-show strategy.
Patrick stood in the middle of all of it.
For four days in 1987, a student who normally experienced video games as a player instead wore Acclaim’s colors and helped present one of the company’s early NES releases to the industry. He practiced after hours, missed school to participate, and became memorable enough that one of Acclaim’s founders was still telling the story years later.
There are larger names in the history of Acclaim, Square, Nintendo, and the NES. There are people whose careers can fill books.
Patrick Hisel’s surviving story is smaller, but that is precisely why it is valuable. It preserves something that corporate histories often miss. Before video gaming became an enormous American entertainment business, some of the people helping companies sell that future were simply devoted players who were thrilled to be there.
Sources & Further Reading
Computer Entertainer. “Howard and Patrick Hisel at Summer CES.” Vol. 6, no. 3 (June 1987): 13. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Computer_Entertainer_6-3.pdf
Computer Entertainer. “Reader Comments.” November 1986. https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/newsletters/video_game_update/computer_entertainer_nov86.pdf
Computer Entertainer. “The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner.” October 1987. https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/newsletters/video_game_update/computer_entertainer_oct87.pdf
Computer Entertainer. July 1989. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Computer_Entertainer_8-4.pdf
Computer Entertainer. February 1990. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Computer_Entertainer_8-11.pdf
Computer Entertainer. March 1990. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Computer_Entertainer_8-12.pdf
Acclaim Entertainment. The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner: Game Pak Instructions. Glen Cove, NY: Acclaim Entertainment, 1987. https://www.digitpress.com/library/manuals/nes/3D%20Battles%20of%20the%20Worldrunner.pdf
Platt, Charles. “Whuppa-whuppa whuppa Eeeeeeeeeee! Krrrroooom!” Wired, June 1, 1995. https://www.wired.com/1995/06/acclaim/
Video Game History Foundation Library. “Computer Entertainer Collection.” Accessed October 12, 2026. https://library.gamehistory.org/repositories/2/resources/208
Salvador, Phil. “VGHF Acquires Early Game Magazine Computer Entertainer.” Video Game History Foundation, August 6, 2025. https://gamehistory.org/computerentertainer/
Consumer Electronics Association. 1987 International Summer Consumer Electronics Show Official Directory. Chicago, May 30–June 2, 1987. Video Game History Foundation Library. https://library.gamehistory.org/subjects/216
Nintendo of America. “Nintendo Publicity Folder, Summer CES 1987, May 30–June 2, 1987.” Game Publisher Publicity Kits Collection. Video Game History Foundation Library. https://library.gamehistory.org/repositories/2/archival_objects/17459
Atkinson, Terry. “A Little of Disc, a Little DAT, and More.” Los Angeles Times, June 5, 1987. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-06-05-ca-2991-story.html
Atkinson, Terry. “Latest Developments: An Electronics Show Looks Back, Ahead.” Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1987. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-06-10-ca-3559-story.html
Potts, Mark. “Video Games Are Enjoying a Resurgence in Popularity.” Washington Post, June 21, 1987. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1987/06/21/video-games-are-enjoying-a-resurgence-in-popularity/0d5dbfdd-1c29-4dc5-ab8e-5325ae125ac7/
Wallace, Louis. “Summer CES: The Show Goes On.” RUN, no. 45 (September 1987). https://www.commodore.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/run_issue_45_1987_sep-www.commodore.ca_.pdf
Sharpe, Roger. “On the Homefront, Part III: Acclaim Entertainment Winning Praise for Software Efforts.” Cash Box 2, no. 35 (March 5, 1988): 32. https://retrocdn.net/images/6/6f/CashBox_US_1988-03-05.pdf
Square Enix. “Tobidase Daisakusen.” Square Enix Game Archive. Accessed October 12, 2026. https://www.jp.square-enix.com/archive/tobidase/
Square Enix. “Final Fantasy III 30th Anniversary Special Interview Vol. 1.” Final Fantasy Portal Site. Accessed October 12, 2026. https://na.finalfantasy.com/topics/171
“The Man Behind the Fantasies.” Next Generation, no. 50 (February 1999). https://library.gamehistory.org/repositories/2/resources/11/digitized
MobyGames. “3-D WorldRunner.” Accessed October 12, 2026. https://www.mobygames.com/game/11086/3-d-worldrunner/
CGC Video Games. “The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner.” CGC Certification Database. Accessed October 12, 2026. https://www.cgcvideogames.com/en-US/cert-lookup/results?certNumber=1014221003
Village of Park Forest. “Park Forest Bids Farewell to Fire Commander Patrick Hisel Following 30 Years of Service.” July 30, 2025. https://www.villageofparkforest.com/m/NewsFlash/Home/Detail/3117