Millions of Nintendo Game Lovers Soon Will Have Very Own Chair

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) _ For the Nintendo fanatic who has everything, including an aching back: a $79.95 chair specially made to relieve the tortures of twisting joysticks and punching buttons.

The armless, rocker style chair, patterned after one invented in the 1930s by chiropractors for patients who needed lumbar support, sits about 6 inches off the ground. It’ll come with a joystick-looking, metal attachment that fits on the front and offers a velcro-coated plate to hold the various game controls.

Stylemark Industries, whose Booneville plant employs 20, recently won a license from Nintendo of America Inc. to make as many of the chairs as people want to buy. Nintendo figures demand comes to about 100,000 chairs and Stylemark is planning on hiring 60 more workers.

Stylemark Industries president Karen Piraino said as the mother of two boys who are addicted to Nintendo games such as ″Super Mario 3,″ ″Days of Thunder″ and ″Zelda,″ she thought it was an idea whose time has come.

″We researched it,″ she said. ″We set one up at the local mall and the kids went absolutely crazy over it.″

Nintendo, which estimates that by the end of 1991 one out of three U.S. homes will have one of its $90-plus entertainment systems, granted Stylemark a license June 6. The computer game giant, located just outside Seattle, will receive 10 percent of the gross sales of the chairs, which will be featured in its catalogues starting in September, Bartlett said.

For 15-year-old Jason Kennedy of Brandon, Miss., near Jackson, a special chair would be a welcome relief for the back strain he gets after he plays Nintendo games for six hours a day when school is out.

″Right now, I got a little shelf I put my game on, but it gets filled up,″ Jason said. ″Yeah, a chair like that would be a pretty good idea.″

The chair’s concept is not a new idea. Bartlett said his two-year-old company has sold more than 5,000 of the unmarked chairs without attachments to the California furniture sales giant Levitz Co. since he opened up.

This year, Bartlett expects to move out 25,000 plain units to Levitz and other furniture merchandisers across the country.

For Stylemark, which had $1 million in sales last year, the promised boon could be the beginning of a new era. Bartlett said plans are in the works to move to a bigger plant in Booneville.

″This isn’t like hoola-hoop,″ he said. ″We think this is an idea that will stick around for a long time.″