Not everything shocking has to be negative. At E3 2004, Reggie Fils-Aime gave a speech in which he kick-started a new era of Nintendo, starting with a single line: "My name is Reggie. I'm about kickin' ass, I'm about takin' names, and we're about makin' games." Like a modern day Gettysburg Address, this speech -- more accurately, this line -- proved to be a turning point for the Big N.
Before this moment, Nintendo seemed to be flirting with the possibility of being the loser in the home console race for three consecutive generations. As Sega taught us, it doesn't take many failures before a console-maker goes toes-up. Even this blogger considered the possibility that The Twilight Princess would be Nintendo's swan song and entertained the idea of a future Mario title being played on a competitor's system. I get the impression that I was not alone in hosting these dark thoughts. But by amalgamating a few simple words into one immortal quote, Reggie instantly won the hearts of Nintendo fanboys. More importantly, however, his presence signified a metamorphosis in Nintendo. With the use of a simple curse word, Fils-Aime drastically altered Nintendo's image from the company run by Japanese dinosaurs who "just don't get it" into an aggresive, no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners game-making machine. The results speak for themselves.
