Though thousands of wholesome speeches, memorable moments, and, of course, hilarious memes, former president of Nintendo America,Reggie Fils-Aime, has quickly become one of the most recognizable figures in the gaming industry.While he stepped down from his post last year, he has far from been forgotten, with fans still discussing his widely beloved, 15-year tenure guiding Nintendo.
It makes sense that all that time working at the top of the incredibly popular video game publisher would come with its fair share of incredible stories and, luckily for fans, Reggie was kind enough to share a particularly funny one onhis and Harold Goldberg’s Talking Games Podcast. In this tale, Reggie recalls his first E3 with Nintendo, where he’d just been hired as a top executive for the company.
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He goes on to discuss once being mistaken for a security guard by a member of staff at the event, who promptly pulled out their ID and showed it to the notorious video game icon. “So I’m there in a two-piece suit with a black t-shirt underneath, standing, looking out onto the crowd, and we had various staff running around, doing things. Everyone had to be badged,“Reggietells his listeners. “They needed to have ID that showed that they were allowed to be where they were. So I’m standing there, gazing out to the crowd, and there was a member of the staff that came close to me, and I turned and looked at them, and literally they just stopped – rigid. He starts fumbling for his ID, and he’s like, he’s showing me his ID, like ‘it’s okay for me to be there.’ This guy thought I was the security guard.” The personal anecdote can be found found in the podcast below and begins at the 11-minute mark.
The story is clearly one of Reggie’s fondest memories ofE3, especially after he considers that the member of staff must have been in the crowd watching the presentation he did with Nintendo later that day. He even muses that the member of staff must’ve been thinking “What’s going on with Nintendo that they’ve got the security guard giving the presentation? What is this?”
Evidently, this was long before Reggie became the iconic staple of the industry that he is today and only makes the memes surrounding his legacy all the funnier. For those who have never seen Reggie’s comical internet following, fans have always painted the former president of Nintendo America as a secretly dominant force, going as far as to call him"The Regginator"online. Evidently, this member of staff knew he was looking at a man who’s body was truly ready long before the internet had even caught wind of him.
