My Body Was Ready: I attended Reggie Fils-Aimé's lecture at Cornell! (UPDATE: I attend the second lecture too!)

[Theorymon]

So late last night before I went to bed, Arhops alerted me to something huge: Reggie was having a lecture at Cornell tomorrow, and it was open to the public! Yes, THAT Reggie, Mr. "My Body Is Ready" retired leader of Nintendo of America fame!

See, as many of you know... I live in Ithaca, so I pass by Cornell all the time! I made time to get there (and my mom got me some cab fare, tyvm mommy!), and I'm sure glad I did: I had an amazing time there! Now, I'm mostly going to be paraphrasing stuff, since it was an hour long lecture, and thankfully, Cornell has said they will upload a video of the entire lecture later for online viewling pleasure!

As for the lecture itself, I absoloutly loved it! Reggie was funny, personable, and his presentation had a very strong focus on what he personally thinks, makes a leader. He labled them under the 7 principles of leadership.

Without going into toooo much detail (it was around an hour long!), some really cool moments in the lecture:

1: Yes, he talked about Nintendo a lot! Specfically, he talked about getting Wii sports bundled with the Wii, Nintendo's hanafuda history, how he once chatted with the person who engineered the NES to ask him its main goal (it was to play a good game of Donkey Kong of course :P), etc. In particular, he acknowledged that the Wii U was a failure pretty bluntly, but he called it a "failure foward" since it led to the Switch. Another funny ancedote: He seemed to talk to the Japanese side of Nintendo a LOT, more than just bussiness reasons. Apparently, they usually called him Reggie-san lol.

2. A particularly touching moment, is that he had a short segment about Iwata. The way he talked about him, they really seemed like close, personal friends. I also found it interesting that during the wii sports segment, he specfically mentioned that Iwata disagreed with bundling Wii Sports in the US at first! He described Iwata as a mentor figure, and that he learned the value of "silence" in bussiness from him, something he didn't see often in the more western bussinesses he worked at. Im only paraphrasing it here, but it was really interesting! Here's a picture of the Iwata slide, he even mentioned what the text behind him meant! It was related to Inovation I believe:

3. Reggie wasn't some wooden, boring presenting here. Dude seemed to LOVE the audience, and interacted with it a lot. For example, he immeditly says "Wow, I love you too!" when the audience goes apeshit at his apperance. He was cracking jokes, responded to a dude that literally held up his launch Wii over his head, and in general was really receptive to us all. A really great one in particular, was when he straight up admited that the Wii U was a failure, but then added that it was a "a failure foward", one that led to... well, he gestured us, and the whole auditorum yells "THE NINTENDO SWITCH!!!". We had a really electric crowd here!

4. He went into a lot of detail into his 7 principles of leadership. It wasn't all just Nintendo. For example he talked about his time at P&E, and his time at Panda Express too! It seems like for Panda Express in particular, hes responsible for the kitchen design or something like that!

5. Something that made me really happy is that he had a strong focus on the importance of diversity. Not only did he seem to lambest organizations / companies that employ too many of the same kinds of people, he emphaized the importance of having a workforce with a variety of races, genders, and sexual orientations. He had a neat slide with Miis for this! Even better, the final question asked him about getting more women to work in the video game industry, and he went further and talked about how apparently, Nintendo of America had internal diversity programs that supported groups of women and LGTB people at the company!

6. The questions got pretty interesting. Probably the highlight was someone asking about the Blizzard Hong Kong situation! Unfortunately, he stops just short of condeming China themselves (saying that its a very different market), but he saved it by praising the consumers response to Blizzard-Activision, and seemed to make it clear that he think they screwed up. However, he didn't view it as an issue of intregrity of leadership in this case, as he had a pretty specfic defination for it in the lecture.

7. Yes, someone asked about Mother 3, which caused a roar of laughter, and Reggie joking saying he thought he'd FINALLY escaped it until now rofl!

8. Possibly the craziest background to a question: So a guy talked about how to deal with feedback. Seems normal right? Well, he also talked about his apsirations, and this dude dreamed big.. his goal is to become the CEO of the Pokemon company in 38 years o______O. That's... one hell of a goal so to speak, and he mentioned something about trending on twitter and google, and he had people sign a clock. Not gonna lie, it was pretty odd, but Reggie reacted to it awesomely, saying that he'll be sure to remember this moment, and he looks foward to seeing him as the new CEO rofl.

9. Retro actually got brought up a tiny bit! Someone asked him about how Nintendo decides release dates for their close partners like the Pokemon Company. He said that that its a back and forth process, and mentioned that Retro Studios seems to have control over their release dates in a similar manner to the Pokemon Company. Not sure how reliable that is, I may have misheard it.

10. Someone asked what Reggie's favorite video game of all time is...

I had a bit of a hard time hearing it, but it seemed like it was...

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD!

Yeeeep, he went there, and the crowd went nuts with cheering! He did note that he holds A Link To The Past in pretty similar regard, but specified that under his mangement, Breath Of The Wild is the video game he's the most proud of.

Overall, I had a great time, and the lecture was surprisngly very inspirational. Reggie had a big focus on learning from failure in particular. He still had a bit of the PR sheen, but he certainly felt more down to earth than say, he has in interviews of the past. Even stuff before and after the lecutre was cool! People gathered and played a lot of Smash and Pokemon Go while waiting, and Reggie even did a meet and greet with EVERYONE! Yeah seriously, I thought he was gonna leave at 9 PM like he was supposed to, but I think I heard him yell that he was gonna do it for everyone, and he stayed almost an HOUR after he was supposed to to make sure everyone got a selfie with him!

Yep... that's right, I got to shake hands with the Regginator himself, and got a picture taken with him! To make it extra sentimental, I actually did it with my N3DS open. Specfically, it was open on the Pokemon team I used to get 1st place in the recent Ultra Final Competition in Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, which Reggie seemed to think was a cool idea! And yes, I am 100% including this photo in my RMT this week now rofl!

There's so many cool details and fun questions that I just don't have the energy to type out now (I have to get up really early for class tomorrow). But yeah, I had a freaking blast, todaty was an unforgetable day!

 

[Theorymon]

It's time to bump this, because guess what: Reggie is doing another lecture (well this time more like an interview), on Feburary 14th, 7-9PM EST!

Like last time, I'll be posting my experiences here, but theres a new twist: My brother (who is actually on this site as Deadite , but basically just lurks lol) will be attending too!

Unlike last time, there's a ticket system too (though its free), probably because so many people showed up last time. If any of you are in the Ithaca, New York area (or can swing by), I highly suggest you get a ticket and drive on over to Cornell, Reggie is a great speaker!

Here's the ticket website: https://dyson.campusgroups.com/LEAD/rsvp_boot?id=667537

 

[Theorymon]

Alright, here are the details on what Reggie's lecture was like last night! Unlike last time, this was more of an interview format, so instead of Reggie giving us a great speech on his principles of leadership, this was more of a personal focus on his life. I'll be presenting this in a similar Q&A format from my notes (I ended up having over 4 pages of notes from this thing, it was basically an hour and a half of questions!). To give you an idea of what it was like, here's a few pictures of the stage.

The first part of the Q&A was presented by Donna Haeger, who is Dyson’s Faculty Director of Leadership Development. These questions were prepared well ahead of time, and covered some very interesting topics about Reggie's life!

Question 1: What was your earliest memory?

This was really interesting, as Reggie went into the life of his parents here! His parents were Haitian immigrants that came to the US in the 1950s,
What's really fascinating is that his parents had backgrounds in COMPLETE opposites of Haitian politics. On his mother's side, Reggie's grandfather was a proponent for Democracy in Haiti. On his father's side, Reggie's grandfather was the #2 in the Haitian army! Reggie described his parents as being a sort of "Romeo and Juliet" situation in this sense!

This is how it relates to his earliest memory: Reggie's earliest memory was being a 3-year old living in a single bedroom apartment in the Bronx (a part of New York City for those of you who don't know). He used to hear his parents talking a LOT about Haitian politics, specifically about Duvalier, also known as Papa Doc. Papa Doc was a brutal dictator, and a major reason why many people immigrated from Haiti. Reggie said he grew up in what was basically the epicenter of Haitian immigration in New York City. He said he obviously didn't entirely understand what his family and family friends were talking about until much later, but it seems like talking about the political situation in Haiti was a very common topic in his household.

And that's his earliest memory. He said it was important to him because it made him realize his connection to Haiti, since he was born in the U.S.

He also went over his 5 principles from the last lecture, which was a nice refresher! What made us start to tear up though, is that he also mentioned that Iwata passing made him painfully realize how short life is (this interview really made it seem like him and Iwata were very close friends, more on that later), and that he thinks that you should live your life to the fullest every day!

Question 2: You're the first in your family to attend Cornell, tell us how you got there

So first, he mentions that his parents actually didn't know ANY English when they immigrated, and that they got their education in Haiti. Due to that, they had to take on different careers than their education would have implied. Reggie mentioned that in high school, he played a lot of sports, but also did very well academically.

He applied to three different colleges. Hobart college, who offered him to play Soccer there (it seems like this was Reggie's favorite sport?), Syracuse University (it was his safest option), and Cornell (which was his dream school). Being a state resident and having a scholarship, he was able to attend Cornell!

He was also asked if he changed his major. He didn't. Reggie was a major in finance, and his goal originally was to become a banker. He mentioned that Cornell also was a life changer experience for him, and now that he is retired, looks back at how a lot of his decisions there affected his life. That's part of why he's been doing these lectures as well.

Another major way Cornell changed Reggie's life, is that thanks to the help of professors, he got into a mentorship with Procter and Gamble, a major consumer goods corporation responsible for stuff like Tide, Pampers, Olay, etc. Think general lifecare goods. It was here that Reggie seemed to learn that he had a passion for "aggressively growing businesses". This is actually what led him to leave the company, and go onto many different others, such as the restaurant business (which he mentioned he especially enjoyed because of the immediate feedback of seeing people sitting on tables), beer, private equity, and of course, Nintendo!

Now this is where he drops a REALLY cool tidbit about Nintendo in particular. It seems like his love for growing businesses is what led him to joining Nintendo in the first place! Reggie specifically went into how the PS2 was dominating the video game marketplace, with the Xbox being a distant 2nd place, and Nintendo doing slightly worse than that with the Gamecube.

Basically, he saw that the Gamecube wasn't doing too hot, and that's what actually got him to join Nintendo, he saw major growth opportunity for Nintendo as a company. So go yell this in the streets Gamecube fanboys, the Gamecube's struggles are what led to Reggie joining Nintendo!

Unfortunately I didn't type this next question fast enough, but I do have the answer!

Reggie mentioned that he also started to develop a preference for "fast, youthful markets", using the beer and Spirits business, and Nintendo as good examples of this. He loved their fast pace. It was here he also talked about his principles of innovation (which I posted a picture of earlier in this post!)

He mentioned some cool details here, such as wanting to call up some old pals at Guinness while they were making poor decisions in the late 2000s, but it turned out none of them even worked there anymore!

He also mentions that according to Nintendo's data starting in 2002, software was starting to stagnate, and this is what led Nintendo to stop focusing on the graphics arms race that Sony and Microsoft were continuing to do. He also mentions that there tends to be strong executive leadership at places of innovation.

Reggie also gets asked two questions that are more announcements of two very cool things he'll be doing.

1: Reggie will be attending South by Southwest (SXSW) to talk about important skills video games can help enforce. This will happen in Texas this March!

I didn't catch the exact date when he's doing this, but this is probably worth a thread on its own. SXSW is mostly a media festival, and Reggie will be having a presentation there that shows the valuable life skills video games can help you attain. He actually mentioned two pretty interesting examples here!

His first example was actually about how DOTA can help with learning strategic skills. Yeah, I was NOT expecting Reggie to bring up DOTA of all things!

The other example got a great reaction from the audience: Reggie mentioned he wants to tell parents that their kids should play Animal Crossing, so they can learn about mortgages! As soon as he started talking about Animal Crossing this way, there was a roar of cheers and laughter from the audience!

He also goes on to talk about data collection being useful for business purposes, and how platform holders like Google, Apple, and Amazon use them well. He also mentions that patches are a great way to re-engage the audience, and how video game companies like Nintendo would look at data on how players would get stuck in games and quit at them too early. He also mentions that he thinks AI may have serious potential for interpreting this kind of data as well.

2: Reggie will be writing a book!

This may be worth a thread in itself too! The interviewer said "I heard a rumor you were writing a book", which immediately got the audience cheering as well. Reggie talked about how despite companies like Amazon shaking up the book business, that publishing is still fairly old school. He asked us in the audience how many would buy a book of his, and pretty much everyone in the audience raised their hands, with my brother jokingly shouting "I'll buy 10,000 copies!".

Reggie mentioned that the book is in the proposal stages, and that his first proposal actually got rejected, with pretty much every publisher saying "that's a nice speech, but it's not really a book."

He mentioned that for his 2nd proposal, it will focus on his life principles, and partially be a memoir about his life. He noted though that it wouldn't be a full memoir of his life, as he values being a private individual. Think something like his last lecture where he goes over principles of leadership, except its about life in general, and with many real life examples of things that happened to him.

He also mentioned later on during the audience questions about wanting to focus a MAJOR part of the book on his many mistakes and failures in business. Like the last lecture, he mentioned his philosophy of "failing forwards", basically using failure as a learning experience and a way to do much better next time (Back in October, he actually used the Wii U as this example, saying that the Wii U was a failure forwards that led to the Nintendo Switch).

So that's it for the pre-prepared questions. Next up, Reggie took a LOT of questions from the audience! I don't have every question here because I asked a question myself, so I had to take a lot of notes with my phone for this one. Reggie took questions in the last lecture, but this time EVERYONE was able to ask their questions, so there's a lot more of them this time!

This question was a doozy: the same person who asked about Blizzard kneeling down to China asked about Reggie's opinion on video game workplace ethics, video game unions, and delays, and specifically brings up EA's development disaster with Anthem!

Here, Reggie brings up the famous Miyamoto quote about delays, you know "A delayed game is eventually good, a rushed game is forever bad". He says that Nintendo deliberately avoided this kind of culture in particular.

On unions, Reggie argued that ideally, if a workplace is effectively managed and pro-employee, they shouldn't need unions. Keyword "effectively managed", which he certainly didn't seem to think EA was with Anthem lol. He clarified that he however, is absolutely not anti-union, especially since his father was in a union for around 30 years too. His answer on unions was a bit wishy washy, but at the very least he didn't really seem to be against them.

The next person expanded on the last question, asking about crunch time and layoffs, more on corporate culture, and how Nintendo seemed to go against the grain in this respect.

Reggie expanded upon a particularly famous moment during the Wii U's downfalls with this question. Remember when Iwata took a big pay cut instead of laying off employees? Reggie mentioned that Nintendo executives across the board (and implying that this included himself) took pay cuts over mass layoffs during the Wii U era. He said this wasn't even because of some higher mandate, but the decision to cut executive pay rather than start mass layoffs was due to Nintendo's deeply ingrained corporate culture, which felt that laying off employees would deal a serious blow to company morale, and lead to far worse video games being made.

He also side tracks into more about his relationship with Iwata here! He talks about how the two bonded because they both had a similar backgrounds of being "outsiders" of Nintendo that quickly rose through the ranks, with Iwata and him both joining in the early 2000s. It seems like Reggie and iwata talked with each other a LOT, and a common topic was they'd talk about the core reasons they loved Nintendo as a company. The way Reggie talked about Iwata here, it really seemed like they were best pals!

A lot of us were misty eyed at his side track on Iwata. I could sense a deep amount of respect for the man in Reggie's words. Reggie goes on to credit Iwata for being the mastermind behind BOTH of Nintendo's rebounds as well. He credits Iwata for the Wii's huge success, and as some of us expected from what Kimishima has said in the past, Reggie also credited Iwata for being the mastermind behind the Nintendo Switch's success as well!

Since he mentioned the Wii and Switch's rebound being a mastermind from Iwata, he also mentions the 3DS's turn around. He talked about how as is known, the 3DS's sales were underwhelming at the start of its life, but that now it has outsold the Xbox One in lifetime sales. He attributes this to great software leading to people to purchase the 3DS. He brings up that the 3DS's life story is actually being used in a business class at Cornell as a case study due to its turn around!

Oh by the way, right after this question ended, the question asker also asked "what position you played in soccer". Reggie played defense!

I'm proud of this next question, because my little brother asked this one! He asked about Reggie's experience at E3, and what his favorite E3 moments were.

Reggie went on to answer by saying that he LOVED the E3 experience, and that in particular, he loved making people's jaws drop with surprising, exciting announcements. He had two moments in particular that were his favorite.

The first one he mentions (and seems to be his 2nd favorite) was his first E3, E3 2004. It seems like he really loved people's reactions to the famous "I'm here to kick ass and take names" speech, and the DS's reveal in general.

His #1 moment however, was E3 2006. In particular, it was the fan reaction to the Wii at E3. He said the best moment in all of E3 history for him, was the famous Wii stampede. On day three of E3 2006, a lot of fans got into the expo, and in Reggie's words "thousands of them" ran past the Sony and Microsoft booths, just to play Wii Sports. He said that seeing Wii Sports resonate with people THAT much was the most "magical" E3 moment for him!

Next up, someone asked a question about continuing with difficult studies. I wasn't typing notes fast enough for this one sadly, so all I got was Reggie talking about how for studying, you need to find your tolerance level for workload.

I did get notes on this next one though! Someone asked about Nintendo Directs, UHOH! Well specifically, she asked if Reggie had any creative input on them.

Reggie mentions that he did have input onto Directs, being a Nintendo exec of course, but that it was Nintendo's developers that were mostly responsible for them (he may be referring to the game's themselves, not sure). He mentioned that he loved the skits in particular though, especially Fils-A-Mech rofl.

He also mentions that he doesn't have much creative input on the games themselves, since that wasn't his role. Regardless though, he did give input on games, and apprently he was influnecial enough that there are several Nintendo projects that put Reggie in their special thanks! He said he was pretty touched by this! I wonder which games these are?

Oh, and Reggie added this on his own: he KNOWS how crazy the internet is getting over waiting for a new Nintendo Direct, referring it to "eagerness on the internet for a new direct". He clarified that he has no idea when the next Direct will be, which got a lot of laughs out of the audience!

The next question was about the social function of video games, and their stories. I wasn't able to type the entire answer fast enough, sorry I'm not great typing on a phone.

What I did catch though, was Reggie feels that while not every video game needs to tell a story (quoting Miyamoto, who said that Mario's story is that he jumps and breaks blocks lol), when a video game actually does a story well, that it usually becomes an instant classic. He gets another question on storytelling later I typed faster on though!

Next up, he gets a question about creativity that I wasn't able to entirely catch.

Reggie mentions that there's many different types of creativity, and that the creativity of a business person and creativity of a content creator is pretty different. He said that he also felt some of this creative strain when making posts on twitter recently! He also mentioned that his daughter, for example, is an illustrator, which is a very different type of creative than he is.

For this question, Reggie is asked if Cornell feels particularly different today than when he was a student.

Reggie says that campus wise, he feels right at home at Cornell, and it feels very familiar to him. However, he also states that he feels like the caliber of the students has dramatically increased since he attended!

Someone asks Reggie about the increasing amount of cutscenes and storytelling in some games, particularly name dropping Sony here, and asks him if he prefers a story focus or a gameplay focus, or maybe a bit of both.

Reggie thinks that there isn't really an approach that's better than the other, saying that it shouldn't be a forced choice. He did say however, that he thinks that often, the best games actually nail both aspects. At the same time though, he mentions that even something like Zelda, which has a bigger storyline focus than say, Mario, still has a fairly simplistic story. He also mentions that he likes games on ALL platforms, whether it be Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC, etc, and also praises indies for advancing the medium. He also states that in the end, video games are like all mediums in that there are many different ways to be quality.

Woo, I finally get to ask MY question! I asked him a very simple question: What's your favorite Mario game?

Reggie has to think about this for a bit. He decides that Super Mario World is his favorite Mario game, and that Super Mario Odyssey is his runner up! On a side note, in the last lecture, someone asked Reggie what his favorite game of all time is. Reggie's favorite video game is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and before that came out, it was the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Seems like Reggie is quite a fan of the SNES and Switch!

Unfortunately I didn't get the next two questions down, since I was returning to my seat after asking my Mario question! Someone asked about being creative on the business side of things, I didn't get to write down the answer for that. Another question was asking about fan reactions, and Reggie brought up how Metroid fans were up in arms about Metroid Prime having a first person perspective.

When I got to my seat and the computer booted back up, someone asked Reggie about when he felt like it was time to move on from industries.

Here, Reggie mentioned that usually he felt like it was time to move on when he felt like he had helped grow the company enough. For example with Nintendo, he felt like NoA had grown enough that Doug Bowser would be able to take the reigns, and that the team at NoA was ready for it, so that's when Reggie decided to retire, and focus on his next "growth" project: Helping students grow in their potential!

This next question is a good one: Someone asks Reggie if Mario rom hacks have had any influence on Mario Maker as a project!

Reggie mentions that the main influence behind the creation of Mario Maker comes from Tezuka and Miyamoto, and specifically, how much fun those two had with making 2D Mario games, and they felt like they wanted to see how customers would approach the level design process. While rom hacks weren't the main reason for Mario Maker's existence, he did mention that the dev team (and Nintendo people in general) were very aware of the popularity of rom hacks.

Reggie goes on to mention that of course, Nintendo does aggressively protect their intellectual property. However, he says it in a wink and nudge way that makes the audience laugh pretty hard, it almost felt like he knew a lot of people weren't happy with how Nintendo takes down a lot of fan games!

I wasn't able to catch the next question because my computer paused for a moment and I was behind on typing, but I caught the answer to it!

Whatever the answer to this question was, Reggie stressed that he felt that the brain was "like a muscle", and that you should challenge yourself into trying new things, even if they're out of your comfort zone.

This time, someone asked a question about how it was like to deal with the cultural divide between Japanese and American business at Nintendo.

Reggie makes a really interesting point with this one. He says that Nintendo wasn't really a traditional Japanese business, and that this had roots in their Kyoto location. Reggie actually goes into Kyoto's history as the old capital of Japan, and that Nintendo had a philosophy of "Kyoto craftsmanship" in their company. He mentions that this "Kyoto craftsmanship" has its roots in porcelain and other forms of art.

He also mentioned that Nintendo corporate culture placed a BIG emphasis on `making people smile". He also brings up that the thing he misses the most about his time at Nintendo (besides Iwata of course) is his frequent travels to Japan. He said that he felt like he fit in very well at Nintendo's corporate culture, but that he doesn't think it was a particularly traditional Japanese company either.

In this next question, someone asks how Cornell helped him to get the connections he needed to become successful.

Reggie argues that while Cornell was important, it was more community engagement at Cornell that gave him the connections he needed, and the tools he needed. He also mentions that while this wasn't around while he was a student, that Linkedin is a very powerful tool for this now a days. He also mentions that attitude plays an important role, such as not focusing on what you want when negotiating, but what you can do for someone else, and what they can do for you.

Someone asks Reggie about how to figure out career decisions

Reggie mentions that not only were mentorships a big influence for him, but that professors were as well. And that in general, you shouldn't be ashamed to ask a lot of questions about careers and your aspirations, because multiple points of view are helpful. He also mentions that he's a big believer of also making a decision for the sake of moving forward when you're stuck, but still being open to course correcting if said decision doesn't go well, instead of sticking fully with it.

For this next question, someone asks about Video Game IP's multimedia potential, and brings up how League of Legends is entering into this.

Reggie seems to think Video Game IP have MASSIVE, untapped multimedia potential, bringing up the Witcher as a recent example from how it went from a Book, to Video Game, to huge Netflix hit. He thinks the Witcher is an example of how video game IP will start crossing over with other media more in the future. He also brings up how Nintendo is dealing with Universal Studios theme parks.

He also mentions that he hopes said crossovers into other media still retain the "essence" of said IPs. He humorously brings up the infamous Super Mario Bros. movie as an example of how it can go very wrong, and how it took Nintendo around 30 years to give the idea of a Mario movie another shot!

For the next question, Reggie is asked about how he rebounds from failure.

Reggie points out that he believes that in general, anyone who has been successful in life has plenty of failures in their past! He mentions that he defines successful people as "people who've made a difference", and that their definitive quality is learning from failure.

For this 2nd to last question, someone asks Reggie about the cultural challenges of working with a Japanese company.

Reggie goes on to say that he's actually worked with a LOT of companies from different countries before, listing off Jamiacan, Irsh, and Czech companies. Since he's talked a lot about Nintendo already, he mentions a particularly funny example with Guinness.

He talks about the drink mix you may find in bars, the "Black and Tan", which is a pale ale on the bottom and Guinness Stout on the top. He goes on to say that in looking into Irish culture and history, he learned that if you asked for a Black and Tan at a bar in Ireland, that you'd probably get kicked out! See, in Ireland, the Black and Tan was the name for the notorious British constables that committed acts of cruelty during the Irish War of Independence in the 1920s. He told us that in Ireland, people instead ask for a "half and half"!

Here's the final question, and it's a fitting one to end on: Reggie is asked who his Super Smash Brothers Ultimate main is!

Reggie laughs, and says that to be clear, he's awful at smash. Apparently, after that famous tournament thrashing, people actually offered to tutor Reggie at Smash, but he turned it down because he said it was pretty hopeless. He mentions that his main is none other than Princess Zelda, due to their floatiness and recovery, since he said he has a very hard time keeping track of characters in smash, which tends to lead to him falling off the stage!

Phew, that was a lot to type up! Overall, me and my little brother had a BLAST with this public interview! I really enjoyed his lecture last October as well, but this had quite a different feel. As Donna Haeger put it, it felt like this entire thing was like an "intimate fireside chat" between Reggie and the Audience!

In particular, I want to add that Reggie was VERY effective at looking at the audience when talking this time. It almost felt as if he was talking DIRECTLY to you the entire time!

After this, like last time, we all got to have a meet and greet with Reggie. This time, Cornell was far better prepared, partly because of the smaller audience size (the ticket system did its job here heh), and partly because we all took group photos this time. Here's mine!

The portly fellow with the 3DS and Pokeball Plus is me, and the taller dude with holding the Switch is my little brother (whose on Smogon as Deadite ) The other two people besides Reggie are fellow Nintendo fans we hung out with while waiting for the interview. I even traded Pokemon with one of them. Reggie himself was also a lot more interactive this time with a much more organized meet and greet. He seemed impressed that my brother's first game ever was Super Metroid, and he asked what game we were playing (I had Pokemon Ultra Sun on my 3DS, Pokemon Sword on my Switch, my brother had been playing Pokemon Shield and Saints Row the Third lately).

Like last time, people recorded Reggie's lecture / Q&A at Cornell, so I assume some footage of that will be released! Also this time, it seems like we got press photos for ALL the meet and greets, so that was cool!

I hope Reggie continues to do these public events in the future. He's a great speaker, the audience loves him, and both times I've gone to these, they've been unforgettable experiences!

 

[Annika]

someone has to ask it: did anyone make the "is your body REGGIE" joke? how did he take it?