TGS 2005 came at a time when 360 and PS3 were being hyped, the GC was far past simply “going down in flames” and there were literally 100 million PS2 fanboys on the web. DS and PSP were battling it out and though the DS was pulling ahead all people mentioned was the fact that Sony grabbed half on Ninty’s market and Nintendo was going under in a few years. There weren’t many Nintendo fans posting on forums in those days, there was a Sony love feast everywhere. A week before TGS ’05 I recall being on a large forum somewhere and there was a thread titled “An analyst predicts Nintendo won’t even finalize it’s ‘Revolution’, will go 3rd party”. The thread was 12 pages of Sony fanboys simply ripping Nintendo’s credibility to pieces. There were a few MS fans as well and a Sony fan’s posts read “Alright XBOX guys, we should get along now because by this time next year we will be the only two rivals. Should be an interesting battle between us when that time comes… but for now lets get the Nintenfailure out of here”
Then, completely out of the blue, a Nintendo fan appeared. He made an honest, quiet post that I shall never forget “Hey guys, come on now. We don’t even know what Nintendo has planned yet. I mean they are going to release the controller in a few days and it might be something good, you know? Let’s wait until we know more, Nintendo might pull something off.” I mean I am a Nintendo fan but I winced when I read that because I felt sorry for the guy, firstly because I doubted Nintendo could pull it off and secondly because this was the wrong thread to post that in, he was going to get torn apart. Sure enough, the next, oh, 30 posts were people simply quoting him and doing the Internet equivalent of beating him to a bloody pulp. I felt sorry for the guy and hoped he didn’t stick around to read what people were saying about him, although he probably had.
Five days later TGS ’05 was here, and I was watching it live at my friend house. That first video was shown (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKsehu9dspM) and as the controller first appeared I first rose an eyebrow. I cocked my head a bit and was thinking “what the hell…” but before I could finish that thought they showed the guy playing tennis. My thought process froze for a second and then it was “HOLY ****!”. At the end of the trailer I just sat there for a second and whispered a “thank you” out loud. It was directed at Nintendo for doing what it needed to do and for standing up for it’s fans. I only wished I could have personally shown it to that guy on the forum who got ripped apart for just saying what he believed it. He was right, everyone else were wrong. And I knew the forums wouldn’t be the same 12 months from then.
