On Sunday morning I woke-up at an ungodly hour to trek over to Target
and wait in line for a Nintendo
Wii.
Unfortunately when I got there, the line was already about 75 people
long and I knew Target wouldn’t get that many consoles, so I headed over
to Best Buy in Reston. By the time I got there, I was number 70 in line
and they assurred us there were 102 Wiis in the store. It was around
forty degrees (Fahrenheit) and stayed that way throughout my wait. At
least the Best Buy employees ran over to Starbucks and gave us free
coffee and pound cake around 8 am. I spent the next three or so hours
chatting with the folks in line next to me. Apparently they did quite a
bit of reconnaissance trying to find the perfect spot to maximize their
chances of getting a Wii. I on the other hand simply lucked out. These
people knew exactly how many Wiis each of the stores in the area was
getting. Several had camped out at WalMart for the midnight release
(even though they knew WalMart would only have 30 or so). Almost all of
them had already pre-ordered Zelda and were still planning to buy it at
Best Buy so they could rush home and play it right away (instead of
waiting until EB Games opened an hour later and picking it up there).
These people were pretty hardcore gamers. I used to be that way before I
had kids. When I got to the front of the line, everything was nice an
orderly. Best Buy employees would allow 2-3 customers in the store at a
time and we each were led around by personal assistants who answered our
questions and fetched us the games, accessories and console. By the time
I got to pick what I wanted they were sold out of the nunchuk and
classic controllers. Three days later and I’m still unable to find a
nunchuk controller anywhere in the area. While I was able to snag two
classic controllers this evening, I should’ve looked at the games
available for the virtual console first as nothing really stood out to
me. When I got home on Sunday morning with the
Wii,
Zelda,
Excite
Truck,
Rampage,
an extra Wii
Remote,
Wii Points
Card
and a 1GB SD
card,
my wife promptly told me, in no uncertain terms, that I could not set it
up until the kids went to bed that night! By the time I was finally able
to set it up, I only had time for a few quick games of Excite Truck and
Wii Sports, both of which I like quite a bit. Wii Sports is surprisingly
addictive and while the control method for Excite Truck takes a bit of
getting used to, I found it fun—though it didn’t recapture the
enjoyment of Mario Kart (or the original Excite Bike for that matter,
but then again I was ten when that came out and much easier to impress).
I still haven’t cracked open Zelda yet as I’m saving it for when I’ll
have a nice block of time to dive into it. With 22 people coming over
for Thanksgiving (all of whom are from out of town and are staying
through the weekend), I don’t think I’ll get a chance to play Zelda. But
I’m hoping the other games will provide quite a bit of diversion for
everyone.