Sunday Notes (November 19)... Futile Wii-seeking...
...it was absolutely pointless. I, self-proclaimed Nintendo fanboy many times over, am not quite hardcore enough, it would seem. Anyways, it goes something like this...
Friday night, while I was at the local Wal-Mart I asked the nice lady in electronics what they were doing for the Wii launch. She gave me a ticket and explained that since the manager didn't want any trouble they were going to be doing a drawing for Wiis at midnight the next day, and that you needed to be present in order to claim one. I saw about 10 or 15 tickets already in the pot there. So, after that I called the Wal-Mart on the east side of town and heard it was first-come, first-serve. Headed over there about 6pm Saturday evening... already 20 or so people in line ＿|￣|○
So, enter plan B, head to the Wal-Mart over on this side of town for the Wii raffle at midnight where I had at least a chance of obtaining one. I arrived at about 11:30pm and immediately headed back to electronics, where a sign which wasn't there the day before was posted over the counter with the following (approximate, this is from memory):
Give21 ticket per customer. The drawing for Wiis (20) will be done at 10:00pm. Wiis will be drawn for and sold at 12:01am on Sunday Nov. 19
＿|￣|○
I don't really have to point out that the last sentence contradicts the information in the previous sentence. The manager or whoever apparently decided to change the rules. Thank you very much... and I'll stop myself here before I go into a rant.
Move to plan C... which was pretty much hopeless after midnight as expected -- a small tent city at Best Buy, a full line at Circuit City, a full line at Target (with a few doing some shopping cart racing) ＿|￣|○
So... the Gamecube and DS launches were NOTHING like this. I'm certainly happy as a Nintendo fan that a lot of people have an interest in Wii... but now I don't know what I'm going to do to obtain a Wii in the next week (or two, or three, o(ry Friday morning would be near impossible, probably... maybe some store would get another shipment during the week, but probably not.... so I guess I'll end up with one after Christmas if it turns out to a hot item going for ridiculous prices on eBay. Oh well... my luck has always been very bad ＿|￣|○ I got one!
Anyways, sorry for the rant, I'm not happy about things. I hope those of y'all that did manage to get a Wii today will enjoy it ;) Back to the usual blogging later on today, I suppose, since I certainly won't be spending my time playing through Zelda: Twilight Princess... ＿|￣|○
Ouch! That sucks! Sounds sort of like what my friend and I did to get GTA awhile ago. I told him I wasn't doing it again for the Wii so he's off standing in lines by himself, lol.
Sorry to hear that :(
We over at the west coast still have around 3 hours before the Wii goes on sale here. Thankfully I have one on preorder at TRU. Btw, what you went through last night was like what I went through for the PS3 launch Thursday night, but much much worse. Let's just say that I ended up seeing my face on the local news the following morning with police in the background ;P
er... I got a Wii after "camping" out at my local Toys R Us at 5am launch day. I was 9th in line and the store had 86 units to sell to the public that did not preorder.
S'okay so far but I haven't really played much. Only picked up Zelda so far but it seems interesting. Getting used to the controller is taking forever though =/
I was first in line to reserve it at my local Gamestop a few weeks ago, so got my system no problem. Sole reason I bought the Wii was for the new Zelda game.
However, no component cables available for at least 2 weeks (and that is getting the 'official' ones straight from Nintendo)... so I won't be touching Zelda until I can actually play it in 480p @ 16:9 orz. I did do a small run and the play experience is definitely different.
As for the PS3, I've got minimal interest in it until we either get some good anime on Blu-Ray or until FF13 comes out ^^