Damn my assumptions on when the mall opens! Oh well, it’s grab and dash on Nov. 19th.

Ironically, as I left the mall, Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” was playing over the mall system. Oh, the fun we have with irony.

I was fourth in line at my local EB Games here in Georgia. I’m preordered and ready to play. The list they had looked like they had 20 total, but 4 of those slots were filled with the word “EMPLOYEE”.

Got mine! Well, actually my Grandma got mine. She rocks! And not for this; she has always rocked. Especially that time she threw down with the clerk at Walgreen’s.

Yeah, I got my Wii pre-order this am. I arrived at 9:50 am at the EB Games near my place in Harlem. I even have exciting pix to upload to my blog of the line, which only had about 20 people… Well, once I find someone with a card reader here at work.

BTW, the pre-orders are not guaranteed, only guaranteed to a place in their queue. That’s what the guy told me at the store.

x fingers.

-dr

I finally pre-ordered one from HMV (in the UK) on Wednesday. They’ve been on preorder for about two weeks here in various places, but amazingly I managed to be third on the list! Finally, living in a chav town (google it) worked out for me.

It turns out that there’s a down side to living in “Gamer Town USA.” In retrospect, though, perhaps my plan was flawed.

I woke up at 8:00 and by 8:45 I was in downtown Seattle standing in line along with about forty other DS and PSP playing twenty-something white and/or Asian males. At 9:35 the EB store manager peeked out and started counting folks—he stopped counting after reaching some disappointingly small magic number. A few minutes later our doughy-brand game tyrant was handing out pre-order forms—I guess—to the first few dozen folks in line. (The line was headed up by a clutch of canny PAX Enforcers, so at least they there going to good people.) Trying to count, it looked like there were just enough forms for the first thirty-five or forty people. Too bad I was about forty-four.

Frustrated by not defeated yet, I ran through the list of all the local EBs and GameStops I knew, choosing the most far-flung. Being that I’ve only lived in Seattle for a few years, the list was kind of short, but I decided on the EB in Redmond. Surely a town that neighbors both Nintendo headquarters and the Microsoft campus wouldn’t have too many folks interested in video games. Leaving a wake of diving pedestrians and startled motorists (Seattle drivers tend to be a bit timid compared to east coasters) I raced east, Burn Out style.

Redmond sold out two people in front of me.

So it looks like I have a cold November night ahead of me in the near future. Who’s bright idea was it to start preorders for a new console on Friday the 13th!

If you’re store was doing pre-orders for that many then he screwed up. He was preordering all of 2006 shipment, not the initial shipment the stores will be getting.

I went to the most upscale mall on the Las Vegas strip and was 2nd in line at 9am. The manager said he had 25 consoles for preorder and they were all gone a little after 10am when they opened. Anyone wanting one on Nov 19th go to your local mall. The manager said the mall stores always get more consoles to sell than the neighborhood stores.