Well, I have to say I had a pretty good launch. Here's how it went.

November 17. My dad calls up Funcoland. The guy says they'll be opening at 9 AM. So I am woken up at 8 AM the next morning (not that I was complaining, given the occasion) and we take off to town. Now, I should mention here that I live in the middle of a desert in California. Very unpopulated, and it takes an hour to get to the nearest video game retailer. So, we show up right at 9 AM, only to find out that they aren't opening until ELEVEN. Gah.

So, we drive to get some breakfast, marvel over the fact that Toys R Us has a LINE (where I live, a line of 15 people is an amazing thing to see in front of a Toys R Us.) Then we marvel again over Best Buy's line, with only 6 people in it. We return at 10 AM, and behold, an employee shows up to get the store ready to open. This is the fun part.

My dad gets out, demands to know why they don't open at 9 AM as they said they would the night before. The guy stands there, unsure of what to say. I'm wondering whether to shut my dad up and spare the guy the scene, or to let things unfold and possibly get a Cube an hour before the store opens.

Naturally, I choose the latter. And naturally, the guy lets us in to have at the Nintendo Goodness they have stored all over the place.

I then go Nintendo-Crazy, (although not as crazy as most people, but this is good for me, okay??). This is the first time I get a console at launch. So I get the console, Luigi's Mansion, the token Memory Card. Then, the guy asks if I'd like a second control. Sure, less money to spend when SSB:M comes out. Speaking of SSB:M, would you like to preorder that so that you can get it when it comes out? I hear it's popular. Sure, why not. Better safe then sorry. Then my dad comes out with "Hey, see these used GBA games? They're cheap." So I go, hey, what better time to finally pick up Super Mario Kart Super Circuit? Add that, too! So, he shoves everything into a bag (which STILL weighed, er, nothing... I could get used to this "small" trend) and I lug it all to the car.

Then, here comes the OTHER fun part.

I take the Cube out, we drive by the Best Buy and Toys R Us, with their lines, and I flash the Cube at them with a grin on my face that clearly says "Suckers!" They cheer, my self esteem goes up a bit, and hey, I just got some glory for being a Nintendo geek-ette. Sounds good to me. After my five seconds of being a semi-celebrity, I then go home and glue myself to my shiny new Jet-Black Cube and the pretty pictures it puts on my screen for 8 hours straight. The only bad part about that was finding out that Luigi's Mansion only takes 8 hours to beat. You guys ain't kidding when you say it's short... but sweet. Yes, sweet. Mm.

Looks like December 3rd is the next great date in my never ending Nintendo Adventure, and may God bring it quickly. But today... today was a great day. I've never been happier to be a Nintendo fangirl.

-Lzn64

We had been collecting Gamecube accessories and parts throughout the week so we already got our memory card, a spice controller, Super Monkey Ball, Rogue Leader, and Wave Race (we made a Toys 'R Us employee go into the back to get the last game.) On November 17, the three of us (we're getting 2) went to Walmart around 6pm in some slightly heavy fog. None of us expected there to be more than about 6 people in line, so we were a little surprised when we saw the line was already around the corner of the electronics department. We "borrowed" some chairs from another part of the store and settled in for an almost 6 hour wait. The people in line told us that there were 48 units available. When we went to Walmart on the night of the XBox launch, the employee told us there would be 4 units. We chose to believe the the loyal Nintendo fans over the clueless Walmart employees. The person infront of us was apparently just bored so he decided to come wait in line for a GameCube. The mother behind us was getting her kids one for Xmas. Since there were 3 of us and we were getting 2, one of us could walk around. We snatched up an Indigo-clear controller (the last controller

in the store), and listened to people complaining about not getting memory cards nor first party games from Babbage's. Time went by surprisingly fast with the help of GBA's and friends. We were pretty much on display and people kept asking us what we were in line for and snickering at us. We didn't care. We finally got our tickets at 11pm so we could walk around the store. We got numbers 20 and 21. After half an hour, we went to the courtesy desk infront of the store and waited in line there. Fortunately, we got there fairly early and when the manager started asking for what color the people in line wanted, we were ready to with "Jet!". We all got our gamecubes safely, now came the hard part: getting home. The fog had gotten heavier and standing infront of the store, we couldn't see the parking lot at all. One of us ventured out to get the car while the other 2 hugged the GameCubes. We got home safely at 25 miles per hour and played Rogue Leader and Wave Race until 3am. The next day, we went hunting for more spice controllers and saw Gamecubes lying around in Target and Circuit City. We don't regret waiting in line - it was definitely an interesting experience. (And we now have one spice controller for each of us.) We're VERY happy campers.

'We haven't had time to capture pics from the video we shot while in line at Wal-Mart for 6 hours waiting for our cubes along with 60 others, but we have pics of me Kelly and my cousin Matt with our cubes and all our stuff. Peace.

Kelly