Aaron Kaluszka, Staff Writer

I’ve never purchased a system at launch before, this being the first time there were enough compelling launch games and I had an adequate budget. I was apprehensive about greater demand on Wii systems than supplies, but I was not able to get a pre-order due to my schedule. I was going to a party on the Saturday night before launch, so my original plan was to leave early, get to Wal-Mart for midnight launch, and then bring the system back to the party. I called the nearest several Wal-Marts and found that only one was actually open 24-hours. They had about fifteen people waiting since that afternoon. Each store was only getting 20 systems. I called every store that might sell Wii systems in a 30 mile radius. The prospects didn’t look good. The local Targets were getting 30-50, the Toys 'R' Us was only getting 15 beyond their pre-orders, Circuit City was only getting 24, and GameStop/EB Games were only getting enough to fulfill pre-orders. Best Buy looked like my best bet with 87 systems.

My TMK colleague, David Dayton, already had a pre-order secured in Los Angeles, and since he was covering the Wii Launch at CityWalk, I asked him to secure a system for me. Despite Nintendo being reasonably sure that there would be enough Wii systems for everyone at the event, he called me around 9 to tell me that there were over 1000 people, with a rumored supply of 600 Wii systems and not enough Zelda to go around for even those systems. He didn’t get there soon enough to be in the lucky group.

I had a friend who also wanted to get a system (a casual gamer, incidentally), so we drove over to the two closest Targets around midnight to see what was going on. After all, the PS3 launch was only a couple days before, and was absolutely ridiculous over in San Francisco. As we had feared, there were already people camped out at the Target. My friend decided to forget about it right then. My plan was to try Target early, and Best Buy if that didn’t work out. Early, meaning less than two hours before opening…certainly I could get a system by camping out, but I wasn’t about to do that.

I went over to Target in the morning and found even more people camped out, a number greater than the confirmed number of systems available at the store. One of the store employees, who didn’t speak English, just stood there shaking his head saying "no". I then drove across the city to the Best Buy and found the line had already snaked around the corner of the building. I got in line and waited until an hour before opening, when they handed out the tickets. I ended up being somewhere in the 90s for a stock of 87. Somebody mentioned that the CompUSA was getting systems, so several of us rushed to that store. I made it there first, but was informed by a rude employee that they were not receiving any systems for launch. I tried calling some of the other stores around the San Francisco Bay Area, but everybody was sold out. I’d have to wait for the next shipment.

Every time I called a store asking about availability, I’d get a different answer. It was hard to tell what was going on, but there were rumors of Black Friday availability. I decided to try EB Games at 5:30AM since they opened at 7:00. I drove past one of the EB Games in town, and saw a dozen people camped out. I found out that the Best Buy had over 400 people in line before 5AM, with people in line wrapping around the entire building, and then some. Other stores were just as bad. It seemed hopeless, but (probably thanks to the absence of students on break) I ended up being third in line at another EB Games. Half of the people in line were college professors.

They got four Wii systems and five PS3 20GB systems. (Actually, they had nine Wii systems, but had to ship half to another store that didn't get their shipment in.) Success! Two other guys had been circling the area, but didn’t get in line immediately and lost out. Dozens ended up being turned away for Wii, but they didn't even have enough people in line to claim all of the PS3s by the time the store opened. In fact, the three they did sell were only to people who got them since there were no more Wii systems left. The sales clerk wouldn’t sell me both a Wii and PS3 for "moral reasons". He did give me the badass Reggie shirt, though. Unfortunately, they were out of extra controllers.

I called around, but no stores had any extra controllers left since launch day. On Sunday, I woke up abnormally early, so I decided to drive down to the Best Buy again in hopes of controller stock since they were getting more Wii systems in. Certainly, I could order from Nintendo’s online store, but I didn’t want to wait for them to be shipped. Again arriving nearly two hours early, I found the line already wrapped around the building. The manager came out early to tell us that they only had 30 confirmed systems, but to wait for the truck to unload, because they may have gotten more in. He also assured me that they had extra controllers. Again, they began to hand out tickets; it turned out that they had 50 systems, and I was number 52 in line and was put on the list in case others transactions didn’t go through. People continued to line up despite us telling them that they were out of stock already.

Store opening came, and everybody who wasn’t confirmed for a Wii was allowed inside. People continued to get in line, not knowing that it was only for the Wii. I went inside and found that they didn’t actually get any extra controllers in. However, the girl who had been in front of me in line had to go to the airport to pick up a friend. That left me at #51, with my only means of getting another set of controllers was to get another Wii. It turned out that one of the girls in line was only waiting with her boyfriend, and didn’t actually buy a system, leaving the system went to me. After putting up with the Best Buy reps’ warranty sales pitch and falsehoods (e.g. Wii only has a three month warranty and the Nunchuk breaks easily...I don’t think so), I purchased my second Wii. I took out the controllers for myself and gave the system to somebody I knew who had waited in multiple lines but wasn’t able to obtain a system, making his Christmas a little happier.