I am not participating in console launches this year. Although I have been in favor of the PlayStation 4, having all these new machines in people’s houses showing better visuals, more applications, smoother interfaces, better controllers (trust me, the DualShock 4 is amazing) and being more connected is going to bring about some pretty exciting video games. These are video game machines that play video games and they are companies that want your loyalty. Watching them fight over your business is a fun thing to watch.

I have participated in these crazy fights and lines for consoles before. The last time I had this fever was when the Nintendo Wii came out. Before the console was released on November 19, 2006, Nintendo showed us what the machine would do at Tokyo Game Show in 2005. The controller was just a stick with a couple buttons that tracked motion and somehow that is all I need to be all in. The showing of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess helped a whole lot, people were really clamoring for a realistic Zelda around that time, so seeing all the footage and screenshots was really exciting. This eventually lead me to putting a preorder down at GameStop in Oskaloosa, Iowa. It was in the spring of 2006 when they were accepting preorders in which I grabbed a Wii console, a second Wii-Mote, Red Steel and Twilight Princess. I was pretty happy.

Then the day arrived for the midnight release. Once 10PM started to creep up, I was alone. My wife was working at a coffee shop and I started to make my way to the car. In my car, I found a drunk lady inside of it, sleeping. I asked if she needed anything or if I could help her out of the car because I had a couple things to take care of. She woke up, said, “No, I’m waiting for my boyfriend” and left my car. Weird way to start this console cycle but it could have been worse. I think I made plans to see my brothers at the GameStop so that they could witness this dirty deed that I was going to take part in. Other than that, I was on my own.

It was freezing cold and people were lining up. If I recall correctly, I was the second dude in line. I made a little nest and started to play through some games on my Nintendo DSLite while waiting for the excitement that was inside the building. The line was getting bigger and then the time came to enter the store. A lot of people were just there for Zelda, like almost half of the people in line. They were sprinkled about with the Wii guys so they started to open the doors and get us all separated. After we had two lines in the store, it was nice and warm finally, they started to hand out systems. No big countdown or anything, just really orderly. The guy in front of me walked forward and then I was on deck.

I walked up to the counter, we went over my credentials and I got a Wii, an extra controller, Red Steel and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for Gamecube. Gamecube? Yes, they handed me a copy of Twilight Princess for Gamecube. I was pretty livid. I asked them to review everything because why would I buy a new console without getting a Wii version of Twilight Princess? They scrambled a little bit and said that all the preorders were gone and I can either take the copy of the Gamecube version or nothing. I said, “I don’t need it, I will take my chances somewhere else.” I ran out the door and made a mad sprint for Wal-Mart which was a couple hundred feet from the GameStop. At about 12:10AM, there was a huge line of people waiting for their Nintendo Wiis. So I wait.

Wal-Mart had the decency to pass out tickets for stock that they had and could guarantee that I could get a copy of Twilight Princess about 20 minutes into waiting in line and sweating it. After the clock struck 1AM, I had a copy of Twilight Princess, a whole apartment full of fools that wanted to see what motion control was all about back in Pella and about five hours of Wii bowling ahead of me. It was a good console launch. I lived above a pizza joint so we ran downstairs, made a bunch of pizzas and desserts and snacked on those all the way into the early hours of our Sunday.