I did once.
It was Black Friday of 2006, a week after the release of the Wii. My friend had to work at a store in the mall in the wee hours of the morning, and he dropped me off to wait at GameStop so I could test my luck. Nintendo has always been infamous for engineered scarcity, and the Wii was no exception, so I was fully prepared to leave with nothing but an interesting story to tell. I had never seen the horrors of Black Friday, and was morbidly curious to experience it for myself at least once.
The experience was pretty tame. At first I waited outside the mall. I had my guide dog with me, and I allowed other people in line to give her pets and scritches as we waited. Not gonna lie, me bringing her was a bit of social engineering. Who’s gonna hit a blind guy? We got to chatting about what the line was for, and I discovered it was for an unrelated promotion. I asked if I could be let in to wait in front of the GameStop in the food court out of the cold, and they let me enter.
I can’t remember if others in the same line came in with me, or if they had already been there, but I ended up behind a dad and his two kids, and they were both getting a Wii. There were only three in stock, so I ended up getting lucky. I even got a copy of Twilight Princess, as well as FF XII on the PS2 as a Christmas gift for my sister.
tl;dr: veni vidi wiici
When I was a child my parents took me to a midnight release reading of probably the fourth Harry Potter book. After some woman read aloud the first chapter, at midnight, everyone was allowed to buy the book. It was very fun for little me back then.
These days it’s a complicated feeling, tainted by Rowling’s behaviour.
We did that for one of the books. We even invited the kid down the street to go with us, for a Tuesday Midnight release on a school night. He told us his Mom said it was all right and off we went.
We had a great night, ate dinner, wandered around the store (the friend had never been in a book store before), and finally bought the book at midnight, and headed home.
We got to his house, and I walked him to the door, and knocked. His Mom answered, and I said, “Here he is, everything went great, he had fun!”
And she said: “Oh! I thought he was in bed. I hadn’t heard from him all night, I just assumed that’s where he was. Oh, well, thanks!” And shut the door.
She’d never known that her kid was gone all evening long and until about 1 AM, and wasn’t even concerned about it.
I did not camp out myself, but I did work a register when some early World of Warcraft expansions came out. People went crazy for them.
I remember one evening we had some Wrath of the Lich King collector’s editions available for the release event and there was a huge rush to get in when they opened the doors. I had this sweet old lady come through my line with one of the big boxes. She was very excited because she bought it for her grandson and she wanted to give him a special gift. She was all smiles.
A few minutes later, I had a guy come through my line. He looked a little flustered and had a regular edition in his hand. He said some old lady ran up, pushed him out of the way, hit him with her purse, then grabbed the last collector’s edition and ran to the front.
Pretty sure my sweet old lady customer was the same one that hit him with her purse lol. It was a weird night.
Just once, for GTAV.
They released just after midnight. There was a decent line as I recall, probably less than 50 people. People cracked jokes about the series, and quoted favorite dialogue. The first guy in line strode victoriously to his car, his copy held high, then burned rubber when he hit asphalt. Immediately a cop tore after him out of the darkness. The rest of us went “ooooooo”. Somebody said, “No that’s just one star. He can do this!”
PS2 release day when I was 16 at best buy. I’m 42 and still have it, works great. Just tried it last month with some Twisted Metal, sat hiding as Spectre just doing my special like a bitch. Actually it’s under my TV, a bit dusty but all the og cords and controllers.
I worked the midnight release of the PSP. nobody came. like…nobody.
so I bought one after my shift ended. played it for a week and returned it.
it really was a trash system at first launch, though playing twisted metal online was pretty fun, until the Japanese players came on (if there be gaming gods, the Japanese are it).
last Sony system I ever bought.
edit: I just remembered staying in line for a Wii. I was the first person in line. then some other folks showed up and put up a tent since it was winter.
they were totally banging in that tent…it was fun 🤣
I waited in line for 3 hours to get tickets to The Phantom Menace. I’d like those 3 hours back.
Actually it was with a group of friends so it was actually kinda fun.
I was going to comment this was my first one, too. But I got to go with my big sister and her friends, so it was really cool for me. Hanging in line in retrospect was way cooler of an experience than seeing the movie.
Nah.
It’s always seemed really desperate. Very Cult of Capitalism. I can wait. Life is full of other things I can occupy my time with.
I can see doing it as like a social thing. Camp out with friends. Meet likeminded people. But it’s still supporting over-the-top capitalism.
Went for the midnight release of Death Stranding. I wasn’t really interested in the game, but Hideo Kojima was there signing games, so I went and got his signature and a picture.
It’s not really my type of game and I never finished it, but I love Kojima and I’m happy I got the signature.
I’ll keep this brief, but me and my buddies are down in Philly just smoking a lot of weed and having some beers, as we tended to do. Our friend who’s going to school at John Jay in the city (which is New York where we’re from) tells us they’re going to be giving out PS3s on TRL. So this is sometime around November 2006. So me and my friends drive to Trenton and hop on a train to Manhattan, get in around 5am, stumble out into Times Square with all the degenerates on a Friday morning, get to the MTV building, meet our friends, and do this thing. There’s a decent enough line but nothing crazy.
Hours go by, and we just wait. We hang out til showtime, which is like 2 or 3pm, I can’t remember. Needless to say, they eventually come out and say it was all a rumor and there are no PS3s. Depressed, we hop back on a train back to Trenton, because we are seeing Brand New open for Dashboard Confessional in Camden that night. We are exhausted. We meet a friend in Ewing, smoke some blunts, get uncomfortably high, but head to the show anyway. On the way in we watch this girl trip on a sidewalk and land on her face. Her friends help her up. I want to help, but I am too high and so we ask if she’s okay, get nods, and we continue in.
Brand New is already on. We hear one song. Dashboard comes on. Lead singer starts crying almost immediately. A woman who’s at least 10-15 years older than us (we are 19-20) keeps hitting on my one friend, and eventually says “This guy’s a bigger pussy than me, and I’ve got one!” We go home.
It was one failure after another for us. That was my one and only.
I went to the midnight release for Portal 2. My GameStop had more people there for Mortal Kombat though. And by more I mean I was the only one there for Portal 2 and all 7 other guys were there for MK.
My usual MO is getting things when they are discontinued. And cheap. Turbografx, Sega Saturn, Virtual Boy, Game.Com. I have them all. Virtual Boy was $20 at Target.
The only time I got something when it came out was the Gameboy Advance. But I pre-ordered it. No camping, just went in and picked it up.
I got the PS2 for Christmas the year it came out, but it was out for almost 2 months at that point, plus it was a gift, so I didn’t have to camp for that either. I still love that thing.
During that time when the LOTR movies were first coming to cinemas, people were camping outside to get premiere tickets. While we were all in the target demographic for said movies, having read rhe book and all, we found it a bit laughable considering how important it was to some people to see the movies on the premiere rather than just waiting a day or two…
Well, a couple of friends and I decided to ensure we got premiere tickets as well, so we brought sleeping bags and beer for our overnight adventure.
Except we weren’t there for LOTR. We got premiere tickets for Shrek 2, just because why not. We were the only ones there. 10/10, would recommend.
Just once for GTA 4 midnight launch. Only took 2 hours, mild weather.
Nearly did for the PS3 launch but managed to snag one on a digital storefront same day.
I went to the midnight releases of Call of Duty Black Ops, MW3 and Pokemon Black and White 2. I was in college at the time so had a lot more time to play video games on release back then.
I remember a Skyrim release party at the local game stop. We all hung out and got our games and the store ended up giving away a bunch of promotional stuff like cardboard stands and the like. It was a good time. I can’t imagine wading through a sea of people anymore for a release like that. Digital has changed a lot.
