I’ve known for a while that I’d be picking up a Wii as soon as possible. Once Nintendo released launch details, it became clear that demand at launch would be pretty high, so I figured I better find a place to pre-order one to be on the safe side. I figured once all the information was out there, plenty of stores would start taking pre-orders. Ha.

Details for the North American Wii launch were announced on September 14. I figured it would only take a week or two for stores to figure out how they wanted to handle things. The first thing I can remember is Amazon opening up pre-orders and closing them again the same day. Hmm…that’s both a good and bad sign. Good for Nintendo that demand is high, but bad for me trying to secure one for launch day. I wasn’t too concerned yet, ’cause I had no interest in ordering online. So I waited. I call GameStop every few days and hear the same thing: “We don’t know, but it will be soon.”

October 9 rolls around and GameStop/EB Games announce they will be taking limited PS3 pre-orders the next day, but there’s no news of Wii. I keep checking out my various sources for news (The Wiire, Go Nintendo, Joystiq). Word spreads quickly that the PS3 pre-orders were gone in minutes at most stores. Hmm…there should be more Wii’s available, but it might be harder to get my hands on one than I thought. Rumors are flying that Wii pre-orders should be later in the week or the beginning of next.

Finally, confirmation shows up on a few sites that Gamestop/EB Games will be taking Wii pre-orders on Friday October 13. I got my own copy of their email Thursday night and knew I was set. I’d stopped into the closest location and learned they let 14 people pre-order a PS3. With Wii’s launch units more than double that of PS3, I figured it was safe to assume that they’d have around 30 Wiis available. But would more people line up for Wii?

I found out early Friday morning when I pulled up to GameStop around 7:30AM after dropping Amber at work (why I drove her is another story). There were 10 people already waiting when I got there, making me number 11 in line. Two guys showed up immediately after me and the line continued to grow. I think it finally capped about 35 people. The first guy had gotten there at 3AM, and the second guy had been there the night before with a sleeping bag, but when no one else was showing up, he left and came back at 5AM. Craziness.

After about two hours of hanging out with other fans, sharing stories and favorite games, an employee came out. He had in his hands a roll of stickers to mark each person’s place in line and signify that he/she would be getting a pre-order. His roll stopped at 32, and he sent away one person. It turned out two of the people in front of me were together, so I ended up being number 10.

Once I got to the counter, I pre-ordered a console, an extra remote, and an extra nunchuck. I had brought some GameCube and DS games for trade-in, so I didn’t end up needing to put any money down. I’d pre-ordered Zelda and Red Steel a few weeks ago, and paid them off last week. I walked out of the store with my pre-order reciept and stashed it somewhere safe. I got to work around 10:30, and was happy to see nothing had exploded and no one had really missed me while I was freezing my ass off outside. GameStop

November 19. I’m ready.

This really was one of the best games on N64 and probably one of the best games ever. I remember seeing it for the first time in Toys ‘R’ Us and actually being interested in a first person shooter for the first time. I spent hours and hours playing the single player campaign mode and I’ve still never finished it on 00 Agent mode let alone the one after that. I could only unlock some of the cheats by using the GameShark. And the multiplayer…many evenings were completely blown while my friends and I lost sleep over it. The first time I ever played I got my ass kicked every game, but it didn’t take long and people started hating to play against me. And somehow, they still did…

It saddens me to think that the chances of Goldeneye appearing on the virtual console for Wii are slim to none. Maybe that will be one of Nintendo’s last surprises – actually convincing both Rare and EA to license it. If you’d like to reminisce with me, here’s a pretty cool article from one of the game creators.

Apparently a release date for a video game doesn’t mean that’s the day it will be in stores. Despite today being the well-published release date for New Super Mario Bros., it won’t actually be available in any store in Madison until tomorrow at the very earliest. Why bother to publicize a release date if you can’t get the game on that day? Just so I can go online and officially order it instead of pre-order it? I guess I’ll have to wait at least one more day for my Mario fix.

For anyone interested in my thoughts on E3 and Wii, I’ll get to it soon.

Holy crap, this sounds totally sweet! TIME reveals details for a WarioWare game on Wii, as well as info on Zelda: Twilight Princess gameplay, a tennis game, and the next Madden.

It’s a remarkable experience. Instead of passively playing the games, with the new controller you physically perform them. You act them out. It’s almost like theater: the fourth wall between game and player dissolves. The sense of immersion–the illusion that you, personally, are projected into the game world–is powerful. And there’s an instant party atmosphere in the room. One advantage of the new controller is that it not only is fun, it looks fun. When you play with an old-style controller, you look like a loser, a blank-eyed joystick fondler. But when you’re jumping around and shaking your hulamaker, everybody’s having a good time.

That’s a pretty awesome first impression. I think this might be my favorite part:

But the name Wii not wii-thstanding, Nintendo has grasped two important notions that have eluded its competitors. The first is, Don’t listen to your customers. The hard-core gaming community is extremely vocal–they blog a lot–but if Nintendo kept listening to them, hard-core gamers would be the only audience it ever had. “[Wii] was unimaginable for them,” Iwata says. “And because it was unimaginable, they could not say that they wanted it. If you are simply listening to requests from the customer, you can satisfy their needs, but you can never surprise them. Sony and Microsoft make daily-necessity kinds of things. They have to listen to the needs of the customers and try to comply with their requests. That kind of approach has been deeply ingrained in their minds.”

This excerpt didn’t go on to explain what the second notion was, but it’s not really important; Nintendo knows what they’re doing. I’ve been saying it since last September when they showed the Wii controller to the world at TGS. They will continue to be successful where Sony and Microsoft struggle to break even. Maybe Nintendo won’t overtake Microsoft and Sony this time around, but I know they’re going to surprise a lot of people. Games on Wii are going to be something everyone should experience. I’m just waiting for Nintendo to announce a launch price so I can finally pre-order it. Unnfortunately, most people don’t think this is one of the details to be revealed this week at E3. Still, with TIME journalists writing things like this about Wii, I can’t wait to get my hands on one 🙂