In last night’s blog entry I said that Graev and I would be headed to Gamestop at midnight to pick up our copy of Halo 3. At about 11:30 we left the house and stopped by Jack in the Box for a Diet Coke because what’s a midnight run without a nice cold beverage? Making decent time we made a straight shot to Gamestop and pulled into the big shopping center at about 11:45 thinking that maybe in our city there would be a couple dozen people. As we got closer it make clear we were wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. There were easily 200+ people standing in line with about another couple dozen standing around loitering in the parking lot. For HALO 3?! I guess it’s a popular game and I did mention lastnight that I felt it was somewhat a cult following but this was ridiculous!
So we roam the parking lot still in our car and at this point it’s nearly midnight. The doors open and we watch as 4 guys maybe in their late teens or early twenties walk in, buy their game, and walk out. Suddenly one of them thrusts his game toward the sky declaring at the top of his lungs “Halo 3!!! IN YOUR FACES!!” and points at the line which was quickly met by the profanity and cursing from the remaining 190+ who are still waiting patiently. Several more outbursts followed by people standing on cars shouting glorious praises to their Halo 3 games were about all I could handle. We decided that no game was worth this regardless of the hype.
I can understand passion for a game and I can understand excitement about a games release. I’m one in a sea of many who camp outside stores waiting on consoles or games (like Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne) and I love to share excitement with others. It seems though that these Halo crowds are just a bit bizarre! It’s almost brought a trendy feel to gaming to see these people who probably have never played any other game in their life get so excited about a pass-time that I’ve been involved with for more than the past decade. But hey, to each his own and even Halo fans deserve their moment of fun.
This morning we woke up and decided to head out at 8:30am to Chik-Fil-a and get ourselves some chicken-minies and of course another Diet Coke for breakfast. We then casually made our way to Gamestop (ohhh how I loathe thee Gamestop) and waited until 9am for the store to open. Once it opened we went inside, picked up our game, and we were out within 3 minutes. So IN YOUR FACE to the guy lastnight who probably camped out 15 hours to get his #1 spot in line! Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I overheard the store owner talking with the employees that they brought in $10,000 dollars in sales lastnight alone but had 1,000 trade-ins thus having only 10% profit or something like that. I’ll never understand this system of Scamtsop, err, Gamestop.
More to come on our first impressions of Halo and our adventure in our Podcast which is set for release this afternoon!
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