Courtesy of xkcd.com

1987. My birthday had arrived, and this was the era when my parents would still ask me what I wanted for my birthday, and I still had an answer without all the mature modesty we learned to hold us back in adulthood.

“Nintendo”

“hmmm, ok, we’ll give you a choice. Nintendo, or a Telescope.”

“Nintendo”

“Why don’t you think about it for a bit”

“Nintendo”

I remember this option so vividly, because even then, despite wanting the 8bit NES so bad, I actually had a sting of guilt. I wondered if at that very moment I was ruining a fateful celebrity like success in astronomy. Or even astrology. C’est la vie, life moved on and I became a super mario music editor instead and loved every moment of it.
19 years later. Gaming Consoles have come and gone, and I learned to turn a ho hum shoulder to gamer marketing. Sure I bought a console or two. But I had lost that pee in my pants feeling I used to get. A feeling killed at the hands of modern day media saturation. The same reason you have 30,000 mp3s in your iPod and no longer know an album’s lyrics, timing and song order as if your life depended on it.

On my, “Things to do in life” list, I hadn’t check off, “Stand in Line for the release of ______ “. So in order to recreate some of the excitement I used to feel, I jumped on the Nintendo Wii bandwagon, or rather, Pre-order line at the local EB games. I had heard the night before that Wii was going to have a limited number of preorders at 10am, and i happened to have the morning off.

Console releases happen every 4-5 years, so I saw this opportunity as the ultimate pee pee dance moment for gamer fanboys, the haley’s comet of Nintendorks, the Presidential election of United Button Mashers of America. My citizenship was under question, however, as I stood in line for the experience of the line itself, planning on flipping the console on Ebay when I picked it up.

I arrived at the Pre-order line. I was number 12, not too bad for being in line an hour and a half before the store opened. The people were colorful, yet generally nice, illustrated perfectly by the above comic. The biggest annoyance was a mother who was in line for her son.

“He’s so excited about the Wii, I told him he couldn’t skip school for this, so i came in his stead”

“aaah, that’s so nice of you. How old is your little boy?”

“24″

That in itself painted the perfect picture of who I was dealing with in this line. 10am, the store manager walks out.

“OK guys, we only have 13 pre-orders, so if you’re #14 or beyond, it’s time to go home”

I was in like Flynn at #12. One poor schmuck had arrived as #13, but decided that the line was short enough to go get a cup of coffee and donut next door, while the next #13 arrived. If there was ever a facial expression for kicking yourself in the ass, he perfected it.

I had my pre-order stub and was ready to rock the grey market.
Then something magical happened. The black magic of advertising tickled my fancy. In researching the product I was supposed to sell, I was hooked. Like a crack dealer who’s now in dept and in trouble with their supplier for using their own product.

I became a living Cartman. Counting the days, and reading all the PS3 vs Wii gossip on the likes of digg.com. My Dog, what had become of me. This isn’t healthy. I fancy myself a nerd, but fanboy? No way, especially after my record digging post that brought on the wrath of other Nintendo fanboys.

11:30 pm, Saturday, November 18. I stood back in line, this time, no threat of losing. I had my pre-order verified, no Playstation 3 violent line stories to reenact.

I had my Wii in hand (hehehe.. read that one more time). My shame had gone away. Why? That excitement was back. Sure, a consumer driven excitement. Guilty. But with it, a rush of nostalgia. I have re-entered the gaming world at a paradigm shift in controlling methods, and am now rocking the system every sane chance I get. Maybe not as much as this guy playing live for one week, But i’m rocking it like it’s 1987.

Wanna play?

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