Following Tuesday's PS3 pre-sale blowout, I expected to be confronted with dozens of console campers, assembled in a makeshift shanty town around my local GameStop in Philadelphia's working class neighborhood of Port Richmond. The game store is attached to a strange, suburban-esque shopping mall in the middle of Philadelphia, next to the requisite suburban Applebee's and a grocery store with the baby formula locked up behind glass. When I arrived at 8:15, I was alone save for two college students tossing a football in the parking lot.
"You guys here for the Wii pre-order?," I stuttered.
"Yup," they said.
Good, I wasn't alone. But why'd I come so early? No sooner did I complain about the long, cold wait than the duo inform me they'd been waiting since 3.
"3 ... AM?!"
"Yup," they said.
We waited for another hour, chatting about whether they braved the weather for the PS3 pre-order (they didn't), and why they were willing to lose a good night sleep for this (it wasn't as bad as the Xbox 360 wait, they tell me). An hour later, a fourth person arrives in a Cavalier telephone installation truck. He's getting one for his little brother. He asks us if the Wii can accept SD cards over 2GB, meaning the newer SDHC cards. None of us knew. I should have.
Every time someone walks by, I expect them to look up at the sign, realize they were at the right place, and settle in. Maybe if enough people showed up, we could even form a line! By 9:15, after a couple Dollar Tree employees got my hopes up, a father and son meandered into our fold. I knew everyone would come at five of, and still get one. The 3AM guys knew it too. I went to get a coffee.
At 9:30, a city worker drove up and left his truck running, and we realized it was time to make a line. After the awkward process of agreeing who belongs where ("No, I was fourth and he was third ..."), we assess the situation. Only seven people in line, and the father isn't getting one, which leaves six. I'm number three. The city worker says he didn't bother waiting in line for the PS3 pre-sale, he just showed up at 10:05 and managed to secure himself a number two or three spot. He wasn't sure which.
At quarter of, the manager rolled up, smoking a cigarette and looking generally impressed there was anyone waiting outside at all. "There was no one here for the PS3. No one," he said. Wow, and here I was thinking this was a snoozer. He said they had been allotted 8 PS3s on Tuesday and said they had the same amount of Wiis available today. He went inside to do what it is managers do before they open stores (what is that, anyways?), while we counted heads again. Still six.
Everyone was most excited for Zelda: Twilight Princess and Mario Galaxy (of course), but Red Steel also piqued their interest. In reality, it's the controller we're all interested in. When we were finally let in, the line immediately expanded. At 10:01, we were joined by eight slackers, hoping to score a Wii with a minimum of waiting. We all laughed heartily to ourselves until the manager corrected his earlier tally. They had twelve Wii units left after the 3AM gang claimed theirs. We counted again. There were twelve of us left. I was number one.
