Wii Got A Wii!

The hype for the new Nintendo system has been ongoing for quite sometime now and the wait, seemingly, longer. But finally, today, Nintendo Wii Release Day (also known as November 19, 2006) has arrived. Earlier this week Sony's Playstation 3 debuted to limited quantities, overnight lines, violence, and insanely overpriced ebay sales - all of which worried me about the Wii release.

Nick has been so excited about the Wii that I said I'd get it for him for his birthday and/or Christmas. Since his birthday has since passed it has become a Christmas gift, but what if I couldn't get it? I've never really dealt with toys or game releases like this and the only thing that came close was last year on Black Friday when Nick and I tried to wait outside of Circuit City for some bargain electronics and that was a somewhat failed and definitely ridiculous excursion.

So rewind to yesterday, the eve of the Wii release ... Nick and I had a game plan to be up and pound the main electronics websites for a midnight release. We had a received emails from Amazon.com about their plans for the Wii release, but it was somewhat cryptic about the time. They basically said it would be released on the 19th but based on Pacific Standard Time. So we figured that'd be 3am EST. So we figured we'd try at midnight EST, but unfortunately we didn't find anyone that had it available then. The next attempt was at 3am on Amazon and any other sites possibly working on PST (I had gone to bed by then). I awoke around 8-8:30am and poor Nick was delirious from exhaustion, frustration and of course no Wii. So he went to bed and I began my day. I saw that a local Target had the Wii listed as available but limited. I decided to take a ride over on the off chance they had one. It was definitely wishful thinking because the Target Team Member I asked just about laughed at me.

I returned home (a little sad) and arrived just before 11am EST (8am PST) and decided to try Amazon (and other sites) with the hopes that they were thinking like a business and the earliest they could get people in to launch on a weekend would be 8am, 9am the latest. After about 5 minutes of constant refreshing I thought it'd be a 9am PST release, but I decided to keep trying a little longer. Suddenly I was no longer seeing the blue box that said it was unavailable, I was seeing the magical add to my cart button. Adding didn't take right away but after a couple of tries I finally had the Wii in my cart and was able to complete the check out process. I was still in disbelief and didn't believe it until I saw the confirmation email.And as one should always do when victorious, I woke Nick with shouts of, "We Got A Wii!"