Jon Lindemann, Staff Writer

It all started on November 18th, one day before the Wii launch. I really didn’t want to camp out, so I was on the lookout for an online pre-order to take advantage of. As I got online Saturday morning, I received word that RadioShack.com had just started Wii pre-orders on their website. Normally I disregard an online pre-order unless I know ahead of time, but I found out about this one pretty quickly so I thought I’d take a chance. Their website said that they still had the Wii available (no bundle either, which was exactly what I wanted), and I got in early enough that I figured it might actually be true. I ordered it, received my confirmation email, and everything seemed great.

Throughout the day I kept reading that some people were receiving cancellation emails, because RadioShack.com had kept taking pre-orders long after their allotted supply of Wiis had been claimed. And yet, I had received no such email. Day turned into night, and I thought that I had finally lucked out and scored myself a Wii. Better yet, I was paying only $5 shipping and no tax. $255 for a Wii shipped to my door? Yeah, it sounded too good to be true, but I had no indication to believe otherwise. I went to bed that night with no worries whatsoever. While all these other schmucks would be getting up at 4am to camp out in the bitter cold, I’d be sitting back and waiting for the mailman later in the week. No problem!

I woke up the next day – Wii Launch Day - at 8:30am. That’s a little earlier than normal for me, but since I was awake I figured I’d take one last look to see how my RadioShack.com order was doing. You know, bask in the warm glow of my good fortune. I logged into their website, pulled up my order, and clicked on the order number. My jaw dropped. My order had been canceled due to "invalid information"! WHAT!?!?! There was no way I had screwed up any of my information. It was obviously a bogus attempt by RadioShack.com to make my order cancellation look like my fault. I didn’t even have time to get angry about it, because I knew I had to take action. It was almost 9am, and while stores like Target and Wal-Mart had been stripped clean of their Wiis for more than a half-hour, there was still hope at stores that were opening at 10am and 11am.

I hopped in the car and hit two Circuit City stores, a Best Buy, a CompUSA, and three Targets. Nothing. By this time I’d just about lost hope. Then I thought about MicroCenter, a smaller retailer where I had bought an Xbox 360 earlier in the week. After reading on CheapAssGamer.com that they had had a pre-order earlier Sunday morning, I figured they might have consoles in stock with little to no line. I put the pedal to the metal and arrived at the store at 10:15am, 45 minutes before they opened. There were nine people waiting inside the store and two guys waiting outside. I figured that with only twelve people there I was golden - they had to be getting in more than twelve, right? Wrong. The 10th guy in line (i.e. the first guy waiting outside), told me that the store manager was outside at 10am and said that they only had 10 Wiis to sell. I thought that had to be B.S., but sure enough, at 10:30am the manager walks up to the people waiting inside and hands them all tickets. He then opened the outside doors and said, "Guys, I only have 10 Wiis to sell, and this guy here was the first guy waiting outside." At that point he handed ticket #10 to the first guy outside, and I walked away with a heavy heart.

That was it for me. On my way back home I waited outside a nearby Toys 'R' Us, since I had nothing to lose. That was fruitless as well. There were about 50 people in line, but they all had pre-order tickets and there were no consoles on the shelves. The remaining games and accessories were snatched up within minutes by the Wii-crazy mob.

By now I had been running around for 2½ hours trying to find a Wii and had nothing to show for it. I kicked myself for not going to MicroCenter right off the bat; if I had gone there immediately, I’d have been playing Wii Sports in my pajamas. I was really surprised at how all national retailers and big-box stores had NO systems whatsoever. I mean NONE, and this was a mere two hours after they opened. Thankfully, MicroCenter had a Wii Sports demo kiosk inside, so I got a little bit of Wii action to whet my appetite.

In summary, my Plan A (online pre-order) and Plan B (grab one by running around morning of 19th) had both fallen through, so I was on to Plan C (get a Wii by any means necessary). The MicroCenter manager had no idea when his next shipment was coming in, but one of the sales associates later told me that it was arriving during the first week of December. That wouldn’t do at all.

That week I talked to a friend of mine at work. He already had his Wii, was playing through Zelda, and had a launch day experience entirely different from mine. He was one of the fortunate ones that managed to snag a Wii pre-order from Amazon.com, but he wanted to play it on launch day (talk about greedy) so he decided to camp out at a local Target on Sunday morning. He was waiting in line and it was very cold outside, so his girlfriend called him and asked if he needed anything (awww). He requested some better cold-weather clothing, so she brought some by and waited in line with him. They were both in line when tickets were handed out, so they got two Wii tickets to go along with his Amazon pre-order! Talk about a lucky guy. However, he broke my heart when he told me that he had already sold the Wii that he’d received from Amazon, and that since he assumed that I already had a Wii and couldn’t think of anybody else that would want one, he had THROWN OUT his other Target ticket! FEEL THE BURN.

Coming off yet another Wii near-miss, I was even more determined to keep my online eyes peeled for any hint of a shipment in my area. I knew there had to be more systems coming in soon, and sure enough word quickly spread across the web that GameStop was holding a shipment of them for sale on Black Friday. I figured that I’d take my chance, get up really early just this once, and do the camping that I had promised myself I wouldn’t do. What made the decision easier was the $100 of EB Games credit I had in my wallet, which I figured I might as well use towards a big purchase. I knew an out-of-the-way EB Games store in a standalone strip mall that was sure to have little to no line, so my plan of attack was to get up at the butt-crack of dawn and stake out my spot at its door.

I didn't bother sleeping the night before, since I planned on getting up at 4am anyways. I drove by the store at 5am and nobody was in line, so I figured that nobody else would be crazy enough to snipe my spot at the front of the line at such an ungodly hour. I went to Waffle House and had some breakfast. Let me tell you, Waffle House is an interesting place at that time of the morning.

I returned at 5:25am. I was the only one there, save a guy that works at the Starbucks next door. Not realizing that he was a Starbucks employee waiting for his manager to let him in for the 5:30am shift, I asked, "Are you in the EB Games line?" He said no and looked at me like I was crazy. With that I took my spot at the door, very satisfied that I was first in line. Ten minutes went by until the second camper arrived. It was a mother in her late 30s, who told me that she wanted a Wii to give to her 9-year-old son for Christmas. I told her that everything I've read points to every GameStop having roughly 6 to 8 consoles in stock, so we should be in good shape when the store opened.

More campers arrived over the next hour. By the time 7am arrived and the store opened, the line was about nine campers deep. I was the envy of everyone because I would surely have the opportunity to buy both a PS3 and a Wii at the same time if I wanted. Most importantly, my search for a Wii was about to end and I could get finally get some sleep.

The moment of truth arrived. At 7am, the EB Games clerk walked past us and got a Starbucks coffee. She came out, walked over to the door, excused herself in an "I hate my job" sort of way, and went into her store. She locked the door behind her, and started to go through the routine of opening up the store. She turned on the 360, Wii, and PS3 kiosks, turned on the cash register, and generally took her sweet time. Meanwhile, we were outside freezing, but we were willing to accept it since we were so close to getting our consoles.

Finally she unlocked the door. Apparently opening it was too much effort for her, so I opened it and walked inside. I eagerly walked up to the counter, incredibly pleased to be the very first in line on Black Friday. I asked, more as a formality than anything else, "Do you have any Wii's or PS3's?" To which she flatly replied, "No, we have no Wii's or PS3's".

Silence.