I was reading how Dragon Quest III’s release in Japan in 1988 led to almost 300 arrests for truancy among students absent from school to purchase the game.
I also vaguely remember reading about Western games that had very big queues at physical stores during their release. I assume these can only be heavily anticipated old games before online distribution took off. I checked up the wiki articles of Super Mario Bros 3., Super Mario World, Sonic 2, Sonic CD and Mortal Kombat II but saw no direct mention of queues or otherwise remarkable physical activity at stores on release.
What do y’all know about this?
Throughout the early 2000s to early 2010s most AAA game releases had midnight launches. I remember going to the midnight launch of the first WoW expansion and the queue at my local EB Games at 11:30pm was wild. Never seen so many people in a shopping centre so late. Some of the best memories were hanging out with my family in the queue for the games and the real liminal space energy the otherwise empty shopping centre gave.
The only thing similar these days are people camping out for a new iPhone.
PS3 console has to be in the top. New enough that it brought out lots of diverse people. Perfect holiday timing as everyone wanted one and wanted to scalp them. Coupled with general violence it was a wild time.
I got mine camping outside for a couple days. Had to be police escorted to our vehicles. A few minutes prior at a location 15mins away, somebody was shot in the parking lot and robbed for their PS3. That was a typical American experience there…
Same with the Nintendo Wii. I was working in retail back when it came out. People offered to give me money if I saved one for them.
A number of games over the years have had that. The only one I witnessed myself (and feel is was more the console release) was Halo. I attended a midnight launch and that was just crazy. I was also working for a retailer at the time of the original Modern Warfare launch which was pretty hectic. We had some people that had be queuing for nearly 7 hours.
Others have been the release of the Wii and the PlayStation 3 which I was also present for.
After the Xbox escapade, I vowed never to bother with those releases but just ended up working for a retailer where it was part of my job.
The greatest midnight launch I attended was GTAV for PS3 at GameStop. They hired a DJ and had it setup just outside the shop and they were spinning songs featured in GTA soundtracks across the series. There were tons of people queued up and the line wrapped around the store. Everyone just chatting about what they thought it would be like.
The one I remember most was while working for a games retailer. The Pokemon Game Boy games caused mayhem. Not enough product and so many angry parents.
We had dozens of preorders for Mortal Kombat 2 for the SNES. We got 8 copies in at our Software Etc. and did not get any new inventory for over a month. It was crazy.
Before digital purchases were an option, lines for new releases and sold out games were very common.
I attended the Switch release at my local Best Buy. I decided to swing by after work on a whim (I work evenings) and managed to snag a sheet to reserve a copy. There were probably a few hundred people in line, but nothing crazy like the line wrapping around the store or anything.
How do you have a line of a few hundred people, and have it not wrap around the store? That sounds like the real crazy part.
A large big-box store and the line wasn’t single file. A lot of people were in small groups as well. I could be misremembering since it’s been years, but there were maybe 2-300 people.
The only midnight launch I ever got to be a part of was the launch of the New 3DS XL. I got the majoras mask edition. It was actually a relatively small midnight launch as far as they used to go. That being said I’m really glad I got to experience at least one. I’m not sure if we’ll see massive midnight launches in the future.
I remember always seeing and hearing about midnight launches during the 360/ps3/wii era. I remember halo 2 and halo 3 brought in massive crowds.
When the 360 launched my dad went and waited outside a Wal-Mart in -25°c weather for a couple hours. I wanted to join but had school the next morning. Probably for the best as I would have been a whining little baby about the cold lol.
If you’re curious I think there’s a lot of youtubers that cover midnight launches/history
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