blog.bharper: the blog of brandon harper

I’ve been interested in owning a Nintendo Wii for quite awhile, especially now that we have one at work and I get a chance every so often to play it. Since the weather was crappy this weekend, about the only thing Lindsey and I did on Saturday was do a little shopping, grabbed some dinner, and rented a few Playstation 2 games to play. One of the games, Rayman Raving Rabbids, was one that I’ve played at work before so naturally it reminded me of the Wii.

Early Sunday afternoon I started looking around on the interwebs about buying a Wii just for the hell of it. I found a couple of sites which tracked where you could by them online via RSS but I didn’t bookmark them. I’d read somewhere that you can sometimes come across them on Sunday’s because for whatever reason that’s when retailers have been putting them out lately, so I started calling around to see if they had any:

Super Target: “We won’t have a shipment of them for at least a couple of weeks. Even then it’s only a few”
Game Crazy: “No idea when we’ll get another shipment. Just try calling every few days, but it might be a few weeks.”
WalMart: “We had 5 in stock this morning, and I don’t think anyone has bought any yet.”

Wait. Woah, wtf, they have them in stock? I’d just got done selling a bunch of stuff on Craigslist and decided it would be my only chance in quite awhile to get one, so Linz and I hurried down there.

Me: “Hey, I called earlier and someone said you have Wii’s in stock?”
Walmart Lady: (lights up) “Yep, we do. Would you like me to go to the back and get you one?”
Me: “Yep!”

It was kind of crazy– since they weren’t out on the floor no one would have even known they were there. As it turns-out, I just got randomly lucky. Apparently they have been getting about 5 per week, which they usually put up for sale at midnight on Saturday. This past Saturday someone new was working and had no idea about this, so a bunch people came to buy them around that time and he told everyone that they didn’t have any.

As I was buying mine someone else was getting one as well, and you could tell a couple of other people were thinking about it too just because they had them in stock. The WalMart employee (an older woman) was actually all excited about it and it was because she had a Wii as well and got a kick out of someone finally discovering they had them in stock. She gave me a couple of good pointers on games to pick and what accessories I needed (this was definitely an unexpected purchase so I didn’t already know that stuff).

You can read all about how cool it is in other places, and yeah, it’s totally a blast. Lindsey and I played Wii Sports and Wii Play the rest of the afternoon until she needed to go home. So far I’ve mostly been playing Wii Sports– I also have Trauma Center but am waiting until Wii Sports starts getting a bit boring before playing it. Not sure what games I’ll buy next, but I have my eye on several.