Halo 3 launch night

Today has been the day of Halo 3.

I got done with work a little after 6pm tonight and headed home to pick up my DS, some lawn chairs, my pocket camera, a coat and some gloves. I was ready to spend the next 5 hours outside Gamestop in the cold, waiting for Halo 3.

We chose the Crossroads mall Gamestop because the Best Buy in Bellevue was having a HUGE event (Bungie brought some buses there) as was the Redmond Town Center. The Bellevue Square mall was also a popular Gamestop to wait at, because they had their line indoors. We felt confident ours would be a good place to be, because there wouldn't be much attendance there.

When I arrived, John was already there saving our spot. We were about 8th in line at 7:30pm. The front of the line quickly grew larger in the next hour or so and we ended up being about 20 back by the end of the night. The first thing I did when I got there was unfold the chairs to claim the spot, then go inside and put the remaining 100 bucks onto my credit card for the Legendary Edition of Halo 3 I had pre-ordered. John did the same, then we settled in to our spots in front of the "Eco friendly dry cleaners" and started playing some DS.



We planned to eat dinner in the line and it turned out there was a Pizza Time in the strip mall that had a special just for the Halo 3 people: 5.00 1 topping pizza and you could add a 20oz drink for a buck. John and I decided to order a 30 dollar Round Table pizza instead. Since I was apparently in a "spending money" kind of mood, I also decided I was bored with the games I had. I went in (since we happened to be waiting outside of a video game store) and purchased Brain Age 2 for my DS. As I was paying for it, the pizza place called and told me they couldn't deliver to the line. Apparently they sent their drivers home or something. I was frustrated and a bit hungry, so we settled for the five dollar pizzas instead. They tasted like $4.00 pizzas. At least they were warm.

By 10:30 the line had grown to the length of the strip mall and had to be moved out in front of another set of stores so as not to block the parking lot. So much for our "small little line".



A little before 11, Craig and Bhaskar showed up to join us in line. Here they are standing a ways back from our spot:



There were giveaways all night. We got little Heroclix action figures, notepads, post-it's, lanyards, bracelets, posters and coupons bearing the Halo 3 logo somewhere on them. Around 11pm, Red Bull showed up with a giant "Troop transport" of some kind, as well as a Mini Cooper with a giant can of Red Bull on the roof.





They played extremely loud music for us and got everyone caffeinated by handing out the free drinks. I chose not to drink my "wings", as there were only about 50 minutes to go and I didn't want to have to find a bathroom. They sure had a lot of that stuff to go around. Just when you thought they were out, they'd break out another case or three.



Here's a little video featuring the Red Bull guys:



The last few minutes ticked down and we were finally allowed to walk into the store and pick up our copies. We emerged victorious just after 12:10am and then we all drove home to play.



When I got home, even though it was 4am on the east coast and 1am here, I noticed that 9 of my friends were online playing the game. John (highlighted in black) logged on later to make it 10, and we all did some custom gaming together before doing a 4 player level of the campaign. Extremely fun stuff. I crossed out some names to protect their gamertags, but here's the proof of how nuts my friends are.



I'm still a little caffeinated from the Red Bull (sugar free variety), but I think it's time for bed. I have to work tomorrow and I also gotta start getting good at this game. Need sleep for that. :-)