The Ballad of the Nintendo Wii: Part One - By N.L. Belardes

Some people don’t understand the word, Revolution. Around 1980 I hung out in South Bakersfield and stored up my lunch money—saved each day from the hard knocks of begging kids for junk food in the Emerson Junior High cafeteria. If I fared well I would have enough money to hang out on Chester Avenue after school at the local Sno White burger joint, where there was a stand-up Defender game. You know that archaic word, “ARCADE”? Well Sno White had a little arcade, and it was everything to me.

No, I never bought any food or sodas. Who the hell had money for that? It was all about Defender and having the high score for the day. Mostly I would compete with Jimmy Green. He was a tall scrawny surfer kid who later became a punk rocker and claims to even have had Courtney Love’s diary at one time.

In my opinion, Defender was one of those rare games that revolutionized arcades. It was a game that I’m guessing many kids were addicted to after school. I couldn’t have been the only one in America spending lunch money on arcades.

There’s been a lot of gaming revolutions since then, though now I think arcades are dead.

Other than PC games, nowadays home consoles are totally where it’s at. The revolutions have been masterful: Atari 2600, Coleco, Intellivision, Sega, Nintendo 64, Nintendo Gamecube, PlayStations, XBOX. And now the Nintendo Wii.

I thought recently it would make a good story here on Paperback Writer just to go explore the idea of trying to purchase a new gaming system: PlayStation 3 or Nintendo Wii.

My first tip came through a friend of a friend who led me to EB Games in Bakersfield’s Valley Plaza Mall. The tip was that EB Games was getting a shipment of consoles, most likely Wii, between 11am and 1pm. It was a weekday. I didn’t care. I left work. I was hot on a story, and quick to find myself getting hot on Wii.

I did some research. Wow, the PlayStation 3 graphics looked hot. Resistance: The Fall of Man looked like Doom 3 meets Half-Life Two on the streets of Los Angeles and Call of Dutyville. The trailer got me thinking PlayStation 3. I didn’t bother to look up the Wii, though even the name itself is addicting.

I showed up at EB Games at 9:30 am. There were two people in the store. Once again I made the mistake of actually asking if I could take photos. The manager was uptight. He had a phone strapped to his hip like some IT warrior with too many passwords. He would use it if he had to: to shut us all down. He yelped, “No photography is allowed in the store!” If I were smart I would have snapped his photo right then. I wasn’t quick enough to the draw. As I continued my conversation with him he suddenly interrupted, “Form a line outside of the store! Geez. I don’t know what you’re all doing here?” As he made his supreme announcement another patron entered the store. She and the two others lined up. I quietly followed as I thought, This guy is a moron. We’re all here based on tips from EB Store staff. We’re strategic holiday shoppers? I mean, this doofus possibly holds the key to my grail of the 2006 holiday Christmas buying season? Someone get him some valium!

At EB Games, Bakersfield Valley Plaza Mall:


Or maybe that was just his way of trying to throw people off the trail of the truth: a video game shipment to be coveted.

Out in the mall area I stood in line and quietly listened to the conversations around me: all Wii talk. A guy form DHL suddenly zoomed past. Was this the delivery man? Was it time for console heaven? No, he passed. Wrong carrier. False alarm.

False alarm 1:


Soon enough the Fed Ex guy came around pulling a giant cart of boxes. Could this be the hidden Technicolor dreamcoat, the crackerjacks bonus in one of the boxes, the coveted gamer prize: to be a willing participant in a greedy corporate supply/demand gaming gimmick so evil and wonderfully constructed that I would pay for a console using a bad check—if I’d had one. I was there with plastic: a card worth .0001 cents, yet it could shell out $800.00 with a sleight of the hand and a swipe of the card.

False alarm 2:


No. He handed the manager a tiny envelope. Sucks.

And then the rumors started:

“Maybe there are no games coming.”

“I heard it’s just the Wii. No PlayStations.”

OK, I can live with either or after standing in line for an hour.

“I hear only 3-5 games are in each EB shipment.”

“I hope it’s not 3. I’m number 4 in line,” I said.

The #5 guy in line grimaced, “I hope not.” He had been surfing online using keywords like Nintendo Wii shipments to try to stay ahead of the whole chase-the-console game.

And then there, in the distance, came the UPS guy pulling a giant cart of boxes. All the talk of only three games had me suddenly thinking 30. I could sense the games in their boxes. I could smell em!

The arrival of the UPS guy:


Suddenly the manager appeared. He wore the same grimace and appeared annoyed and wide-eyed. He yelped, “I have three consoles that’s it!!”

What? But all those boxes on the cart?! All I could think was how I let someone slip in front of me in line. Holiday shopping faux pas. Alas, I wasn’t aggressive enough. The lady in front of me cheered. She was in the midst of a shopper victory high.

Final hurrah:


What could I do? I had to get serious now. No more allowing people to get in front of me in line. No more games. I would weigh each tip accordingly. And after careful research I would soon realize that the Nintendo Wii would be my battle cry!

Stay tuned for Ballad of the Nintendo Wii: Part Two…

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Sunday, December 17, 2006. You can leave your response.