Topic: What is your favorite day 1 purchase memory?

I remember leaving at midnight to get SSBU and I checked the computer to see if the GotY awards were going on and when I opened them the middle of the Joker trailer was on and I freaked out when I saw the smash invitation. After I got the game I got almost no sleep for the next week. It was AMAZING

Taking a day off school to wait for my Wii to be delivered only for it to arrive a day late!

Then also going to Woolworths to buy Twilight Princess as all the launch games I'd ordered got delayed by a couple of months!

When I got Mario Kart 8 in the mail the day before its release date. That felt awesome.

Switch Midnight release & BOTW. Putting BOTW in at 2am, it was surreal.

I have to go way back for that one: Super Mario Bros. 3 on NES.
I was 8 years old and asked it for my birthday, which would have been a 4 month wait, but my mother bought it as a surprise on release day.
Best day ever!

Super Mario Maker 2. I waited and waited for it but inevitably had to work that day. It was an awful day. I was so tired. But getting home to play the game was the best gift ever.

Not jump force, mario 3d all stars i'm just waiting for it to show up.

Actually now that I put more thought into it, my favorite would have to be Mario Odyssey. I was laid off from my job and poor as heck. I wanted the switch so bad but I knew I could never afford it.

Then, my now deceased friend bought me one with Odyssey and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Word can’t express how thankful I was. That day was the one and only time I played a game for more then 10 hours straight. Every time I play the switch I think of him.

Getting off work from one job, camping out all night at Target to get a Wii and Zelda, then going straight to my second job sell Wii to preorders for the next 8 hours.

@Apportal
I'm sorry to hear about your friend. Good friends are hard to come by and yours sounded wonderful.
My condolences.

Me too. My favourite game. That was bliss.

But probably my favourite Day 1 story was when I decided fairly late on to pre-order the Switch and BotW. I kept it secret from my partner and was desperately hoping it would get delivered on Day 1 without her knowing. To make things tenser, the game was shipped separately to the console even though it was all via the same retailer.

March 3rd 2017 arrived and BotW had its 97 metacritic score. I was so anxious/excited. The morning went by with no delivery. Afternoon came and my partner would be home in a few hours. Then I had a delivery. BotW in my hands! Just no console to play it on! An agonising hour or so ticked by and I was starting to feel mild trepidation that my plans were going to pot and I was going to miss out on playing the new GOAT on Day 1 🥺😢

Then ding-dong.

My switch was here.

Oh. Yeah.

Getting my Switch in the mail and playing BotW on March 3rd, 2017 was an almost surreal experience. For a couple of reasons.

It's the first console I've ever preordered, and I followed the Switch way more closely than previous consoles prior to release, so getting to hold it in my hands after speculating about the "NX" for years and reading about the finalized console was so exciting.

Moreover, it was SUCH a massive step up for portable gaming. Playing the first hour or so of Breath of the Wild in handheld mode felt like a vision of the future.

@gcunit how did your partner react to the awesome news?

Wii launch day, December 7, 2006.

Was extremely excited in the build-up but circumstances at the time meant I was a bit broke and a bit short of the money to buy it.

So I rang the old man in the hope that he might come through and send me the extra cash I needed, but was absolutely expecting him to say no. I thought well, if you don't ask, then you don't know, and if you don't ask, then the answer will always be no.

So I call up and pitch the Wii to him, and he more or less cuts me short mid-sentence with a casual "yeah alright". And I couldn't believe it.

This is a bloke that had a history of getting myself and siblings nothing for our birthdays or Christmas when we were children, so I wasn't expecting that to change when I was much older by then. But then he came through with the extra cash I needed - about $250.

I head on down to Toys R Us, no pre-order mind you, and pick one up, along with Twilight Princess.

My cat had in the past couple of days prior to that been hit by a car and died, so getting the Wii at that point in time was a welcome distraction from the distress of that.

@Apportal No, you don't get it. I was keeping it a secret from her... indefinitely, didn't want her to know I'd splurged on a Switch. She knows now, but only after about 3 years 😁

@gcunit oh, I get it.

It’d be funny if she surprised you with one later on only to realize you secretly got it on launch.

Breath of the wild

The PS1 was the first console that wasn't a gift and had bought myself. Along with Battle Arena Toshinden. Perhaps not the best money spent, but still memorable in its own way. In hindsight I should've went with Ridge Racer instead.

Original Xbox, Halo, naturally. 360, along with Condemned: Criminal Origins. PS2, Madden '01, back when Madden was good and used to routinely get 90+ on Metacritic. GC, Star Wars Rogue Squardon II: Rogue Leader. DC, Soulcalibur II, etc.

Several fond launch-day memories.

Getting The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time Gold Edition on N64. I preordered it when they opened up and the only place I was able to get a copy was an Electronics Boutique store in a mall two towns over (this was before internet). The only thing was it released right during the holiday season so going to the mall at that time was had enough. I arrived early though on release date to get my copy. Imagine my horror when I saw a line going all the way down the mall.

Long story short after standing in the line for several minutes I came to find out the line wasn't for the game it was for a shoe store next door to EB that happen to have the latest Air Jordans come out the same day as OoT. After finding out that I was in the wrong line I went to EB walked in and got my copy, no line at all.

That time just stands out in my mind cause of how devestated I felt seeing that line and then how relieved I was when it was a line for shoes.

Donkey Kong Country. My son's 11th birthday was December 7 and it's all he wanted. I called all over but nobody had a copy. I finally found one 70 miles away. I got the kids off to school and my husband and I set out. About an hour in a snowstorm hit. We're in the Finger Lakes in NYS...it happens. It was whiteout conditions. Got to the store, bought it, then had to get back before school let out. We just made it.

The next day I got them off to school and put that baby in the snes and fell in love! I played it every day.

Birthday came and he was thrilled. Put the cartidge in and I heard "Mom! Why is there already a save file?" I mumbled something about having heard there was a problem with some of them so I wanted to check and make sure his copy was ok. He just smirked and asked how I liked it.

He's never let me forget it.