This evening marks the release of one of the most anticipated games of all time, Halo 3. It's a strike for western gaming in the console market. When Microsoft began treading into Console territory, would anyone had guessed that their IP would be the number one best selling pre-order of all time?

To mark this event further, Best Buy announced several midnight releases at their stores throughout the country.. One of these stores just happened to be a few blocks away from my house, here in Madison ^_^.

After watching the season premiere of Heroes, Tony graciously joined me in line in front of Best Buy.

At 9pm, the line really wasn't all that long at all. Tony and I parked at the end and played some Pacman Vs. on DS. I was actually surprised that one other person in line actually had a DS, but I wasn't so surprised that most of the other avid Xboxers were tossing around a football and yelling obscenities at each other as loud as they could. It also didn't surprise me when one of their friends drove on by with Rap music blasting out of their car speakers.

2 hours went by pretty quickly.  After Tony beat me 3 out of 5 matches in Pacman, I tried to write up my Phoenix Wright article but got distracted really easy by Wikipedia and other various pieces of information on the internet. Apparently Wisconsin has a state fossil.. it's a trilobite. Minnesota, on the other hand, does not have a state fossil -_-;;

At 11 o'clock, one of the managers came outside with blue tickets for the Halo 3 inflatable chairs.. It just so happens that Tony and I were at the dead end of receiving the tickets. ^_^. Hot damn.. Waiting 3 hours in line was just the trick to getting 1 of 25 chairs.

But these chairs were only given to those who purchased the game, so Tony was 1-up on the other people ahead of us in line who missed their opportunity to grab a ticket. One lucky fellow, purchased his ticket for a whole $5!

Now that we were up, I started walking around to get a look at the line.

When midnight rolled around, it was just about time to get inside.. A few minutes before hand, I went back into the parking lot and got another picture of the line.

At 11pm, the line extended to a little bit passed the end of the sidewalk, but now the line went all the way back. Nearly to the entrance of Kohl's.

At Midnight o'five, we finally got to go into the store..

Pre-orders to the left, non-pre-orders to the right.

Just a little more waiting in line, and then Halo 3 was mine. I missed my opportunity to grab a shirt, but Tony had accidentally gotten 2, so he let me have his extra ^_^.

After purchasing Halo 3, I redeemed my inflatable chair, and we were off..

So... for $70 and 3 hours of my time, I had gotten the following things:

Halo 3 Limited Edition, Halo 3 T-shirt, and a Halo 3 Inflatable chair... which I will probably never open.

The Halo 3 Limited Edition is amazingly cheap. The "metal" tin is so delicate and flimsy, I could easily dent the thing. It's the flimsiest game box I've ever held, honestly..

Both my game disc and extras disc were jarred free in the game, but did not suffer any damaging scars due to its uncare.. So I should be able to play the game with no problem tomorrow after work.

Besides the extras disc, it also came with all you see here. Instruction manuals, advertisements, and a hardcover "art" book, which is really more of a technical details book that lays out all the information about the races, planets and vehicles in Halo.

meh.. Hopefully the extras disc is worth it.. Right now, I'd almost rather have the regular edition of the game.

I took a little peak at the Inflatable Chair, but put it right back into its box. It might be a pretty fun pool toy ^_^.

So there you have it.. I have Halo 3, and will be playing it with Justin, tomorrow.