Latest news with #VirtualBoy
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'No Work Today': Diehard Nintendo Fans Line Up Early For Switch 2
PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing. Lisa Jones has been a Nintendo fan since the company's first major console, the NES, launched in the 1980s. 'I've actually had every system, including the Virtual Boy,' she says. So, with Nintendo about to release its newest console, the Switch 2, Jones knew she had to own it on day one. 'I took the day off just to make sure I'd get one,' she told PCMag as she waited outside a Best Buy store, sitting on the concrete while occasionally stretching. Jones was among the diehard Nintendo fans who began lining up outside the store in San Francisco, hoping to snag the console on launch day. The Switch 2 becomes available to consumers at 12 a.m. EST / 9 p.m. PST. But not everyone managed to snag a preorder, prompting some to fall back on the tried-and-true method of lining up in person. 'Yeah, I'm cold,' said Doonie Love, an actor and model who was first in line at the store. He spoke to us with his black hoodie pulled over his head as the San Francisco wind blew by. Love began waiting at about 9 a.m. after failing to secure a preorder, which sold out quickly across retailers weeks ago. Although he's a Nintendo and Pokémon fan, he actually showed up to the Best Buy on a 'whim,' curious to see if people were lining up. 'There's no work today, I just needed something to do,' he said on deciding to wait in line. 'I just called someone to bring a jacket, chair, and burrito," he later added. Others like Brad Reinke were ready to line up. 'I took the day off. Yeah, I was totally prepared to play video games all day,' he told us while sitting in his foldable chair and eating a pasta takeout order from DoorDash. 'We're here all night so I've got to get lunch and dinner in me.' He too is a major Nintendo fan, and also bought the Switch 1 on launch day back in 2017. 'I'm a big collector and I'm probably going to buy everything they have on sale.' he said. While Reinke wasn't able to secure a preorder, he said he enjoys the experience of the 'midnight releases," which attracts other devoted fans. 'There's good company, everyone's here for the same reason, so we all have stuff to talk about,' he said. Meanwhile, another consumer named James Gualtieri was prepared to work remotely while waiting outside the Best Buy, carrying his laptop and a Wi-Fi hotspot. 'I was in a (remote) meeting for half an hour, chatting with folks,' he said. We visited the Best Buy at around 2 p.m. on Wednesday, where the line for customers without preorders was relatively small, at about 10 people. As a result, it looked like all the consumers had a strong chance of scoring the console on launch day. But Gualtieri told us Best Buy staff wouldn't commit to confirming if everyone in line would come away with the Switch 2 since the retailer also has to prioritize preorders. 'At the end of the day, it's not the end of the world if I don't get one,' he said after already waiting for two hours. Fortunately, Gualtieri's workplace is located next to the Best Buy store. 'If I can't get one, I'll try to get in line tomorrow morning. I would really love to get one before the weekend,' he said. Meanwhile, others like Jones said it was important to snag a Switch 2 soon, rather than wait, citing the risk of Trump's tariffs raising the price. 'Get it while you can,' she said, noting Microsoft recently increased the price for its Xbox consoles. Best Buy isn't the only location in San Francisco to offer the Switch 2 for tonight's release. Nintendo's official store in the city opened last month and is slated to sell the console as well. But the product will only be available to lucky consumers who were able to snag a preorder, or 'warp pass.' Hours before the sales were set to begin, the store held a prelaunch 'celebration' event, giving fans a chance to demo the Switch 2. The event attracted a long line of over 80 people when it began at 1 p.m. Several Nintendo fans also dressed up for the event, including a consumer named Annie, who cosplayed as the Zelda character, and said 'I came here from Mexico.' "When I was a child I play the Nintendo so much with my friends," Annie added, while also showing off a Zelda tattoo. Another consumer named Greg H. also looked forward to tonight's launch, having scored a warp pass to buy the Switch 2 from the official Nintendo store in San Francisco. 'There is this nostalgic factor of waiting up until midnight to pick up the console,' he said while standing at the prelaunch event with a Nintendo N64 bag. 'There's also a communal aspect, where you meet a lot of people with the same interest.'
CBC
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
A trip back through video game history
Social Sharing With shelves full of classic games and consoles, a visit to Thunder Bay's Retro North Games is like taking a trip back through video game history. The store, located on Algoma Street, has accumulated thousands of classic gaming items, including games and consoles. And they're selling much better than owner Matt Carr expected. "We originally were gonna do this just for our website, just online," Carr says. "We started putting some stuff out, and I'd say now, our online is probably matched, or even in-store, I'd say, is maybe higher than online." Carr said the business finds its retro gaming products in various places, including auctions. The stock includes various classic consoles — those include the Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, Nintendo 64, PSP, 3DO, a Sega Genesis-Sega CD combo, even a Virtual Boy — and shelves of controllers, and games. The rise of retro gaming 3 hours ago Duration 1:55 And while the store does have in-the-box collectors' items — like an unopened Game Boy and Virtual Boy — most people that purchase from Retro North Games do so to play, Carr said. "We'll usually see three different reasons," he said. "The first reason is childhood memories, nostalgia, somebody wants to play a game they used to play when they were a kid." "The other one is forcing their kids to play the games they used to play, that happens all the time," Carr said. "And for younger kids, it is easier to pick up a game with a controller that only has a couple of buttons versus like a PS5 controller." "And then the third one would be collectors, people that just want to have it on display, or show it off." Frank Cifaldi, founder and director of the Video Game History Foundation in Okaland, Calif., said the interest in retro gaming is "50-50 nostalgia and, honestly, new people discovering old games." I've actually been around video game collectors for a very long time, since it was new," said Cifaldi. "I started collecting games when you could find them in thrift stores, and yeah, a lot of people are nostalgic for their past, and are sort of trying to maybe fill in the gaps, right?" "There's a lot of people who, let's say, collect old games like they're baseball cards or something, where they identify with a specific console they like," he said. "Maybe you like the 8 bit Nintendo. And they think it might be fun to figure out what all the games are and collect them as a full set. That's one type of collector." But younger gamers who are discovering classic gaming play a big role, too, Cifaldi said. "There is sort of a culture online around not only playing but also watching people play old games," he said. "They're a lot more, let's say, easily accessible in terms of immediately-gratifying entertainment." "You turn it on and you press start and you just start playing, and it's easy to sort of grasp the might be easier to immediately understand and be entertained by, than maybe a more-modern game that might have a little bit more of a learning curve, or you know, cutscenes with stories in them." "I think a lot of people are discovering that you can get a $5 game from two Xboxes ago and be just about as entertained as something you get for $60.00 new now," he said. "I expect a lot of people are just looking for cheap fun games to buy from that sort of era, like the early-to-mid-2000s tends to be a big chunk of what I've I've seen from retro game stores." Cifaldi, who's worked in the video game industry, has been interested in preserving video since his high school days. "I always felt that it was difficult to get the information one might need to explain video game history," he said. "For example, libraries didn't hold on to magazines that reported on games." "They tended to throw them away once they were done, and so there was no backtracking and seeing what people thought about games in their time, or how games were marketed back in the old days," he said. "I founded the Video Game History Foundation that actually exactly nine years ago this Friday." The foundation includes an archive of informational material for researchers, including a digital library with magazines, business records, and other game-related documentation. "It's gratifying to me to see that there is an active interest in discovering where we came from in terms of the art of video game creation," Cifaldi said. "I think that video games are the best form of entertainment to be invented in the last like 50 years, and and it's something that I feel that we've barely scratched the surface on, what games are capable of even like socially, let alone entertainment-wise." "It's like when we were in school, and we were asking our parents and teachers to justify why we need to learn history," he said. "It's to learn where we came from to, to not make the same mistakes that we made in the past. It's to sort of build something new and better by understanding how we did things before." "I feel very strongly that video games are the entertainment of the future, and that they only get better the more we understand where they came from, and so it's been really nice for me to to see that there's still an active interest in looking backward and understanding it."
