6 and things were grand, but, I forgot to inform the staff that I planned on buying one of every single Breath of the Wild amiibo that they had in stock (absolutely zero regrets), so I had to wait for the ENTIRE line to go through before I could secure the rest of my purchase and get home. You had to lineup the day that the pre-orders came out to even get one (I was there three hours ahead of opening time because I grossly misjudged how not difficult it would be to secure a pre-order), and then come back on launch day to get a number assigned to you (which my mom had to do for me, I was working, shout out to her for that), and THEN come back that night to actually get the Switch. One of the midnight releases that I look back most fondly upon is the Nintendo Switch launch.

Nothing says brand new video game like a destroyed sleep schedule! Whether it was Pokémon, Uncharted , or Halo, the very small GameStop that was meant to fit three people and 841 Funko Pops! was suddenly housing 20 megafans who were all waiting to go home and play with their brand new toy until 3 a.m. Every other person in that building was there for the same reason, they cared about whatever game you were picking up just as much as you did. When you went to a midnight launch, you were in good company. However, once I had a car and a little bit more freedom, I would always go to midnight launches, usually at the mess of a company that is now GameStop.

As such, I was often forced to wait until 3 p.m. on actual launch day to play new releases, waiting for that final bell to ring so I could bolt out of school to launch my entire body full force into Super Mario Galaxy. When I was younger, my mom was never to keen on letting me attend midnight releases, as they usually fell on school nights. The video game industry is continually moving toward an all-digital landscape, but just a few short years ago, midnight releases were one of my favorite parts of being a gamer.

Midnight video game release