Finding Pokemon Conquest

Pokemon Conquest for Nintendo DS

Pokemon Conquest was officially released by Nintendo of America yesterday, June 18, 2012; finding a copy of the game though, was a challenge!

Although the release date was yesterday, when I went to my local GameStop to pickup my reserved pre-order, I was told that the game wasn't actually released until today, June 19th. We were really looking forward to getting this game, and I was sure I had the release date correct, because I subscribe to the official Nintendo twitter feed, and they send out a message saying that it was out. I looked it up again via Twitter on my cell phone just to make sure, and there the confirmation was in plain sight -- it was released on the 18th.

With this information, I went back into GameStop and appealed to the clerk, showing him the official release info from Nintendo, but he said his hands were tied because their system said the 19th, and they would get fined if they released the game earlier. I completely understood and figured as much, but told the clerk I regrettably had to ask for a refund so I could get the game elsewhere. Really a bummer because we looked forward to the bonus Pokemon that you were supposed to get as a Power Up Rewards member for pre-ordering the game, but again, we just had to have it yesterday!

Well, I took myself on over to Walmart to get the game, but they too said that although the release date said the 18th, they didn't have the items in stock, and that it was probably on the truck on their way to them. How Disappointing! I didn't have the time to another store to try and locate the game, so after all of that, we still didn't get the game on the 18th.

This morning I woke up determined to get the game. I called around to Walmart, Best Buy, ToysRUs, Target, GameStop etc. and FINALLY found the game at one particular Target about 45 minutes away from my home. I went there, got them game (which they said they had JUST received about 10 am) and was a happy camper.

I'm happy to have finally found the game, but it's got me wondering, why was it so hard to get on it's release date? If the official release date was yesterday, why did GameStop have the release date as today, and some other websites have the release date as late as the 28th? Did you have a problem locating Pokemon Conquest as well?