There were huge Halo 3 launch parties across America and the rest of the world (although later). Those were the ones that got covered, that everyone wanted to be at, and that no doubt had by far the worst lines and wait times. While those select cities may have made the biggest deal out of Halo 3’s launch, thousands of other retailers were open across the country to make sure everyone got their copy as early as possible (without being incredibly lucky or downloading it illegally). One such midnight launch happened in Prescott, Arizona, and I was there for it all.

It may not have had the flash and flare of the big city launches, but there were less people to wait behind and it was still plenty of fun.

It started at 9 PM. After finishing Prison Break and Heroes I rushed straight to GameStop, where people were all ready waiting and preparing for the torturously long next 3 hours. The line wasn’t long, and most people there already had fold up seats and even blankets. Someone hap pulled their truck right up onto the curb so it was next to the line, and was playing music from their open door.

A little while after I got there the store was opened and they ushered in a few at a time to pay for our games. They said they only had 4 unreserved copies, and I bet those didn’t take long to get snatched up. Once inside I payed for the game in full and was given a receipt, which was my golden ticket to the game once they were allowed to sell it.

After everyone had gotten their receipts the line didn’t reform, and everyone started spread out and settle in for the wait. People moved their chairs together, to converse about games, wives, and anything else that made the time go by.

I had some people I knew with me, so we decided to go ride the shopping carts down the large, slanted parking lot. However, we had only been enjoying ourselves for about 10 minutes when our first race was halted abruptly when some old people senior citizens shouted for us to stop and were threatening to call the police before we even had a chance to respond. We had to stop, and so it was back to GameStop again.

We sat around and listened to people talk about everything from duplicating items in Oblivion to wives to having WoW addictions and six different characters, and a paper was passed around to get everyone’s gamercards. Someone would shout out how much longer it was about every 15 minutes so those who weren’t checking their watches cell phones feverishly already would know how long they had.

The people who had brought the truck also had everything needed for Halo 2, and so an extension cord was plugged into the wall and the back of the truck went from an empty abyss to a sweet set up to play while we waited. The TV was set on the edge, and they had the Halo Edition Xbox 360 hooked up with Halo 2 in the tray. There were 3 controllers, and anyone could play if they wanted.

At about 11 or 11:30 one of the guys who worked at GameStop brought out a box of stuff to give away, but most of it was lame and none of it was Halo related - it was just random stuff they had from the store to give away. They had a bunch of demos, mainly PC and PS2, some DDR soundtracks, some Nintendo stickers, a random shirt or two, and some DS styluses.

There were about 25-30 people at that time, and more were arriving as it got closer to 12. Shortly before midnight, they said to start the line again and so people began to line up (luckily I was near the front). I don’t know how many people there were by midnight, because once I got in line I couldn’t see back very far, but a lot of people started arriving right before 12 and there were more there to buy it than had been waiting over the last few hours.

The store was finally opened, and once we entered they directed us to one of three lines - one for each edition of the game. Since everyone had already payed up it was an extremely easy and hassle free procedure. I was out of the store with Halo 3 in hand by about 12:03, and didn’t look back once.

Did anyone else get the game at midnight? How was your launch experience? Tell us about it in the forums.

Note: Yeah, I know it’s been two days and this is a bit late. But I wasn’t waiting in line at GameStop so I could go home and write about, I was there so I could go home and play Halo. Now that I’ve had time for that, I’ve pulled myself away long enough to bring you a first hand report on how things went down that fateful night.