A Few More Hours Until PlayStation2

TOKYO - Insanity. That's what this is. More than 600 people, all pushing and shoving, trying to make their way to the front of the lines - and this is only for one store here in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Store owners, clearly not expecting such a massive crowd, did their best - in conjunction with police - to keep people under control and in an orderly fashion.

But it was a mess, and now there are several lines that span the lengths of blocks throughout Shinjuku. No one knows how many PlayStation2 units the store will end up getting (it claims to be receiving the most number of units out of any software retailer in Japan), and consequently, it is unclear if everyone will walk away with one in hand or not. But I suppose that's just part of the excitement of trying to get a video-game system as hyped as the PlayStation2 on day one in Japan.

We're currently waiting in one of the lines overnight here in Shinjuku. Even though we've got a few consoles preordered elsewhere in the city, we wanted to get the full experience of a system launch. And from what we've seen so far, this has been quite an exciting night. In a few hours the store will be open, and we'll be grabbing whatever PlayStation2 hardware and software we can. Oh, what a long few more hours this will be....