Don’t Listen to Clerks, Listen to Me November 29, 2011

Happy Holidays everyone.  With the passing of Thanksgiving I’ve decided to spend several times over the month sharing some of my favorite gaming related Christmas shopping memories.  I want to share a quick story with all of you from a few years back, it didn’t help me get a job, but it may help you out this shopping season.

I was in my local Best Buy during the holidays, buying some Christmas gifts for my friends and family.  An older couple was behind me in line to ring up their items.  They had purchased a Nintendo Wii and a bunch of shovelware games with it.  A clerk was with them talking about the Wii and the games they had purchased.  The clerk was completely clueless, and had no idea about the technicals of what he was selling.  My evidence to this conclusion ranged from the gaming selection the couple had to the comments he made to them, like he had no idea what kind of internal memory capabilities the Wii had (it does, but not very much, just enough for saves and a few downloadable games) or if Wiimotes have rechargeable batteries (they don’t, they use two AA batteries, and you can only get a rechargeable batteries for it through third parties, not recommended).

As he walked away I turned around and commented on their Wii purchase.  The line was pretty long and I figured I had about five minutes to kill, so it didn’t bother me.  They were actually quite nervous about their purchase and had no idea if they had bought their son right thing.  I’m platform agnostic, so I saw no issue with anyone receiving a Wii as a gift, as long as they got some good games along with it.

I asked how old their son was and they responded he was twenty-two.  I looked at the stack of games they had, and not seeing the obvious game any twenty-two year old with a Wii would have I told them to leave the line immediately and buy him Super Smash Brothers Brawl, which as far as I was concerned was a must play for the Wii.  When they asked what it was about, I said it was a cartoonish fighting game with Nintendo characters and it was very well made and quite fun (I had been playing it at the time).  They left the line and came back with a copy, now satisfied of their purchase.

I guess my problem is I have a serious issue with minding my own business.  But thank goodness for that, or else I’m sure their son would have been out $50 for the copy of Super Smash Bros he would have eventually bought for himself.

I know that a lot of you parents are going to be stuck buying things on your child’s Christmas list that may look as if its written in some foreign language.  You may be asking yourself things like, “What the Hell is an Xbox 360 Kinect 250GB?”  Worry not, because that’s what I’m here for.  If some random person who is not wearing a store tag tells you something knowledgable, take it with a grain of salt, but listen well, he may just know what he’s talking about.