When I pulled up to the parking lot of my local GameStop to pick up Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom last night, I was expecting to see a fledgling crowd just sizable enough to make the tiny store feel busy, but not crowded. I thought there'd be a couple of Zelda shirts, maybe a pair of elf ears, and a Triforce tattoo at the very most. Holy Hyrule was I wrong.
See, this particular store lives in a suburb on the far-north edge of Phoenix, Arizona, in a slightly older community of working class families, retirees, and as I've since learned, a shit ton of Zelda fans. They were everywhere! When instead I saw a shambling, disorganized multi-line throng of literally hundreds wrapped around the store and encroaching on the nearby grocery store, I couldn't believe my eyes.
