The voice mail featured the voice of an extactic friend of mine, Andy from Pwned.com. He had just bought an advanced copy of Gears of War 2 at the 7-11 by his house. I, of course, made sure he wasn't crazy but his story seemed legit. Since my friends and I were already in the neighborhood we decided to try and repeat his good fortune.
We found out which 7-11 he bought his at and decided to hit every 7-11 we passed on the way. The first four were duds, but we did buy at least one thing at each store. We didn't want to get the clerk's hopes up, plus hey, that cherry slurpee just helped the economy. When we finally approached the 5th 7-11, the same one Andy got his from, we were visually anxious. The clerk didn't know what video games were but after we explained further he was happy to oblige us with the pack of games under the shelf. He only had 3 left, and we bought them all.
It wasn't before long that we realized we couldn't possibly go on without tweeting our accomplishment to cyberspace, so we pulled into the nearest parking lot. That parking lot just happened to be home to another 7-11, so naturally, we bought two more. Three iphones, four geeks, 5 advanced copies of Gears of War 2 later, a photo shoot in front of the 7-11 was called for.
Later in the AM our friend Robert Welkner of Coin-op TV found out about our success and went on a Gears raid of his own. He checked out his 7-11 and at 4am he got the game too. Obviously there is nothing official going on, just stores not knowing they aren't supposed to sell the game yet, but if you're lucky enough to live near a 7-11, which if you live in America...you are, then stop by and see if they are releasing games before release date too.
Good Hunting.
