Today Nintendo releases New Super Mario Bros (NSMB) for the Nintendo DS and I couldn't be more excited. NSMB is a return to the classic side-scrolling Mario found on the NES and Super NES. Mario, Princess, Luigi, Goombas, and Power Ups galore. I can't wait. I am so worked up for the release that last week I went into a local game shop and placed my $5 on the counter and asked to pre-order the game.

It hasn't been since I was a young child that I have pre-ordered a video game without there being some type of additional reward for the action (like a bonus game disc with Mario Kart: Double Dash, or a Gold Edition of The Legend of Zelda cartridge, or maybe 10% off the price like Valve does on their games like Half-Life 2).

It was somewhat thrilling to see my name get written down (4th on the list), and have the young girl running the register tell me that I will get a phone call when the game arrives. When she told me that they would hold the game for some ridiculous time period of like 10 days, I had to restrain myself from blurting out something stupid like "No need, I will be here within 10 minutes... har har har".

The courteously call of the game arriving is almost worth the drive of going to the game store twice. I can assure myself that I will get the game the day the store receives it (most likely tomorrow), and I don't have to make multiple calls to the store to check and see if they "have the game in yet". And on top of that, have some young clerk see me when I come in and think "man, this is the old guy that called us like 10 times today?" Yes, I do consider myself the "old guy" at times, even when I am only 27, I guess being a Nintendo fanboy at my age I am asking for it.

I have to admit that I will pre-order items on Amazon and other on-line shops. But that almost doesn't count since all on-line orders have some delay attached to them. You place your order, and it ships as soon as it is ready, whether the delay comes from a slow warehouse, items being out of stock or unreleased, it is almost irrelevant. I will get an e-mail from Amazon when the next Seinfeld DVD will be released, it would be stupid for me to wait until after the release before going to the web site and placing my order when the experience of ordering the DVD months before the release is exactly the same, no more difficult at all. Just send me my stuff when it's out. It's almost like surprise when you get an e-mail saying that your order has shipped.

Back to the video game... yea... um... I can't wait. And I am such a geek I am thinking about ordering this "I Scored With The Princess" T-Shirt from the UK.

UPDATE: Nintendo opened up the full web site for NSMB, check out out at http://mario.nintendo.com/