As video game sales have increasingly shifted over to digital platforms, we’re seeing the slow death of a lot of long-held traditions in the culture. PlayStation is actively killing physical game sales in 2028 and Grand Theft Auto 6, the biggest game of the year, is launching with just a code in the box. People are becoming increasingly more nostalgic for an era when they could just show up to a store to buy a game they’ve been excited about. What better game to really drive that home than The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a remake of a nearly 30-year-old release? That’s probably why there are so many videos and pictures surfacing from last night’s midnight launches showing huge lines of people waiting for the game and the elusive Zelda-themed Switch 2 console.
Naturally, people gathered at the Nintendo store in Manhattan for an event organized by Nintendo itself, but there are also videos of people showing up at other brick-and-mortar stores like Best Buy and GameStop. Some lines were already pretty long by the late afternoon, all for a game that people could have simply bought on the eShop if they’d wanted to.
One of my favorite clips I’ve seen this morning is of a group who had set up a GameCube and TV to play games outside a store, and also ordered pizza for the folks waiting to grab their copies of Ocarina of Time.
Grand Theft Auto 6 will likely also have scheduled midnight releases when it comes out on November 19, but there will be a slight sadness to it considering people are really just lining up to get a slip of paper inside the plastic box. It will still be an exciting event for fans to gather in-person rather than posting through it online, but it is sad knowing that, as companies seek to cut retailers and physical media out of the equation, we might be seeing some of the last few big midnight releases that bring people together like this.
Zelda Ocarina of Time midnight release in Toronto, Canada.
Source: https://t.co/0rNRvzNoAL pic.twitter.com/K01ECFAwAb
— KAMI (@Okami13_) November 5, 2026
Lining up gorgeous the midnight launch of the legend of zelda ocarina of time special edition! LOOK HOW LONG THE QUEUE IS!!! luckily im in the first 20! 😅 pic.twitter.com/76tANDvzGp
— Attack The Backlog (@Attackdabacklog) November 4, 2026
The Zelda midnight launch line at Best Buy in Bellevue, WA is longer than the line was for the Switch 2 launch pic.twitter.com/DyVNIGNiCV
— Nintendeal (@Nintendeal) November 5, 2026
110 people queuing for the Zelda Ocarina of Time midnight launch outside Argos on Tottenham Court Road and I’m the only one with a 3DS…not one green light 🙁 pic.twitter.com/p9msUfRr14
— Neil Flynn (@Flynnneil) November 4, 2026
I’ve gotten a lot pickier with my physical media now that I live in New York City, but when I lived in the boonies and felt cut off from a lot of the gaming community, midnight launches were some of the only times I felt connected to others. The Mass Effect 3 midnight launch is a core memory for me, and so was lining up outside my local GameStop to get my family’s first Wii. So it does my heart good to see that folks are still showing up for these events when they happen. It’s just a shame they feel like they’re on borrowed time.
