Kotakuite Julien D. wrote from France, informing us the the FNAC series of megastores are apparently filling DS Lite pre-orders one day early:

Ok, it's just one day off, but this also means twenty-four more hours of gaming ! The interesting stuff is that it's been done in a semi-official way : yesterday people who had pre-ordered at Fnac received a message saying the order had arrived, but when you came to retrieve it you were told :"Hmm, in fact we can't give it to you now because Nintendo would get mad at us. We'll call them by tomorrow, maybe if you come back on the 22nd (today, one day before the official date) we will be able to do something." And so it was. Oh joy. Oh de(-s-)light. Anyway, they seemed to be willing to sell them even to people who hadn't preordered.

So, did Ninty willfully allow for the breaking of its own date? If so, then that means I'll have to take not one, but two or more days off for the release of the Wii.

In the Emerald Isle, at least, this appears not to be true. I called all the usual suspects who have been accepting DS Lite pre-orders over the past couple weeks, asking if they would fill my order today instead of tomorrow. With great consternation and voices quivering with holy dread, they marveled at the question, pointing in the direction of a vast legalistic specter who would swoop down upon them and swallow their company's soul if they broke street date. Given the national Irish penchant for saying 'fuck you' to authority, this is curious in and of itself: Nintendo must have really slathered on the threats.

Regardless, the breaking of street date in Europe appears to be a case of one rogue store, not a Nintendo backed initiative. But if you're a French FNACer, you might want to put down that croque madame and putter your Vespa over to your local store. Florian Eckhardt