By: Paul Arzt

On Sunday, just before eight in the morning the line stretched from the doors of the Nintendo World store at Rockefeller Plaza, more than half way down the block towards Sixth Avenue. Keep in mind, that's one of mid-town Manhattan's big blocks.

I saw a little over two hundred people lined up, waiting for the release of the latest Pok mon games, Pok mon Diamond and Pok mon Pearl. It was crowded then, but nothing like what it would become that afternoon.

At the the front of the line was Japan's TV Tokyo interviewing Jack Smith, the 17-year-old who was first at the store after arriving at three in the afternoon on Saturday. I didn't talk to Jack until two in the afternoon, when he had been up for over twenty-four hours, but still "thrilled" describes him best. After all, he'd been doing TV and press interviews all day, not to mention a lot of attention from other Pok mon fans.

Jack was in the middle of what Nintendo, according to a press a release issued four days before launch, anticipates (and hopes) "to be among the top-selling games for all of 2007." If Nintendo's claim that 533,000 pre-orders have been placed for the games is correct, than that hope may just come true.

Clearly Nintendo is feeling celebratory about something. Part of the Pok mon celebration this Sunday was a party at one o'clock, open to all. A party that Bruce Loeb, Vice President of Marketing for Pok mon USA, claimed drew "solidly 5000 people."

During the early hours before launch, the line to the store was quiet. Most of the noise heard came from the crowd gathered around the windows of the "Today Show," which shares Rockefeller Plaza with the Nintendo World store. There was the occasional holler or fist pump from the line as staff entered or exited the store, opening the doors as they passed.

Then the store opened.

There was a cheer. Bored faces perked into smiles. There was no mad rush inside though, and when the staff asked for the line to hold and wait for the store to empty, it did, peacefully.

After the early customers bought their copies of the games, nearly everywhere I went, as I wandered through Rockefeller Center waiting for the one o'clock party, there was someone playing Pok mon. In a Duane Reade, the New York pharmacy chain, there was a group of teenagers, from 15 to 19, standing in the middle of the store playing Pok mon. In the basement of Rockefeller Center nearly every table of the food court was taken by someone playing Pok mon. Between a pizzeria and a deli I saw a dark, shaded staircase, and at the top, there was a kid playing Pok mon.

At Dean and Deluca, the high-end deli and coffee shop, I met David, a 12-year-old fan playing the game. He and his mother had arrived at the store at 5:30 in the morning, but David wasn't showing any signs of fatigue.

"She's tired; I'm not tired," he said.

David was dressed in a Pok mon anniversary hat, a Lucario t-shirt, and a Pok mon backpack which he won at a trivia contest.

"He was a shoe-in," his mother said.

David also claimed to be "the expert" in Pok mon trivia at his Hebrew School in Queens; a fact, he proudly told me, which was settled after an impromptu trivia contest between he and a classmate.

While we talked David never set his DS down, until, of course, it ran out of batteries. Then he wanted to switch tables to find an electrical outlet. He decided against it though when he realized he could read his new Pok mon strategy guide. "Little addict," his mother said as he flipped through the pages.

David wasn't the only addict there that day. I saw much stranger.

For instance there was James, a 46-year-old freelance writer from Philadelphia who, when he isn't writing about sports, shows up at Pok mon events dressed as "Jesse." As in the mid-riff baring, woman member of Team Rocket, often drawn in short skirts.

James is six-feet tall, and weighs over two hundred pounds (an educated guess). He gets a lot of looks. James has been a Pok mon fan since he was introduced to the game by his nephews nearly seven years ago; nephews who also dared him to dress as Jesse, inspiring James' cosplay fascination.

James wasn't the only "Jesse," at the event. There was also Voila Viola, a 26-year-old man (who swears that's his name) also dressed as the mid-riff baring member of Team Rocket. When asked about James, Voila said, "I'm dressed a lot better."

Both men, though outside the norm, were nice guys. In fact "nice" describes the event as a whole, which is not surprising for a party definitely aimed at children.

There were stations set up all over Rockefeller Plaza, each one seemingly geared toward a different age bracket. There was the tent full of stuffed animals, all Pok mon of course, for mostly toddlers.

There was a tent with Nintendo staff handing out removable tattoos and stickers for those slightly older, and another with a scavenger hunt for those who could read.

There was a station set up to play the card game, manned by adults who were there to teach the game to kids. Finally there was a station where Junichi Masuda, the game director, and Shigeru Ohmori, the game design lead, signed autographs for those old enough to know who they are. It may have been meant to push Pok mon merchandise (the guys at the card station handed out thin packs of cards to every kid who came by) but it also meant there was something for everyone.

When you pack what Nintendo said was 5,000 people into a small space, especially when many of those 5,000 are children, and don't have one fight (I didn't see one), then something was done right. Or perhaps, as the mother of nine year old Rachel, who traveled two hours by bus from Allentown, Pennsylvania, said of Pok mon fans, "they're a class above."