I've been chatting back and forth with Justin, our lucky $2,000 shopping bot winner. Turns out he actually lives a few hours from me, so instead of going shopping on my own, packing his stuff up and mailing it to him, we decided to just meet at the store of his choice and do the shopping together. And no, I didn't tell him to by a copy of Cruis'n, but I totally could have.

When he emailed me with the address to the GameStop he wanted to shop at he mentioned that he had called ahead of time to get them to hold some stuff. I just assumed that meant he had $2,000 worth of games and goodies sitting in a pile waiting to be paid for. Not the case.

In fact Justin had only asked them to pull an Xbox 360 Elite and a copy of Rock Band. Turns out that Justin doesn't own a single gaming system. In fact he hasn't really played much since gaming with roommates on the original Xbox. So I had my job cut out for me. I had, I discovered, in my hands the power to shape a new gamer, to push them in the direction of particular games and it took a lot of self-control not to abuse that power.

At one point, after he told me he planned to eventually buy a Wii (they were sold out), I plucked a copy of Cruis'n from the shelf and sort of jammed it into his hands.

"Here hold this"

It was sort of exhilarating knowing that I could have probably gotten him to buy a copy... and told him it was the best Wii game on the market. But then he pointed out that Kotaku had written about it recently.

"Didn't you guys say this was really bad?"

Dammit. Well I wouldn't have told him to buy the game anyway. Honest.

I did talk him into a portable gaming system. He decided on the PSP because he really wanted something that could play music and movies. I warned him about some of the pitfalls about that, but in the end he picked up the Daxter Bundle of the system. And I got him to pick up a couple of other choice PSP titles.

Here's his full list. Turns out it's a lot harder than you'd think to spend $2,000 on games:

Xbox 360 Elite
Rock Band Special Edition
Xbox 360 Network Adapter
Xbox 360 wireless controller and charging cable
Xbox 360 Memory Card
BioShock
Xbox 360 Guitar Hero III
Used Guitar Hero controller
Call of Duty 4
Halo 3 Legendary Edition
4000 Microsoft Point Card
13 Month Live Subscription Card
Super Mario Galaxy
Legend of Zelda
Wii Zapper with Link's Crossbow Training
SOCOM US Navy Seals Tactical Strike
Grand Theft Auto Vice City PSP
Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories PSP
Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow
Sony PSP Daxter Box Set
Wii Charge Station
Game Informer subscription
PSP Slim Headphones
PSP Slim Component Cables
Gears of War
Mass Effect
Universal Cleaning Cloth
Assassin's Creed

Hard, but not impossible. The clerk said it was the single largest transaction he's ever seen at a GameStop

[via PS3 Fanboy]

You can see some of the other contest entrants here and here.

[via Wonderland]

Where are all these toy machines that have Nintendo Wiis and Xboxes in them and how come their locations haven't been added to Wii Seeker?

This could be the future of shopping (as in, THE GAME). All the owners of these machines would have to do is add a couple of other life's necessities like kitty litter and birth control pills, and I'd do all my all my grocery shopping at the arcade. Kim Phu

Man wins 360 from Stacker machine [Xbox 360 Fanboy]

E3 has turned into nothing more than a fanboy spoogefest that exists just as much for free XL t-shirts and booth hotties as it does for media coverage. Why they haven't tried to limit the size of it before has always escaped me, but I for one think this is a good thing. The company I work for spent 125 times my salary on our booth this year, yet it is "too costly" to hire another person for our team... so multiply that times all the big companies and then probably double it for EA and anyone with a jumbotron or fire dancers, and that's a lot of wasted money that isn't going into the games. And isn't that really the point of E3 anyway? The games? Or maybe it's the free t-shirts. I forget. While all the guys who sneak in with fake press badges every year are going to groan at this, I know I'd rather watch developers get paid what they deserve (and not have to dedicate an entire milestone or two to an E3 build) than have a six foot blonde in spandex hand me a free tchotke.

And that's it boys and girls. I have survived my very own trial by fire, a daily giveaway for a month. I'll start shipping out the prizes this weekend. And, of course, start thinking about ways to give away more stuff. Hope you had fun.Brian Crecente

The problem is, for beginners, what you're looking for is the Celestron SkyScope. Looks like a camcorder; select the star you're looking for on the side screen, and then look through the eyepiece to find what you're looking for; it'll give you arrows to get you in the right direction. That kind of telescope-and-locator planetarium in a box serves the low end much better than stuff like this... And for everyone else, there's your laptop. Because inevitably, you're going to pick up a telescope, and want to either record what you see through it, or get it to track stuff in the sky. I suppose there's a 'middle range' between them - but I'm unconvinced that this is a good fit. You'd want to be able to find/locate the stuff in the sky you want to be watching, etc., and load in lots of data that probably isn't included in the built in stuff. It won't have, for example, all of the satellite and space junk data - and you'd want that when you're scanning the sky and see something odd.

Don't forget to post away today for your chance to win. I will be randomly selecting a post tonight, as I will every day this month, and then deciding which comment about the post was the funniest, most insightful or interesting and hand out a prize to the poster.

Today's prize is a 360 Memory Unit and a 360 wireless controller. Prizes cannot be changed. Brian Crecente

"Never admit you play Wii" ???

Don't forget to post away today for your chance to win. I will be randomly selecting a post tonight, as I will every day this month, and then deciding which comment about the post was the funniest, most insightful or interesting and hand out a prize to the poster.

Today's prize is a 360 Memory Unit and a 360 wireless controller. Prizes cannot be changed. Brian Crecente

R. Kelley brought wii to the people, but they didnt like it so much, and he got in trouble.

Don't forget to post away today for your chance to win. I will be randomly selecting a post tonight, as I will every day this month, and then deciding which comment about the post was the funniest, most insightful or interesting and hand out a prize to the poster.

Today's prize is a 360 Memory Unit and a 360 wireless controller. Prizes cannot be changed. Brian Crecente

I was interested in this when it supposedly going to be priced similarly to the Premium bundle, and should that turn out to be the case, there remains a great likelyhood that I'll pick on of these up. Even though I'm willing to guess that 1,250 of points won't last me terribly long. Of course if this is merely a core bundle with all the limitations that carries in addition to PGR3 and the other assorted goodies, I'm back out of the X360 fold again. I didn't want the retard pack last Winter, and I sure as hell won't want it when the Wii rolls onto store shelves with a considerably lower price and a handful of potential AAA titles. Maybe I'm just more discerning than most (I doubt that), but I'd reason that Microsoft could either make this brilliant or idiotic based upon the small decisions they make with regards to content. It was a bundle that proded me into purchasing the original Xbox, and I wouldn't mind repeating history.

Don't forget to post away today for your chance to win. I will be randomly selecting a post tonight, as I will every day this month, and then deciding which comment about the post was the funniest, most insightful or interesting and hand out a prize to the poster.

Today's prize is a limited edition E305 faceplate, a copy of NBA 2K6, a Memory Unit and a wireless controller. Prizes cannot be exchanged.Brian Crecente

Hmm...looks like she may be seizing on this as an issue where she can appear to be moving to the right without any political ramifications from her base. I can hardly think of a group stereotypically less likely to be politically involved than gamers. Expect her to introduce a no-skateboarders-outside-of-convenience-stores platform any day now...

Don't forget to post away today for your chance to win. I will be randomly selecting a post tonight, as I will every day this month, and then deciding which comment about the post was the funniest, most insightful or interesting and hand out a prize to the poster.

Check back later today to see who won Saturday's prize: a copy Amped for the Xbox 360 and a memory unit. Also, I'll be posting what today's prize is.Brian Crecente

Flash forward three years.... Rumor Confirmed: Target Pulls Blu-Ray From Stores

Don't forget to post away today for your chance to win. I will be randomly selecting a post tonight, as I will every day this month, and then deciding which comment about the post was the funniest, most insightful or interesting and hand out a prize to the poster.

Today's prize are a Lineage II cap, a copy of Lineage II with a 60 day prepaid card and an NCSoft notepad. Sorry, we can't swap out prizes if you win. Brian Crecente

Note: If you're having trouble logging in to post comments. Try this: Login as usual, and then when it brings up the same login boxes hit the refresh key. Think of it as Kotaku's own secret handshake.

Dier said he found out about the contest on Kotaku. See, we're good for something.

Scott said Nintendo also scored the three winners passes to E3. The Kalamazoo Gazette is reporting that Daniel Smith, 19, is another winner.

Tell me that the guy who wrote the news story didn't do this on purpose:

If his name is selected Tuesday, Smith will sample Wii (pronounced ``we'') in front of thousands of gaming-industry professionals, insiders and reporters at the Kodak Theatre, home of the Academy Awards.

lol

Daniel, Scott and another potential wii samplers all fly out Monday morning to L.A.

Allegan man heading to L.A. for Nintendo gaming contest [MLive]

Well I'm home and still sober so I decided to go ahead and do the drawing for Kotaku's Year End contest. The winner of a $500 gift certificate to Circuit City and the soon to be most despised person on our commenting section is Mr and/or Mrs/Ms LessMeister. Once I get the person's pertinent details I'll hip you to it.

Sorry if you didn't win, but don't be glum you have a whole nother year of contests to look forward to. Look on the bright side, at least you're finishing the year as a loser instead of starting it as one.

Take care and have a big, fat, honking Happy New Year.