For some time I have wrongly assumed that the Shin Megami Tensei series was becoming well known. It is well known to those who care to know it, but there is a strange isolation in the market around the titles each time they are released. Alright, the internet knows Megaten, and so do you if you are an avid reader of information or even if you just frequent Giant Bomb.  Apparetly the living, breathing, not at all machine-like humans I am occasionally forced to interact with have no idea what I am saying, or how to correctly enter data into fields. My quest for Devil Survivor and Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army follows.

My problems, at least those tied to video game availability, could be solved if I pre-ordered the games that actually matter. I'll pre-order things that inevitably have gigantic releases or are so available my pre-order feels more like Gamestop raping my wallet. So I pre-order consoles I desperately want and leave it at that. 

I would have done well to pre-order Little Big Planet, Persona 3, Persona 4, and Devil Survivor, or maybe not. Little Big Planet I scored at launch by sweet talking an employee.  Persona 3: FES was a gift, and Persona 4 I snatched off Amazon for $25 with the art book and free shipping.  Devil Survivor poses a greater problem than any of the other titles. 2 copies were released in the city I live in. 2 whole copies in a fairly large college town with as many Gamestops as there are Starbucks.

My wednesday rush to find the game began with a Gamestop employee laughing at me. I deserved this but would have preferred some sort of assistance. My friends at the next Gamestop regrettably informed me of the single pre-order of the game among all the Gamestops around. Fantastic. 

So I venture to another company that would like to specialize in games. Here a girl smacking on gum while babbling blandly into her headset stared at me with the most confused expression I have ever seen. Out of kindness, I left the Shin Megami Tensei bit off my question as I hava seen similar summer-jobbing trophies rendered useless by something that sounded foreign. She led me to the store computer and told me to search for it as she had no idea what I was talking about. I wonder if the Devil bit caused something to shut down her reason?

I found her trying to pitch a Wii to a disinterested woman.  I assumed she at least knew something about the section she was in. 

Off I went, after this store's system turned up nothing for the title I searched, to another retailer. Here I rummaged through an assortment of bacon shaped items before an employee asked if I needed help. He revealed that it would be over two months before they recieved the game.  I thanked him in a quiet way and left in a daze, sadly without the bacon wallet I had been eyeing. 

Today, I returned to the Gamestop I like and spoke with their manager. He called a store a county way and winked at me as he  claimed to have a defective copy of the game and desperately needed this store's last copy. Tomorrow Devil Survivor will be mine. 10 points for my atypical Gamestop. While there earlier last week, I picked up the second Devil Summoner game in the limited edition box. Gamestop sells this for forty, where amazon has theirs hiked up to sixty.  I couldn't say no. 

I do not have the first game, largely because from 2004 to 2007 I only played a handful of games, and completely overlooked the first PS2 Devil Summoner's release. 

A fourth retailer to remain nameless was enlisted in the search of the first Devil Summoner. I asked my parents to help me search since I was working at the time. This resulted in my mother calling me in a rush and saying they were driving to a another state to pick up a promised copy of the game for forty dollars. The copy I had sent them after would have been 7.95 at a store associated with the one I work at. They were already well on their way so there was no point in stopping them.

That night I immediately headed to their house to thank them for their hard work. Mom proudly presented me with an expensive duplicate of the game I had recently purchased the special edition of. If I had been less a fatigued from my perpetual runaround, I would have kept myself from saying it was the game I already had and not even the version I would have wanted. The rest of that night was spent comforting my mother and promising to somehow avenge her? I don't know, but my mother is dramatic.

Today I found out tht the retailer who sold them the game only had one listing for the Devil Summoner games that reads: Shin Megami Tensei Devi Sum. A girl told me that a store somewhere even further away had a copy of the game in the worst condition imaginable. She knew from my expression what I thought of that, and quickly offered me store credit. Now I have a gift card for the amount of the game and will likely never use it.

My favorite Gamestop, which still operates as if it were an EB games, has offered to do  the same with this game as was done with Devil Survivor. 

I may take them up on that offer. It is curious that Gamestop, usually so loathed by people looking for assistance and reasonable prices, was the place that solved all my problems. Also, their copy of Devil Summoner will cost me 19.99, rather than forty. 

The last seven days have been very strange for me and I am left with the feeling that pre-orders are the way to go, girls with headsets are clueless, and supposed vintage retailer giants are as incompetent as any other retailer around or maybe even more so. 

I still want the bacon wallet.