Went to TRU to get Pokemon Channel for GameCube - which is only marginally a game, more like one of those click-and-click Putt-Putt Reader Rabbit Spy Fox shinolas they mass produce to prove that games still come out for Macs, but my lust for Pokeproduct will not be sated.

Glory be, they have it. But for $50.

Pokemon Channel has a MSRP of $30. EB, GameStop, even TRU's own website all list it at $30. Nintendo is being very honest here; they know this isn't a full-featured video game. It's a $30 holdover for the faithful and the very young. I would swear that even the TRU presell tickets from a month ago said $30.

I used the Hiptop to do some live-on-the-scene double-checking. Yep, still $30 at every Video Game Shoppe in the known world. But my frickin' Toys R Us has it for $50. And a ton of them too, hopefully left behind by educated shoppers... but I doubt it. We even scanned one of the yellow tickets to see if it was just a printing error. Nope, $50. I could have talked to one of my seasonal employee pals - I do hold them largely innocent in the endless dance of disappointment - but I would likely just be assured that $30 was probably some kind of website deal or special sale from the other boutiques. Nothing short of a personal phone call from Iwata-san could convince them.

Much as I love Pokemon, there's now twenty bucks worth of Righteous Indignation to deal with. So the journey continued to an unlikely place: Wal-Mart. We have a family rule about Wal-Mart, Stay The Fuck Out. Our local Wal-Marts are exceptionally trashy. Whenever we enter one I see beings that I am convinced could not have been born naturally but instead must have spontaneously sprung to life from the dangerous mixture of linoleum tiles, hunting rifles and McDonald's fat vats.

Aside: While in the toy section I overheard some behemoths discussing a child's wishlist. The female of the pair, although no less the hairy, said "We still need to get some trading cards. Pac-Man. No, Pokey Man." Is it too hard to know what your kid is into, at least to the point that you can accurately read the brand names off a list? No wonder the modern parent is forever befuddled by kids toys; they can't even pronounce them right. Pokemon becomes even more confusing when you think Pikachu and company are collectively referred to as a Pokey Man.

What we saw in this Wal-Mart's Fortress Electronics was laughable, a cosmic sign that the retail industry is truly dying. The entire GameCube section was stripped bare, the glass doors open, filled with stacks of random DVDs. One case to the right, PS1 Greatest Hits titles. To the left, GBA games. In the middle, under a happy Mario sign, a spoiled mess of Ben Affleck movies and Sopranos Boxed Sets.

Every single GameCube game in the store had been moved into another glass case at the other end of the Fort. Stacked on their sides like bricks, without any kind of alphabetical order or even visible prices. Looking for Double Dash? Hope you can read the side panel art. Want to buy F-Zero GX? It's in there somewhere. The disregard was so obvious and hateful as if to say "Look, just consider yourself lucky we stacked them with the spines facing outward."

Nationwide, Nintendo sold over half a million GameCubes over Black Friday weekend, outpacing every other console by a huge margin. Not at this Wal-Mart, buddy. We've got $10 PS1 titles to move.

So I found myself at GameStop again, like a prodigal son begging forgiveness. They had Pokemon Channel. $30. And it was the very last copy, I assume because everyone ran there after choking on the price at TRU. They also had Space Channel 5: Special Edition for $20, a title (and price) that Toys R Us has probably never heard of. So I completed one of my life's secret goals: Go into a game store and only buy games with the word "Channel" in them. Shine Get!