But don't expect to take home a copy early.
Our resident retail mole and NWR Forums regular UncleBob has informed us that his Walmart store has already received shipments of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Nintendo's all-star fighter for Wii. This delivery, and presumably many other deliveries in the Walmart chain of stores, comes eleven days ahead of the official March 9 North American release date of the game.
Walmart computers will not allow the sale of the game before the official release date, so anyone hoping to score an early copy (from Walmart, at least) will be out of luck. However, NWR has been seeing unconfirmed reports of North American retail copies of the game floating around the Internet, which could mean other stores that are also receiving the game may be inadvertently breaking street dates.
Furthermore, this news begs the question: Why is Nintendo shipping the game out to retailers this far in advance of the release date? Traditionally, the dates Nintendo lists on its release calendar are when it ships a game off to retailers, with games being available in stores a day or two after that.
So why ship the game off more than a week in advance? Might Walmart, Nintendo, and/or other retailers be planning something special around the release date of the game? Or will Nintendo be producing so many copies of Brawl that it will require multiple shipments to fulfill orders? Until we have official confirmation from Nintendo, any reasoning is just speculation.
Nintendo World Report has contacted Nintendo of America for an explanation for Brawl's early ship date. When we hear back, we will update this space with further information.