We tried buying an NES Classic Edition when it went on sale on Amazon. It didn’t work.

Not sure if you noticed, but the NES Classic Edition is proving to be pretty popular right out the gate.

Thinking about trying to grab a Nintendo NES Classic Edition the first day it went on sale? Yeah, us too. And pretty much everyone else, or so it seems.

After hearing horror stories about people who tried going to GameStop and bribing an employee attaining one in person, I had given up hope. Then, fellow FanSider Cheryl Wassenaar told me that they were going on sale on Amazon at 2 p.m. Pacific time.

“Oh cool,” I thought, knowing that while this was going to be a long shot, at least there was a chance.

Both of us were set several minutes ahead of time, ready to refresh like mad. Here’s an edited transcript of our Slack conversation to let you know how that went:

"Nick Tylwalk [5:02 PM]Pretty sure they just sold out in like 2 minutes!Cheryl Wassenaar [5:02 PM]Amazon just kept throwing me error after error!Nick Tylwalk [5:02 PM]YEP[5:03]I VERY briefly saw a link that said (1 new at $59.99) clicked on it, tried to add it to my shopping cart and got the message that said it was unavailable again.Cheryl Wassenaar [5:03 PM]Me tooNick Tylwalk [5:04 PM]I’LL GIVE YOU INVALID PARAMETERS! *throws mouse*Cheryl Wassenaar [5:05 PM]I had an add to cart button but it didn’t workNick Tylwalk [5:05 PM]yeah I just got that too![5:06]IT SAYS IT IS IN STOCK DAMMIT!Cheryl Wassenaar [5:06 PM][5:07]and now the page won’t even loadNick Tylwalk [5:07 PM]AGGGGGHCheryl Wassenaar [5:07 PM]rage seethe boilCheryl Wassenaar [5:08 PM]Nintendo broke Amazon"

So yeah, apparently Amazon sold out of the NES Classic Edition in just under 10 minutes. The company was at least up front about the fact that its stock was going to be very  limited, but damn.

(As a side note, I also tried using the Amazon app to buy one at the same time, and said app at least had the courtesy to level with me and say “Currently unavailable” the whole time.)

Will Amazon get more soon? Well, maybe. And by that I mean the page (if you can get it to load) says more will be back in stock. As was pointed out to me, the Big A also said that about the new Link amiibo, and that’s proven not to be the case.

Nintendo might be trying to Switch things up (sorry), but some things don’t change.