I was reading how Dragon Quest III’s release in Japan in 1988 led to almost 300 arrests for truancy among students absent from school to purchase the game.

I also vaguely remember reading about Western games that had very big queues at physical stores during their release. I assume these can only be heavily anticipated old games before online distribution took off. I checked up the wiki articles of Super Mario Bros 3., Super Mario World, Sonic 2, Sonic CD and Mortal Kombat II but saw no direct mention of queues or otherwise remarkable physical activity at stores on release.

What do y’all know about this?