December 3rd is Monday, it will be in stores December 4th. The reason Nintendo's games are like this is because they announce the ship dates for games, not the actual release dates. On other consoles, you'll actually have the stores holding the games for a week or more just to hold it till the release date. Example being Halo 2, each case in the initial shipment had a sticker on the top saying "DO NOT SELL BEFORE 11/09/04" Stores got the games about two weeks before the game was actually set to release. Nintendo on the other hand says "Hey, we're shipping this game on this day." and doesn't bother to tell you that you'll have to wait till the next day to pick it up.