With the Wii being as rare as a good English cricket player (or a modest Australian), you will not be surprised to read the story of a female CNN journalist being badly manhandled in a Stateside queue for the console.

CNN’s Krysten Peek reports that, “A massive shipment had just come in that morning and the line didn't look too unbearable, so I decided to wait and try my chances at getting one for my boyfriend. Since it was a little late in the day, I knew the odds were against me, but for some strange reason, I was feeling optimistic.”

Ominously she notes that she “didn't see any other women in line” and that all the blokes in the line around here were “way too serious about this; full of anxiety and tension…. I had never felt so out of place in my life. It seemed like each one of their lives depended on whether or not they got this game system.”

After a few hours’ wait, Peek was handed the last white box in the store, at which point things began to get ugly:

“While paying at the register, the man handling the Wiis said very loudly to the line full of people still waiting, ‘Sorry folks, that's it. There's no more for today.’ Instantly I started hearing groans and seeing other disappointing gestures. It was then that I realised the position I was in... Here I was in line with all these tense guys who didn't get a game system and I did. All at once, I felt their angry, jealous eyes shift focus to me. To them, I was an easy target.”

She continues to outline her frightening ordeal, “Unsatisfied customers began to grab at my bag. Just like that! They were acting as if I was just going to give it to them. There was no way anyone was taking this away from me. I was caught off guard in a game of tug-a-war when a security guard intervened and rescued me from the chaos….He took me outside. And the crowd followed….The security guard flagged a police car. I thankfully jumped in. And it was a police escort for me and my Wii back to work.”

Crazy! It's like a scene right out of Capcom's Xbox 360 Zombie-Mall horror, Dead Rising!

If anybody else has any shock-horror stories relating to in-store arguments and fights over limited stocks of this year’s must-get Xmas present then please share them with us in the forum.