What's cool is when a store like Best Buy holds a really awesome premiere game party for a highly anticipated game. What's not so cool is when that really awesome premiere game party is relegated to but a single location across the entire continent.

But for now, we're just going to focus on the cool part.

Those lucky enough to be in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania on Friday, March the 13th will be privy to the local Best Buy converting their store into a haunted house for the launch of Resident Evil 5. Okay, so one might argue that haunted houses are so 1996 where the series is concerned, but we won't argue semantics.

Employees will be dressed up as zombies (note: Please do not shoot the employees, especially not in the head, no matter how tempted you may be), televisions will be tuned to produce nothing but a haunting bank of no-signal snow (wait, do new TVs even do that any more?), and one lucky guy gets a potato sack thrown over his head and a chainsaw with which to terrorize patrons.

"You want to get away from midnight releases, that's stale, that's old," said Dave Partenio, supervisor of gaming and media at the store. "We want to have a premiere game party for this game."

And Best Buy corporate offices are keeping a close eye on the event. If they go over well, and the store's sales reflect that, than we may be seeing more theme release nights for games in the future. The idea would turn a long night of waiting in the dark with other gamers into a sort of party.

"It's all about the experience," Partenio said. -- Kotaku

In addition to hyping up a much-anticipated title, the store is also in talks with Capcom to try to round up some special giveaways and prizes, and if I know the guys at Capcom, there will be some neat stuff to be had. Plus, the local university wants to work out a deal to donate to a charity there.

Say, wouldn't this be just the perfect place to give blood? They could get the chainsaw guy to do it!

Okay, maybe not.

And so, as noted, the party will be on March 13th, with employees leading small groups of gamers through the haunted store/house, culminating at the point where they get their copy of the game and are faced with the scariest part of the experience: Paying up.

Of course, for those who've not bothered with the game demo for this reason or that over the 39+ days that it's been available, there's no reason to panic: The store has a built-in gaming center where people can try before they buy.

The guy to thank for this zombie mini-apocalypse is employee Drake Campbell, who brought up the idea of having zombies at the launch to his superiors.

They then laughed, said that was the plan all along, and pressed a button that infected all employees and customers with the dreaded B-virus, which resulted in zombified hordes wandering the aisles, attacking anyone who treads too close with pitches for product replacement plans.

Okay, so maybe not that last part, but I defy you to find anyone who will argue otherwise. (Kidding, really!) Drake said the store ran with it after he pitched the idea. So if you like the concept, show up and show support.