Weekend Gaming Score: Metal Gear for almost nothing.

By Stephen Munn | June 7, 2008

Garage sales are more of an art than a science, but there are some general concepts that pay when kept in mind. Firstly, go out early. The best deals are gone long before noon. Secondly, go out late. Nobody wants to pack out the dregs, and they’ll unload piles of stuff for next to nothing. Ignoring this second tenet, there were some good deals to be had in a local town-wide garage sale event.

An early stop had a copy of Metal Gear Solid on the table, which can be hard to find in a complete state. Those who just want to play the game can find it cheap in the recent re-release bundle with Substance and Subsistence, but if you’re a real fan, you might want this original double-disc. The sticker on the box had another surprise. $8 for a bit more than just this game.

Chief on the list is a Sony PlayStation lot, at a surprising $8. This is:

• The original gray PlayStation
• a DualShock controller
• a PlayStation controller
• Two memory cards
• Complete copies of Metal Gear Solid, WCW/NWO Thunder, Nascar 99, Apocalypse, Coolboarders 2, Twisted Metal 2, and ATV: Quad Power Racing
• A demo disc with Gran Turismo, Tekken 3, Hot Shots Golf, and Blasto on it
• Disc-only copies of Grand Theft Auto and Gunship
• A pair of empty cases for Coolboarders 3 and ESPN/ESPN2 Extreme Games

Naturally, after a cleaning, most of this is going right up on eBay, but I’ll be keeping Metal Gear Solid and perhaps Grand Theft Auto. I see this as an opportunity to try to get into Metal Gear Solid once again, after not being very successful with the Gamecube Twin Snakes remake.

Another great deal was a Game Boy Advance lot, at $10, which is the system with a surprising collection of accessories. A Game Boy Color cartridge with Ms Pac Man also turned up for $2.