First, you have to gather the cash to preorder the game at the local GameStop, where your cousin works, and, even though he hooks it up with the employee discount, the game is still a bit out of your price range because you’ve been using your Taco Bell paychecks to help your pops, who’s been out of work since you were ten, and who makes you feel unbearably guilty about spending money on useless hobbies while kids in Kabul are destroying their bodies to build compounds for white businessmen and warlords-but, shit, it’s Kojima, it’s Metal Gear, so, after scrimping and saving (like literal dimes you’re picking up off the street), you’ve got the cash, which you give to your cousin, who purchases the game on your behalf, and then, on the day it’s released, you just have to find a way to get to the store.īut, because your oldest brother has taken the Civic to Sac State, you’re hauling your two-hundred-and-sixty-pound ass on a bicycle you haven’t touched since middle school, and thank Allah (if He’s up there) that the bike is still rideable, because you’re sure there’ll be a line if you don’t get to GameStop early, so, huffing and puffing, you’re regretting all the Taco Bell you’ve eaten over the past two years, but you ride with such fervor that you end up being only third in line, and it’s your cousin himself who hands you the game in a brown paper bag, as if it were something illegal or illicit, which it isn’t, of course, it’s Metal Gear, it’s Kojima, it’s the final game in a series so fundamentally a part of your childhood that often, when you hear the Irish Gaelic chorus from “The Best Is Yet to Come,” you cannot help weeping softly into your keyboard.įor some reason, riding back home is easier.