I had been contemplating a PS3 purchase for some time, but as a big Metal Gear fan, now that the final chapter of the series is coming out, I decided it was time to buy one.

Metal Gear 4 Fans, This One's For You

This guide assumes you want the Metal Gear 4 bundle, and you want to play Metal Gear 4 in Japanese. (You know, so you can "study" eight hours a day when you get home from work/school.) If you don't want to play Metal Gear 4 in Japanese, or you already have a PS3, this is not the guide for you.

Special Edition or Not

The other big question to decide is if you want the Metal Gear 4 Special Edition or just the normal edition. If you already have a PS3, it's an easy choice, since the difference is about 800 yen-- might as well get the special edition. If you're buying a PS3 at the same time, though, it's a little trickier, as this guide will show.

Power Considerations (Japanese or US model?)

For PS3 games, the PS3s are region free. In other words, Japanese games work on the US PS3 and US games work on the Japanese PS3.

Since most US electronics work in Japan but not the other way around, I wanted to make sure that the Japanese PS3, if I bought one, would still work if I brought it back to the US in a few years. Since I live in Japan, at first I was lost over this.

Thankfully, as it turns out the PS3 has a universal power supply, which means that as long as you have a cord that fits in the power outlet, it will work fine. This is great news because it means you don't need any expensive adapter to use a Japanese PS3 in the US, or Europe for that matter.

To Bundle or Not to Bundle? (How bad do you want that special edition?

Metal Gear 4 is debuting with an incredibly sweet bundle in Japan: for an extra 10,000 yen, you get the 40GB PS3 + Metal Gear 4 + the Dual Shock 3. This is a great deal and I would buy it in a heartbeat but as it turns out there's a special edition of Metal Gear 4 that includes an extra BluRay disk-- but you don't get this if you buy the standard Metal Gear bundles (there are three bundles and the only difference is the color of the system: white, black, and silver).

Check out the Metal Gear 4 Japanese Bundle here.

Instead, if you want the special edition, there is a limited edition bundle that includes a "steel" (hagane) PS3 along with the special edition of Metal Gear 4. Of course, this one also costs an extra 3000 yen or so, and more importantly can't be reserved and be in very short supply. The other alternative, of course, is to buy all the different pieces of the set separately. As it turns out, if you use Amazon Japan to do this, you can get the special edition, a Dual Shock 3, and a 40GB PS3 for just over 50000 yen, which is actually about 1000 yen cheaper than the limited "steel" bundle. If you don't need or want the Dual Shock 3, it's even cheaper. The other advantage of this is that you get an additional controller, the SixAxis.

In fact, that's the route I ended up taking to get my PS3-- buying all the parts separately. Since I needed the second controller, it actually ended up being basically the same price whether I bought it bundled or not.

I'm a little frustrated about this whole thing, and wish Sony had just put the special edition in the standard bundle. Since if you already own a PS3, the difference between the normal edition and special edition of the game is a measly 800 yen, this seems like it would be a small sacrifice that would have saved me having to write this article.

Where to Buy

If you want the hagane PS3 (steel PS3) you'll have to go to your neighborhood store (in Japan) and hope you get lucky. Otherwise, I recommend buying from Amazon Japan. Compared to Kojima, Yamada Denki, and a few local electronics stores, Amazon is selling everything about 4-10% cheaper than the going retail rates.

(If you've never used Amazon Japan, check out my guide.)

Metal Gear 2 Movie- Snake's Perspective

This DVD set features Metal Gear 1+2 as animated comic books. The comic balloons are in English and the voiceover is in Japanese. Highly recommended.