These ultra-editions are killing me!

First of all, just to hopefully avoid all the snarky remarks, I KNOW that I don't have to get them. But the stuff they come with is just too damn cool.

Now that I got that out of the way, onto my subject: the ultra-editions. "The what?" The ultra-editions. You know, Halo 3's Legendary Edition or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's Prestige Edition. They are the original instigator's of the next phase in collector's editions for video games. At first, it was just the collector's editions. They came with a small figurine or soundtrack or art book or something, well....collectable. But then one day some genius in a suit thought, "What if we stuck a giant dust-collecting toy in there? You know, something big and gaudy that is gonna really get the geeks soaking their jeans?"

And thus, the Legendary Edition of Halo 3 was born. And geeks "ga-fawed" at it's awesomeness, the potential to see kitten's wearing it, and not to mention it's awesome price: $130! And surprisingly, people paid for this.

As did I.

...Shut up.

Then Activision came about with their Prestige Edition of Modern Warfare 2. Which came with a much cooler toy: night vision goggles. And they weren't some crappy piece of plastic. They were REAL WORKING NIGHT VISION GOGGLES! Admittedly, they seemed of more worth than a plastic display helmet that was too small to wear. Nice move, Microsoft.

So again, I cracked open my wallet and got the goggles. (And to increase the awesomeness of it all, I admit that I have put the goggles on the Master Chief helmet that came with Halo 3).

Again....shut up.

Now we have Halo: Reach and Call of Duty: Black Ops upon us. And each has its own ubber-edition. Reach gets a 10-pound statue by McFarlane Toys, and Black Ops gets a remote control car. "What's so special about the car?" Well, it has a built-in microphone and video camera that feeds images and sound back to the controller through a tiny screen built into the handle. And as for the statue, well, it's a very nice statue. And the ubber-geek in me has a hard time resisting. It's just a bit too epic.

(I see potential to put little spartans on a remote control car and race them around the house. Curse the geek in me).

And so my wallet gets an itch, again. A $300 itch.

I hate the fall game release season.