This Guy Played Through All Of ‘Metal Gear Solid V’ Using Solar Power

If you're a long-time gamer, you'll have seen all kinds of ridiculous-ass control methods come and go. The Wii remote with that terrible plastic tennis racquet attachment, augmented reality cards, the Mario Kart wheel, the Eye Toy… none of this plastic shite will ever biodegrade, meaning the Earth is doomed to live with it forever.

Some of these innovations were a success, true enough. When the DS was first announced, touchscreen gaming was the kind of sorcery you'd be burnt at the stake for in ye olde days. But can you imagine a world without it now? No, no you can't.

Here's something else that definitely needs to catch on: solar powered video games. Remember Boktai? The GBA game that cast you as a vampire hunter armed with a sun gun, which you had to actually take outside to recharge via a sensor on the cartridge? I'm betting you don't. Which is fine, because we're not talking about that and I shouldn't really have bothered bringing it up.

Yesterday, IGN's Caleb Lawson brought us the story of how he played through the whole of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain using only the power of the sun.

‘Before this adventure, I never thought about gaming with solar power. But when my wife and I decided to leave our jobs, pack up our belongings, and travel North America in a camper for a year, I needed a solution to keep gaming on the road,' quoth he, before launching into the whole thing. A 3500 mile journey from Nevada to Nova Scotia, 48 hours of the Phantom Pain on route… this guy really needs to write his memoirs. It'd be like Huckleberry Finn, with more Solid Snake and trying to figure out how fancy solar power tech actually works.

Go and give the piece a read here, it's great stuff.