After speaking to Konami USA marketing VP Anthony Crouts earlier this year at Comic Con, he gave us hope for a stateside release of the Metal Gear 20th Anniversary Metal Gear Solid Collection, a package that stuffed six Metal Gear games and two bonus discs into a budget priced package. After hearing nothing about a release for the past three months, I bugged Kojima Productions producer Ryan Payton about the possibility of it shipping outside of Japan before Metal Gear Solid 4 hits. Our hopes? More measured, but Payton says it’s still a possibility.

“We’re working on it pretty much every day to make it happen”, he said at the E For All Expo “but there are a lot of issues that the average gamer doesn’t know about.” So, who’s to blame for the lack of box set love? Retailers? Maybe. Canada? Only partially. If you’re going to blame anyone, blame your fellow tightwad gamers, who make convincing the Powers That Be difficult with their garage sale attitude toward video games.

Still, Payton has hope. “At some point next year, I want to have a box set on store shelves to give people a chance to play MGS1 and MGS2 before they jump into MGS4.” But don’t count on the box set coming out before the PlayStation 3 sequel and don’t expect it to look like its Japanese counterpart. Payton talked briefly of his design document for the Western version of the package, one that’s slightly different from the home turf release.

More details on the progress of Metal Gear Solid 4 and additional details on the Metal Gear Solid Collection coming in our full interview with the Kojima Productions producer.