I was hunting for clearance video games at Kmart this week when something strange happened…

A woman (who appeared to be the store manager) went through the store handing out raffle tickets, promising a giveaway at the jewelry counter. Once the customers gathered around for the “giveaway,” we were instead subjected to a 5 minute sales pitch for really cheap (and cheap looking) “gold” jewelry at a “special price” of $21 for 4 necklaces and 4 bracelets.

At first, she claimed to be taking a “survey” of whether the audience liked each piece or not. I’m pretty sure the survey was just a ruse of social engineering to get people thinking about whether they would like to own each piece. That’s when the “special” sale came in.

The woman claimed it was some kind of partnership with the Home Shopping Network (dubious!) and after we all endured the soft sell of standing in place for several minutes, the giveaway was for one of the bracelets (big deal).

This was obviously not Kmart’s usual jewelry, as the woman literally dumped the stuff into ziplock bags before selling it. You stay classy, Kmart.

I’m amazed that Kmart thinks this is better for business than, oh, say, having more than one checkout open at any given time.

My recommendation is if you get a raffle ticket while in Kmart, just ignore it, because it’s really not worth your time.

Anyway, the whole thing smacked of something scammy, and I’m really curious to know if anyone else has seen one of these pitches in a Kmart recently. If you have, please leave a comment. For the record, this was at the Kmart in Hagerstown, Md., on Wednesday, Sept. 3, around 4 pm.

And as for games, I picked up Square Enix’s Project Sylpheed (Xbox 360) on clearance for $10. I also saw Nights for the Wii on clearance for $10 but left it behind.

One of my favorite aspects of game collecting is finding ridiculously old titles still new at retail. (Gamecube launch titles at Wal-Mart, anyone?) I remember seeing a copy of Soul Blade at an outside-of-town Dollar General about a year ago. It was $10 at the time, a bit too steep for any PS1 game still kicking around on  shelves. I happened to be driving by the same store yesterday, and thought I would stop just to see if they still had it and if it had been marked down any.

To my luck, not only had Dollar General marked it down to $8 at some point, it was in the middle of 2 big “50% off” clearance aisles. That made it $4 out the door. For reference, they had several other less-than-stellar titles like Wild 9 (PS1, $4), Ultimate Board Games (PS2, $7.50), Dragonball GT (GBA, $7.50), and Veggie Tales (PS2, $7.50).

It’s rare to see any new PS1 games still at retail these days, let alone one that’s part of a well-respected franchise (Soul Calibur). Did I mention the cheapest sealed copy on eBay is $20?

The game rang up as “Xmas 05 Assort,” so it’s been there for at least 3 years. As a funny side note, the store didn’t even have the tool to unlock the plastic bracket that held the game. It came out with a quick snip from a pair of wire cutters.

One of my local (franchise) Blockbusters cleared out a ton of their Gamecube games, including a bunch of first-party goodies. I got all of the following under a buy 2, get 1 free sale, making them roughly $6.67 a piece. You really can’t do much better than that for quality Gamecube titles.

Not to mention, I personally think the dominance of the Wii and its backwards compatibility is going to give the Gamecube a much more favorable retroactive “legacy” than the N64 had.

• Pokemon Colosseum
• Disney Sports Basketball
• Paper Mario
• Disney Extreme Skate
• Luigi’s Mansion (I really want to play this one someday)
• Mario Party 4
• Mario Golf
• Animal Crossing
• Star Wars: Bounty Hunter