My local video game store somehow ended up with a pristine, but non-working Japanese Model 1 Sega Saturn for $20 and a copy of
Batsugun that they were selling for $120 (it had been marked down three times... I guess there aren't a lot of big shmup fans in my area). I've gotten extremely good at repairing pre-PlayStation 2 game consoles, so I decided to give the Model 1 a shot -- only $20 for such a cool-looking system that's hard to come by in the US, so why not?
Batsugun may be my very favorite shoot-'em-up, despite the fact that most see it as a step down from the likes of
Battle Garegga and
DoDonPachi. The art design, the soundtrack, the character design, and maniac bullet patterns that I can actually manage have made it my most-played game on MAME -- it's just so catered to my tastes in shooters that even though I haven't been playing it for that long, I get a nostalgic feeling every time I boot it up, hear Beltiana say "OK", and listen to that amazing soundtrack. Needless to say, I had to have it, but it took some doing at a price like that.
The Model 1 was honestly the easiest fix I've ever encountered for a system being sold as "junk". I opened it up and found out that the ribbon cable was loose. I reconnected it, and everything worked perfectly! Since I had sold my original US Saturn and switched to a Model 2 JP Saturn last year, I'd been having to skip out on the incompatible games that I owned for it (
Space Harrier,
OutRun,
King of Fighters '95,
Real Bout Fatal Fury), so it was awesome to play those again. The design of the console looks absolutely amazing to me -- I had planned on selling my old Sega Saturn, but I love the white design so much that I couldn't bear to part with it. So now I've hooked the Model 1 to my rotating computer monitor through several adapters, and I have a handy little station for those incompatible games and my small collection of tate shmups,
DoDonPachi,
Layer Section, and now...
BATSUGUN. Basically, I gathered together a ton of the duplicate games I've amassed over the years (I'll miss you, extra copies of
Seaman... all seven of you

) and got around to repairing a ton of second hand consoles. Basically spent my entire day under a pile of half-functional Genesis, Sega CD, PlayStation, and Dreamcast consoles (from my "I don't know what I want out of collecting, so I'll just buy anything cheap" phase), Frankensteining parts, replacing fuses, and soldering until I had nine consoles to sell.
When all was said and done, I ended up with a
ton of store credit, and picked up
Batsugun with lots of credit to spare, which is how I also ended up snatching up
DoDonPachi, which I hadn't expected to buy, but am enjoying the hell out of.
I'm in the process of moving (slowly) and I'm having PC issues so I can't post up pictures now, but I'll do that as soon as I can. I'm extremely happy with my new additions. Actually, I might be even more pleased with the space that I was finally able to clear up!