The Gagaman's collection of Saturn Joy

Alright there? May as well make my first post here at the Saturn Junkyard a nice meaty one with lots of pretty pictures to look at, so here's my Saturn collection.

This here is my original Saturn, which I've had since I was about 10 years old, and it has been reliable ever since. It was bought from Currys where it was bundled with Sonic Jam, Sega Rally, Manx TT, Sega Ages and Bubble Bobble collection. Most other kids in my school had moved onto Playstations, but the Sonic nutter in me made it a requirement to own one of these instead. This Saturn has been in storage for a little while mainly because last month I acquired this...

A wonderful white Japanese Saturn. I got it off eBay for about £80, and it came with a few games: Cyberbots, Vampire Savior, X-Men: Children of the Atom, Tetris Plus, Mortal Kombat II, Tongue King the Spirits 2 (what an odd name) and Virtua Cop. Unfortunately so far though I haven't been able to get a scart cable that will run this system at the optimum picture quality like my PAL one, but finally having the privilege to run the games at full screen and full speed 60HZ is fantastic in itself. Daytona USA in particular looks so much better now it's not squashed down by huge huge black bars on the screen.

Next up: my controllers. I used to have a lot more than this (including the steering wheel and a 2nd NiGHTS controller) but had to have a clear out a while ago. Now I have one Model 1 Controller (just for the novelty of having one, I never use it), two Model 2 controllers (the ones that came with the above two systems, and the greatest controller in the world ever), a NiGHTS 3D pad, and one of those cute bright blue Light guns (which I can't use anymore, darn LCD TVs..)

I got rather lucky finding this arcade stick at a car boot sale. Not only was it ridiculously cheap at just £2, but it was also brand new in the box, and had never been used before. It's not quite on par with the Dreamcast arcade stick, but it's still very good and much better than the Sega branded Saturn stick which was a bit shit. The photo also contains my memory cards: a British one i got a few years ago in Gamestation for a tenner, a Japanese one I can't seem to get to work, and an ST-Key which I was using to play import games on my PAL console before I got the Japanese one (it only ran the games in 50HZ though, so some games went out of sync with the sound).

This here is the beautiful Virtual On Twin Stick. It cost me a small lump of cash (about £30) and I still stink at playing Virtual On even with it, but I also have a Total Control 3 adapter so I can also use it for the sequel on the Dreamcast. That and I can use my Saturn controllers on the DC too, because to be honest the DC controllers are not the greatest controller in the world ever like the Saturn one is.

Now onto the most important part...the games!

First off my PAL games. Quite a lot of these were bought back when the system out in the shops but a few were eBay purchases and many were found at boot sales. I think my most lucky breaks at boot sales had to be Guardian Heroes (with a rather dried out cover) for £5, Marvel Super Heroes in perfect condition for £1, Die hard Arcade and House of the Dead for £2 each, and Street Fighter Collection for £5 which I recently sold off for £50 (I own the games on that disc on too many other systems as it is).

Next up my Japanese games. I started to slowly collect these a couple of years ago but my recent purchase of a Japanese system has drove my collecting into top gear (possibly also helped by the fact that I'm running out of Dreamcast games I want to buy). All but two of them have come from eBay (Sexy Parodius and Magical Drop III were purchased from Genki video games.), and a lot of them were bought to replace the bulkier, scratched up PAL versions I had (which are 99% in English anyway), just to save shelf space. I also grabbed X-men vs Street Fighter and a 4MB RAM cart recently so I could finally play all those great Capcom fighters that require it. Smashing.

Magazines! I subscribed to Official Sega Saturn Magazine from issue 26 onwards and it was quite possibly the best video game magazine ever written, I only wish the same staff and publisher did the Dreamcast one too. I also have a pile of back issues including issue 1 but my collection isn't complete and because they were taken to school a lot (to giggle at the fake pictures of a Tomb Raider nude cheat with mates) they're rather tatty. Still worth a good read now and again so they're not stored away. If it wasn't for this mag I probably wouldn't be the Sega and Capcom nutter I am today.

Does anyone remember this mag? It was only going for 10 issues and I have most of them, and the first few issues also had demo discs. I feel sorry for America, they apparently didn't get any Sega Saturn magazines AT ALL. I also have some issues of a magazine called Total Saturn, but I seem to have misplaced those.

Finally here's all the demos that came from the magazines and such I have, including Christmas NiGHTS and that one which is the first disc of Panzer Dragoon Saga. The Sega Flash discs tend to repeat the same playable demos on them over and over again, and were only released once a blue moon. Well that's me lot! I do have some other games in the post (Deathlete, Winter Heat, Sky Target and Golden Axe: The Duel), though.

Aww, they're kissing!