fcgamer | 4,719 Posted April 20, 2020 Share Posted April 20, 2020 Earlier I started a thread about why I like Sachen. To be honest, I was trolling a bit, but I also wanted to hype up a recent find of mine a bit. Sadly though, I can't make a full determination of the magnitude of this find (or lack of), as a few buddies and myself have not been successful vat cracking this nut, thus far anyways. Hence why I'm turning to you guys. We can solve this case together. A few weeks back I had the opportunity to purchase a Famicom gaming machine that was allegedly designed for use in hot spring resorts in Japan. The text on the machine is entirely bin Japanese, do I don't think it was intended for use in the local Taiwan market. Although the price was a decent amount of money, @OptOut and I discussed it a bit, and we both felt it was worth the price, despite the risk (working or not, interesting or boring, etc). What initially caught my eye was that the controller was made by Sachen themselves. I could easily see them being behind this, given the alleged usage. To sum it up in a sentence: Japanese business men took their mistresses to hot springs resorts, then played Sachen porno mahjong / strip games before having a fun time. I am sure the truth aligns quite similar to this guess, and I knew I had to own this piece, given its scarcity, my love for Sachen, and my terribly nasty collection of porno Famicom / Sega games, yeah I'm a perve. The seller claimed the machine worked, I haven't been able to get any picture out of it, though the mechanical points do seem to operate fine. Whether I can get the machine working or not, I honestly don't regret my purchase at all. I just want to know what data is on the games built into the machine. You see, it appears to be a Famiclone built into the machine, with a Famicom cartridge PCB inserted into the game slot. No idea if there are more game PCBs behind the first or not, or even the content on the cart. I thought I was hooking my machine up wrong, so I asked the seller got help, and since my crt TV was on the fritz, I even tracked down another crt and carried the forty-pound motherf*cker halfway across town after work one day, for the sake of this Sachen box. No lie. On the other crt I managed to hook up and get running other game machine, but no dice with this one . I then took another approach, thinking that if I opened it, I could see if there was an internal problem. After undoing the visible screws, I began taking the case off, but it refuses to open more than about half an inch. I took the machine to a locksmith, and he picked the tubular lock open allowing me to access the coin box (100 yen per play) as well as the counter of how many times the machine has been played. He said the smaller tubular locks were very rare, and he couldn't get those opened. Another brick wall. Today I swung by another locksmith and he happened to have a key that fit the two smaller locks, and so he opened them and gave me the key gratis, he said it was so old he didn't need it anymore. I took things home and discovered that the smaller locks are actually switches, which control settings on the machine, likely the timer function, etc. And that's where we are at. There is at least one Famicom cartridge PCB inside this thing, who knows if it is a retail Sachen game, a prototype game, or a finished game designed solely for this obscure machine. Given how they teamed up with Hacker International of Japan, maybe the cart contains something related to that. I feel chances are good that something interesting could be inside, but I can't get anything but static from the machine, and I can't get it opened. Next step will be getting an RF to av converter from somewhere, I doubt that will get me an image, but I'm willing to go down every alley I can, eventually we will get a "hit". This is why I like Sachen though. They produced a large amount of original games (the non-platformer games are actually mostly really well done, it's just that they don't appeal to westerners) for Famicom, Game Boy, they released their own handheld device, they released this sleezy hotel machine, etc. Whether people can recognise it or not, they were innovative . To conclude, this machine of mine is locked up tighter than Fort Knox, that earns then major respect in my book! 4 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fcgamer | 4,719 Posted April 20, 2020 Author Share Posted April 20, 2020 Here are a few more pictures. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DoctorEncore | 3,690 Posted April 20, 2020 Share Posted April 20, 2020 Good luck getting that thing open! If worse comes to worse, you may consider reaching out to Kevtris on Twitter and asking him to look at the circuit boards when you have them exposed. He did a complete tear down and reverse engineering of the FamicomBox. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuppa | 60 Posted April 20, 2020 Share Posted April 20, 2020 22 minutes ago, fcgamer said: To sum it up in a sentence: Japanese business men took their mistresses to hot springs resorts, then played Sachen porno mahjong / strip games before having a fun time You have my attention 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMR | 518 Posted April 20, 2020 Share Posted April 20, 2020 If I'm not mistaken, you can't play a Famicom on an American NTSC machine without modding it. There is some difference in the signal. This thing could have the same issue, or it could just be broken. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DefaultGen | 5,397 Posted April 20, 2020 Share Posted April 20, 2020 Damn I hope you wiped down those buttons. 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OptOut | 8,881 Posted April 21, 2020 Share Posted April 21, 2020 It's a thing of beauty mate, congrats! It's the Cadillac of Sachens, lol! I'm sure it will be up and running in no time. This completely changes my perspective on Sachen to be honest, that they could craft such an awesome looking piece of machinery like that. They get WAY too little respect/credit imo! 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanooki | 4,929 Posted April 21, 2020 Share Posted April 21, 2020 Wow that's amazing. Followed your interest in sachen for years and you're right aside from platformers from what I can vaguely recall they were fairly good at making games. I just don't recall off hand what gameboy handheld they made, but I do recall the games as well as the NES/FC stuff. I wouldn't mind going down a sachen gameboy rabbit hole some, it could be fun. Perhaps for humor sake here you're overthinking why it's stuck together. You did say it was at a love hotel after all. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jfreakofkorn | 282 Posted April 21, 2020 Share Posted April 21, 2020 That is so cool . Would love to have something like that . Cant beat the look of it . No matter at what kind of action was happening in the room ( either game play or under cover twister ) . Funny seeing start and select are wrtten in english along with some wrtting on the panel . Why was that ? The appeal for more markets or just cheaper in making if mass produced ( depending on region would require different language molds ) . . . 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drxandy | 3,225 Posted April 22, 2020 Share Posted April 22, 2020 Wowwww What a find!! Can't wait to see it running, very very coooooool 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Speedy_NES | 102 Posted April 22, 2020 Share Posted April 22, 2020 Amazing item, thanks for sharing! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fcgamer | 4,719 Posted April 24, 2020 Author Share Posted April 24, 2020 Well I didn't get it opened, but I did manage to squeeze my hand inside so that I could pluck the game PCB from the slot and have a look. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RH | 4,895 Posted April 24, 2020 Share Posted April 24, 2020 Go on... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darkchylde28 | 1,546 Posted April 24, 2020 Share Posted April 24, 2020 Any chance of you turning on the video camera feature on your phone, dipping that down into the gap and seeing what's causing the gum up? I know most folks won't have a USB probe camera to feed down into tight spaces, but virtually everybody's got (access to) a smartphone at this point which would likely shed some light on the issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuppa | 60 Posted April 24, 2020 Share Posted April 24, 2020 3 hours ago, RH said: Go on... I thought this was going to be one of the stories you make one sentence at a time after FC's post lol. ... I plucked out the PCB and confirmed it was ... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fcgamer | 4,719 Posted April 25, 2020 Author Share Posted April 25, 2020 Here we go guys, this will be a revival of my blog: https://fcgamer.wordpress.com/2020/04/25/baby-i-swear-im-just-heading-to-the-love-motel-to-play-sachen-games/ 4 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanooki | 4,929 Posted April 25, 2020 Share Posted April 25, 2020 Hah that's a hell of a twist and no I won't ruin it by saying what it was but that's funny. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Rogers | 77 Posted April 26, 2020 Share Posted April 26, 2020 Hi Dave, Good to see you have started writing/researching again :). This reminds me of 'off-brand famicomboxs' which I discovered years and years ago, and have misplaced ALL of my photos and links of. But here is one example: http://oroti.blog.jp/archives/68610556.html I swear there are many more but i don't know what to search google for. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DoctorEncore | 3,690 Posted April 26, 2020 Share Posted April 26, 2020 11 hours ago, fcgamer said: Here we go guys, this will be a revival of my blog: https://fcgamer.wordpress.com/2020/04/25/baby-i-swear-im-just-heading-to-the-love-motel-to-play-sachen-games/ Hahaha. Nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RetroGE | 21 Posted June 13, 2020 Share Posted June 13, 2020 That’s awesome! I’ve seen a number of knockoff hotel systems but this is the most official unofficial one I’ve seen! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OptOut | 8,881 Posted January 19, 2021 Share Posted January 19, 2021 Sachen BOX you say? Pah! This is the REAL Sachen hardware all the cool kids are talking about... Introducing the Sachen Q BOY!!! 2 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tulpa | 3,488 Posted January 19, 2021 Share Posted January 19, 2021 "Wait, 8-bit game? I thought it had 'dazzling 3-D graphics.' Philip, make up your goddamn mind!" - Jontron Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fcgamer | 4,719 Posted January 19, 2021 Author Share Posted January 19, 2021 I think any Sachen game challenges the limits of my imagination, lol 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
croagunk | 798 Posted January 19, 2021 Share Posted January 19, 2021 This is cool! I really enjoyed reading your adventure with this thing. Thanks for sharing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Code Monkey | 2,005 Posted January 19, 2021 Share Posted January 19, 2021 Did you start a story here and then post a link to the ending on another website? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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