Saw a very cheap original Xbox (with Duke controller), and yo it turns out games are dirt cheap on it as well!
Got lucky that this model had a Samsung drive (the earlier Thomson ones are prone to errors). I opened it up to remove the clock capacitor, which luckily hadn't begun leaking yet. Just snapped it right off, I don't trust myself with soldering irons.
(For those unaware, original Xboxes used capacitors instead of batteries to keep the time. They have a very high fail rate after 10~15 years however, and the acid can wreck your motherboard apparantly.)
Picked up a few games I'd always been eyeing, plus some stuff that never hit the GameCube, all for 25$:
- Panzer Dragoon Orta. This was the title I was most jealous of back in the day.
- Jet Set Radio Future. UNDERSTAND, UNDERSTAND, THE CONCEPT OF LOVE!
- Burnout 3: Takedown. I really liked the 2nd one on Gamecube but we never got this.
- Destroy All Humans. Bizarrely I had a phone game of this way back when, curious about this one.
In the future I may seek out Jade Empire for that RPG fix or some of the other Sega titles like Outrun 2 or Shenmue 2. They also had Halo 2 and a weird Evil Dead game for practically free, but realistically I'm not sure I'm really interested in those.