Here’s an interesting little gaming history item. The Sega Saturn Playstation controller. Fully licensed by both Sony and Sega. Minds would have been blown if you could have shown this to kids in 1995…

The full name is ‘Fukkokuban Sega Saturn Control Pad For ‘PlayStation 2’ and they were released in 2005 when the recently third party Sega saw a market for decent fighting game pads for the flood of fighters appearing on the PS2, in particular the recent Capcom fighting collections. There were a few different colours released, including a purple one which came bundled with Capcom’s Darkstalkers Collection.

It is also fully compatible with the original Playstation, so is a great way to play all the 2D fighting games on that console, as well as any other games that need a d-pad better for rolling between directions than the thumb destroying segmented d-pad of Sony’s controllers, or games that use six face buttons.

The unique set up with all buttons having dual labels matching both the Saturn and Playstation button names, plus the addition of a Select button mean it’s the only way to have full functionality on a Sony console while using the superior Sega controller shape and d-pad.

These days there are plenty of more flexible options for using a Saturn pad on almost any console thanks to protocols like BlueRetro. My current go-to us a Blueretro adapter and the Retro-bit Saturn pad.

But for nearly two decades this was my go-to for playing fighters and shoot-em-ups on Sony consoles. They’re quite rare and valuable nowadays so hard to get ahold of.