Hope springs Saturnal
If you're a Street Fighter-lover, you've probably rubbed your thumbs raw or given yourself a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome trying to play the latest release with a standard gamepad or a flashier joystick. As you'll come to find in this and future installments of Out of Control, there are other options. Sometimes they will be masochistically brutal options, and sometimes they'll be downy-soft inputs of relief and ergonomic bliss. Playing Street Fighter with a Sega Saturn pad would fall into the latter category.
Since its debut, the Sega Saturn gamepad has been generally accepted as the ultimate controller for playing 2D games, and the best gamepad for fighters. So revered is it, that 3rd party peripheral manufacturers like Mad Katz
You may have been unaware that Sega manufactured a Saturn-style controller to accompany the remake of Virtua Fighter 2 for the Japan-only Sega Ages series on PlayStation 2. No fancy analog sticks or rumble motors were in this baby. The sublime D-pad, 3x2 rows of face buttons, Start button, and single rows of shoulder buttons were only augmented with a Select button to round out the PS2 compatibility. The L1 and R1 button functions were mapped to the Saturn pad's Z and C buttons, and L2 and R2 worked through the shoulder buttons.
PS2 gamers could throw hadokens in Street Fighter Anniversary Collection
The problem is that the limited-release, Japan-only PS2 Saturn pads are no longer being made. But do not despair, because Sega still has you covered. I only found out a couple weeks ago about a USB-native "Saturn" pad that was said to work with the PS3. I immediately checked around and found a few importers and eBay stores that had them, and I got one for less than the cost of the Mad Katz wannabes. This controller that seems to have slipped under so many people's radars had me a bit suspicious, because you'd think it would be getting coverage at every news outlet that has covered Street Fighter IV, but it's only spoken of in whispers on various forums.
I can't tell you why this controller exists. The Saturn had proprietary ports, not USB. Old PC ports of Saturn games like Panzer Dragoon were intended to use controllers with that the standard Saturn connector, but plug into a special peripheral card that was discontinued long before even before the Saturn console end-of-lined.
Perhaps it is marketed for newer PC ports of Saturn games in Japan, but it's obvious that it's not specifically for modern consoles. The Xbox 360 has USB ports, but doesn't respond to unlicensed USB game controllers. The Nintendo Wii's USB ports are typically used for connecting keyboards, but game controllers interface through the Gamecube ports or wirelessly via Bluetooth. PS3 USB ports aren't restrictive, but the USB "Saturn" pad doesn't feature the Select button that was on the PS2 release, and more importantly, no PS button.
What platform it's made for is of little importance, because all you need to know is that it DOES work on the PS3, and you can use it to dish out the butt-whoopin's as God intended. You'll still want to keep a DS3 or SIXAXIS nearby for when you need the PS and Select buttons, but other than that, it's perfect. For those of you that are crippling yourselves trying to play fighters on the Xbox 360, there is unfortunately no solution so elegant as the Sega pad. You'll have to sell a kidney for a Mad Katz stand-in pad or stick
