Realised I had two of these relatively rare examples (well, PAL Fatal Fury 2 at least!) and figured I should make a video. Please sit back and enjoy one of the dodgiest-looking first-party controllers I have ever laid my eyes on!

Thanks to Doc Eggfan of Sega-16 for loaning me the other Fatal Fury 2 cartridge too!

Australia has had some rather interesting Sega releases over the years. First up we’ve got Fatal Fury 2 for the Mega Drive, a PAL cartridge with an unusual place in the local Sega collection. This particular copy belongs to Doc Eggfan, so I’ll be sending it back after having a look. It’s certainly not something I come across every day.

The other item is a Sega Saturn controller, although you’d be forgiven for thinking it belonged to a completely different machine. It doesn’t look much like the Saturn controllers we’re used to. In fact, at a glance it seems more like something from the Mega Drive era.

Flip it over and things become a little more interesting. The packaging identifies it as a licensed Sega accessory distributed by Sega Ozisoft in Mascot, New South Wales. A local connection! I used to work around Mascot myself, although I wouldn’t particularly recommend the job I had there.

Why did Sega Ozisoft offer such an odd-looking controller? Perhaps there were supply problems with the usual PAL accessories, or perhaps somebody decided there was a market for an alternative. I don’t know, but it certainly makes for an interesting Australian Sega oddity.

The packaging promises a high-response control pad with excellent accuracy. Sounds wonderful! Let’s get it out and see whether the controller lives up to the sales pitch.

Hmm. It feels rather cheap, to be perfectly frank. The shoulder buttons make an impressive clicking noise, and there’s a set of switches on the back. Why put the switches on the front when you can hide them underneath instead? Perhaps it’s a feature!

Time to take the thing apart. With a little assistance from Frank the camera stand, we get the controller open and find a fairly ordinary circuit board inside. There’s a glob-top chip, some basic components and a generous helping of hot glue securing the cable. The shoulder buttons are quite keen to escape while I’m working on it too.

Nothing particularly spectacular, but it’s still a curious piece of Sega history. I wonder how many of these were sold locally, and whether anyone preferred them to the normal Saturn controller. Whatever the reason for its existence, I’m glad this wonderfully dodgy bit of Australian Sega hardware survived!