Rany Battikh

Sega Saturn controllers everywhere!

Well, not literally everywhere, but both Retro-bit and Hyperkin have new Sega Saturn controllers in their respective inventories of retro accessories.

Retro-bit announced earlier this year that they’re teaming up with Sega to produce new controllers for the Genesis/Mega Drive and Saturn. Each model will receive 3 variants: original port, USB and Bluetooth (Bluetooth dongles/receivers will be sold separately).

Now, we’re all aware of the information above but what’s weird is that the whole new line of Retro-bit controllers just went up for per-order only on Amazon UK last week. The release date is set for January 31st 2019. (Although the Saturn “cool” pad has an earlier release date: November 25th 2018. Was that set by mistake?)

Hyperkin just made available on their website, without making a big fuss about it, a new Saturn controller named: CirKa. It highly resembles the North-American model 2 Saturn controller and only goes for 16$.

There’s a ton of new 3rd-party NES, SNES and Genesis (and even N64) controllers out there, with varying quality, but we scarcely get any new Saturn product. I’m really glad that the mid-90s underdog is finally (but barely) receiving its well-deserved appreciation after flying under the radar for so long.

But, how well will those 2 controllers (I would like to believe that the Retro-bit controller is the superior choice here) fare against the original Saturn pad’s legendary status?

Amazon UK Saturn Retro-bit controller pre-order link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Retro-Bit-Official-SEGA-Saturn-Control/dp/B07H3Q295S/

Hyperkin’s CirKa: https://www.hyperkin.com/controller-for-saturn-black-cirka.html