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Some new Controller bits and bobs.

Got some stuff I've got my hands on as of recent here. First off, a Dreamcast controller I found at a boot sale this weekend which I believe to be rather unusual. For starters it's a bright green. These different coloured controllers are pretty hard to find in the UK as they were onyl sold online, but this is obviously not a European one as it has a orange logo on it, but rather a Japanese one. What makes it's truly unusual though is the little "Millennium 2000" symbol printed on it. Have a closer look.

I looked it up on Dreamcast Gallery, and it looks as though these were made in at least Green and blue, and only sold for a limited time, most likely between December 1999 and January 2000. Even better, the controller is in perfect condition considering it was amongst some guy's standard PAL collection without a box. Only problem now is I have way too many standard DC controllers (a total of 9!) so I'm gonna have to sell off a few. If anyone wants a spare controller or two, I'm selling 3 of them on Ebay right now, as well as a spare fishing controller. I'm holding on to this one though, as at some point I'd like to own one of every colour they did, not including those ridiculously rare patterned ones.

What I especially like about these semi-transparent ones is you can see all the circuitry inside the controller that makes it tick, and if you look closely in that second photo you can see a Sega Logo printed right onto the circuit board. I got a similar black controller a while ago but something tells me it may be fake: there's no Sega logo and the Dreamcast logo font looks different. To solve that issue I took the controller and a official white one apart and part the proper Sega parts in the Black shell, why not?

Meanwhile online I finally decided to purchase a Total Control 3 from Play-Asia, who typically decided to have a 25% off everything sale days after giving them my money. Darn!

So I've been through quite a few of these controller adapters now. First a simple Playstation one, followed by what was supposed to be a PSX and Saturn one but turned out to be PSX and PC keyboards instead, then another Playstation one with a VMU slot that I manged to blow a Dreamcast's controller ports out with (leaving me with a total of 3 dead Dreamcast's out of 5 currently) and finally one with PSX and Saturn but no twin stick compatibility. Bah!

This one however is just for Saturn controllers, but the main reason I bought it was for it's compatibility with Saturn Twin Sticks. You see, Saturn Twin sticks can be bought for about £30 but Dreamcast ones are £50+, but why buy a DC one when you can get the cheaper Saturn one then run it on the Dreamcast as well with a adapter? Is anyone still following this?

So how does it wok with this infamous Virtual On controller? Well, like a charm really, although it hasn't exactly made me any better at the game. Sometimes it seems to confuse a left stick movement to the left as pausing the game but otherwise but that may of just been a dusty connection or something. I also had a go at some other games to see if I could find some magic new control scheme ala the Fishing controller with Virtua Tennis but so far I haven't found anything that really fits the twin stick style. Sadly Bangai-O doesn't let you change all the button mapping, otherwise you could adjust it to have the left stick move the robot and the right to shoot in said direction, which would have been ace. Oh well.

So that's all I have to report as of recent. I still have to sort out those videos I promised you, including a couple new Rummage videos which are about half done.

5 comments:

  1. Nice post Gagaman(n) and congratulations on your newest accquisition! I too have the see through green controller which I was given for free, by a chap in an independent games retailer in Bangor N. Wales, when I bought a load of DC games. It looks exactly the same, but I don't think it has the millenium logo on it. It does go rather well with my see through green Dreamcast and VMU though, so I count it as one of my better finds!

    I also have an unused blue one boxed up, bought directly from Japan.

    The only other coloured controller I have is one of those horrible Madkatz ones (black) but I hate it! LOL!

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  2. I have 1 clear blue controller, and 3 greys (1 that came with my Treamcast still in plastic :P) I love the Total Control adapters! They all work perfectly.

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  3. I was going to buy a total control adaptor at Play Asia but I was short on cash during the sale.

    Ah well. I will just have to buy again sometime.

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  4. I think at current count I have 4 colored controllers.

    I really need to organize my Dreamcast stuff better.

    It's all in nice plastic bins now but it's mixed up with other hardware stuff.

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  5. I recently got myself a couple of clear-coloured NTSC controllers from overseas. The red one looks awesome with a clear black VMU.

    I like mixing and matching. Orange logo NTSC controllers with the PAL system. Blue logo PAL controllers with the NTSC system.

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