Sega Virtua Stick for Sega Saturn

Summary

Virtua Fighter is an early fighting game developed by Sega’s AM2 studio. It appeared on Sega Model 1 arcade hardware in 1993 and was ported to the Sega Saturn in 1994. Around the same time, Sega released the Virtua Stick to give players an authentic arcade experience. This large controller has six standard buttons (A, B, C, X, Y, Z), left and right buttons, and an 8-way joystick, with adjustable rapid-fire controls. The controls follow an arcade layout, and the packaging calls it an “Arcade Joystick”.

There are several versions of the Virtua Stick. The first version comes from 1994 with the model number HSS-0104, is kept in grey/black and available internationally. The model number from the USA is 80112 and in Europe MK-80302. The second model, HSS-0136, was only available in Japan, is clearly more colorful, with a different layout of the buttons and reminds more of arcades. The Virtua Stick Pro for 40,000 yen (approx. 330 €) combines two HSS-0136 controllers in one device. Later, the controller will be released for the Dreamcast and PlayStation (Sega Virtua Stick High Grade), 2007 also flawed models, which were added to the game “Virtua Fighter 5” for the PS.