Bandai’s MEGA controller for NES. I remember seeing this huge brick of a controller in magazine ads and desperately wanting one. The presence of that LCD screen held the promise of all kinds of advanced features, and the thing was hilariously ugly as a bonus. I never got one, and thus I never really got around to finding out what any of those features were. They are, in fact, pretty advanced, and also kind of useless and/or freaky.

The MEGA controller has turbo, of course, and the ability to remember a series of button presses (in the pre-Street Fighter II days, this programmable feature was intended for remembering password entry!) It also has the ability to limit gameplay to a set amount of time, after which an alarm goes off and the game freezes! The “Arsenal mode” limits the number of presses of a certain button to a user-specified number, to simulate a limited supply of ammunition.

It also features a Game & Watch-style minigame! Bandai heard we liked games, so they put a game in our controller so we could play while we play! It also has a Shooting Watch mode, which I swear I didn’t know about when I decided to post about this thing. You can set the controller’s autofire to your own rate in the Shooting Watch mode!

The Famicom version, the Super Controller 2, came in a different, but still ugly, style with some extraneously plastic wrapped around the middle. Fun!

tags / nes / bandai / mega / jc / controller