We’re exactly three decades away from the launch of the Sega Saturn in Japan, and one veteran developer is celebrating the milestone with share footage of a secret Fighters Megamix phase that has gone unnoticed since the game debuted on the underrated console in 1996.
Fighters Megamixjust like a quick history lesson, is a crossover fighting game featuring characters from sega games like Virtua fighter, Fighting Vipers, Sonic the FightersAnd Virtua Cop. Most people know it as the game where you can smash the iconic Sega AM2 palm tree logo as a car Daytona USA. It’s a weird but surprisingly competent 3D fighting game that not only combines characters from separate franchises, but also their unique mechanics.
“When it came out, Fighters Megamix received a great response and was featured in almost every gaming magazine,” Megamix programmer Yutaka Ito posted on X (formerly Twitter) on the evening of November 21, according to translations from Machine West. “But just as we were about to reveal information about the hidden stage, we discovered that breaking a wall in the stage or defeating an enemy with a powerful move would cause the game to freeze.”
Since there was no way to fix the bug – this was before the days of pushing updates to everyone who bought the game over the internet of course – all the prepared information on how to access the game Fighters Megamix phase was not published and remained confidential for almost 30 years.
Ito, who now works at Like a dragon developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and most recently served as technical director Like a dragon: infinite wealthadmitted that the entire fiasco was his fault and that he fell into a deep depression afterwards, despite the support of the Fighters Megamix team helped him get through it.
“It’s the 30th anniversary of the Sega Saturn, so I decided to reveal this for the first time,” Ito said. “The hidden phase of Fighters Megamixcalled Ohshima Stage, appears when you meet certain conditions. However, if you destroy a wall in it, the game will freeze. I will think about this for the rest of my life.”