We’re exactly three decades removed from the launch of the Sega Saturn in Japan, and one veteran developer is celebrating the milestone by sharing footage of a secret Fighters Megamix stage that’s gone undetected since the game debuted on the underappreciated console in 1996.
Fighters Megamix, just as a quick history lesson, is a crossover fighting game featuring characters from Sega games like Virtua Fighter, Fighting Vipers, Sonic the Fighters, and Virtua Cop. Most folks know it as the game that lets you beat up the iconic Sega AM2 palm tree logo as a car from Daytona USA. It’s a weird if surprisingly competent 3D fighting game that combined not only characters from separate franchises but their unique mechanics as well.
“When it was released, Fighters Megamix received a great response and was featured in almost every gaming magazine,” Megamix programmer Yutaka Ito posted to X (formerly Twitter) the evening of Nov. 21, according to translations by Automaton West. “But just as we were about to publicize 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.”
With no way to fix the bug — this was before the days of pushing updates to everyone who bought the game through the internet, of course — all the prepared info on how to access the Fighters Megamix stage was kept from being published and remained confidential for almost 30 years.
Ito, who now works at Like a Dragon developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and most recently acted as technical director on Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, admitted the whole fiasco was his fault and that he fell into a deep depression afterwards, though the support of the Fighters Megamix team helped him pull through.
“It’s the Sega Saturn’s 30th anniversary, so I’ve decided to reveal this for the first time,” Ito said. “The hidden stage of Fighters Megamix, called Ohshima Stage, appears when you meet certain conditions. However, if you destroy a wall in it, the game freezes. I will reflect on this for the rest of my life.”
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