Linux 5.11 Will Play Nicely With The Sega Saturn Controllers Connected Via USB Adapter

For those fond of the Sega Saturn video game console controllers from the mid-90s, the Linux 5.11 kernel has a fix so a common USB adapter for them will behave nicely.

Raising eyebrows this morning was seeing in HID-next a commit mentioning HID: add support for Sega Saturn. What the heck is a kernel being released in 2021 doing with the Sega Saturn from more than two decades prior?

The commit is adding a USB HID quirk (HID_QUIRK_MULTI_INPUT) so that it's exposed to user-space in a consistent manner.

The Sega Saturn controllers aren't native USB interfaces but the commit is for a USB product ID of 0x3010. That corresponds to the Mayflash Sega Saturn Controller Adapter. This Sega Saturn USB controller adapter can still be found from the likes of Amazon (affiliate) for around $18 USD for connecting up to two controllers via USB.

The Linux 5.11 merge window will kick off in December while the stable release won't happen until early 2021. Besides this quirk in HID-next, a lot of other changes are building up for this kernel cycle.