Quick update, I did locate one of these things a while back; in fact, it was thanks to Devilman who made me realize how I had to search for it (i.e. the Puchi Carat Limited Edition is the way to go). Ended up getting that for around $20 off eBay, which is well worth the price for the paddle alone.

Puchi Carat, as far as I've played (not that much), is pretty freakin' lame, unless there's more to it and something that I've missed. I have four other games that work with the paddle controller as well.

I've got Arkanoid 2000, which I got as a bootleg back in Ukraine in, well, 2000, and hadn't played it at all, but suddenly I could finally play the heck out of it, tons of fun. It works well with Super Breakout, obviously, from Arcade's Greatest Hits: Atari Collection 1; I had to tweak the analog sensitivity in the configuation menu a bit first. And it works like a real champ for both Cutie Q and Bomb Bee from the Japanese Namco Museum Vol. 2. By the way, I had a heck of a time getting that Bomb Bee code to work, the instructions are slightly vague. The key is to select Cutie Q and let it go through the motions of getting it started, then at the screen where the graphics are scrambled, that's when you quickly enter the code. (I was selecting Cutie Q at the start menu and then immediately entered the code and it never worked.)

Now my obsession has turned to trying to get a Sega Mark III paddle:




I just acquired Woody Pop for the SMS, which is on a MyCard so it will work on a U.S. SMS, but I definitely need the paddle controller (which I hope will work as well). I even took a long shot and hooked up my 2600 paddles, but no dice (any way to mod those so they would work?). I'm obsessed with Woody Pop, but can't play it properly without the paddle. No dice on Ebay; anyone have an extra they'd like to sell or trade? A good Japanese site that would have one for sale? I'm not too worried because when my fiancee returns from Europe (whenever that is), she can contact her network of otaku friends back home in Japan and hopefully score it for me. Still, I'd like to try to find one in the meantime.

The next step after that is trying to get the Mark III system itself so I can play the other Mark III paddle games, especially Megumi Rescue, which I played on my modded Xbox via the Meka emulator, and it was tons of fun. I actually didn't do too poorly using the analog Xbox controller, but the paddle would be the way to go. But one step at a time.