I’m gonna be honest: I have a bad pack rat habit in my life. I often will buy things for the explicit purpose of blog material, no matter what it is. Games, plug and play devices, stuff like that. Controllers are no exception, I often tend to grab some oddball or promotional controllers, which was incredibly common in the 2000s during the PS2/Xbox/GameCube era.
I naturally saw this controller at a thrift store, and I couldn’t resist grabbing it. I guess you could say I pulled a Scorpion and grabbed it while saying “GET OVER HERE!” Okay, I didn’t actually do that, but humor me, will you?
This is a PlayStation 2 controller made by Nubytech to promote the then-new Mortal Kombat: Deception, the third installment of the more 3D era of Mortal Kombat, which took a few pages from its competitors like Virtua Fighter and added things like weapons for characters.
The 2000s-era Mortal Kombat games seem to be less fondly remembered than the original trilogy and the reboot era from Mortal Kombat 2011 onwards, which is a shame, because that’s when the series got really goofy. Loads of characters, the introduction of the Krypt for unlocking bonus goodies, even adding bonus games based of Puzzle Fighter and Mario Kart. I haven’t played them myself, but if there’s anything I can give Mortal Kombat credit for is having a glut of unlockable goodies.