The Dreamcast, Sega’s last combatant in the console wars, was a beautiful failure – a forward-thinking machine arguably scuppered by company infighting and mismanagement, public fatigue after a spate of expensive Sega hardware releases, or simply being a year or two before its time.

© Vanamo Media / Evan Amos

Just one area where it pushed the boundaries was its controller – a hulking great lump with space for Jump Packs (or Rumble Paks, in Nintendo parlance) and VMUs or Visual Memory Units – a memory card with a built-in LCD screen offering a limited second screen experience long before Nintendo went down that road.

While hardly perfect, it was an iconic interface and Microsoft took inspiration from it when designing the face button configuration of its Xbox pad; needless to say, Sega's final video game controller continues to get retro enthusiast’s juices flowing to this day.

If you're one of those people, then you might be interested in the recently-launched Kickstarter campaign from Retro Fighters which looks to bring back the pad and correct some of the faults in its design, bringing it more in line with modern controllers while offering full compatibility with VMUs and accessories.

Alterations to the original design include some additional shoulder buttons, a better D-pad and the cord exiting the pad from the top instead of the bottom.

The company has previously produced accessories, including an updated N64 controller which smashed its target goal. The Next Gen Sega Dreamcast Controller has followed suit, sitting at a whopping 459% of its funding goal at the time of writing, with 27 days still remaining.

Stretch goals include some additional colour options, so there’s plenty of time to check out the campaign if you still boot up the ol’ Dreamcast on a regular basis.

Reckon you’ll pick up one of these or is this a blasphemous affront to the perfection of the Dreamcast pad? Let us know below…