This controller did not suck. It felt solid, the buttons were sweet... it was probably my favorite Genesis controller. Good for platformers where having shoulder buttons wasn't an issue.
The Capcom Soldier Pad! Yeah it looks weird, but it fit so well. Another solidly built 3rd party controller that rocked. Basically it was just cool looking AND comfortable, which went a long way for an avidly gaming 11 year old. It was quite empowering when used with fighting games. (Side note, you may have noticed the picture is the Super Famicom version, rest assured, the Genesis had one too)
The Power Plug was cool, at least on paper (or in the commercials). It let you have turbo or slow-mo with any controller you preferred. Also you could program button sequences or something like that. I don't remember having much success with it, but I was wicked stoked to get it.
The 32X!! Sigh. Well, we all know how that turned out. Some love it and some hate it, I don't miss having one either way. Sure it was a pretty gnarly accessory and I got it at the end of it's retail life so it was on sale and affordable for a kid, but it was not good times. Basically I had never seen or heard of RCA jacks, had no idea what they were for, and since I had never seen them you can be sure that the tv I was using didn't have them. So I thought I'd try to play it anyway. Needless to say, seeing only the status bar and a black square with sound effects wasn't the Doom experience I was looking for.
Sega Channel was freakin amazing. You probably know what it is (was) but in case you don't... Sega Channel broadcasted Genesis games TO YOUR TV(!)!!. Every month the list of 50(!) games changed up a bit and it was so freaking AWESOME!! Sega Channel was awesome. Browse, choose, download, play. Oh boy. The adapter was pretty cool too, it's always fun, as a kid, to plug something cool into something else that is cool so that you get 2 things becoming ONE resulting in something that is TWICE as cool, like Voltron! or Transformers! or Zords!
Ah, nostalgia
good times