SJ-200
Although the SG-1000 shipped with a controller wired permanently into its body, Sega’s system differed from Nintendo’s Famicom in that their console left a connector open for players to attach a second game pad or other input device rather than including two wired devices. Ostensibly a cost-saving measure, it had the pleasant side effect of allowing second players the option of which controller to use. In the beginning, those options were fairly limited, however, and most SG-1000 owners probably opted for the SJ-200, a detachable version of the standard hardwired controller. Same spongy buttons, same failure-prone stick contacts.
SJ-300
For those who preferred a more arcade-style experience at home, Sega naturally delivered with the bulbous SJ-300, a more traditional take on the joystick featuring a pair of buttons with considerably less travel than the mushy triggers built into the side of the SJ-200. The more responsive interface offered by this system offered a real advantage to younger siblings who were forever stuck in the P2 slot.
SH-400
Shipping well after the console itself—promotional material and packaging suggests it accompanied July 1984’s Safari Race, which would place it alongside the console’s soft relaunch via the SG-1000 II—the SH-400 represented a significant interface upgrade for fans of Sega’s racing line. While not precisely an analog wheel (not that the system’s racers really demanded such a thing), the SH-400 added an element of nuance to driving games that standard joysticks and joypads lacked. Since Sega’s SG-1000 racers accelerated with the up direction on the joystick, the gear shift lever works as a speed control by simulating up and down commands; this control scheme worked so well it carried over into advanced games like Super Hang-On.
BH-400
Functionally identical to the SH-400, the BH-400 simply replaces the steering wheel with a set of miniature motorcycle handles. The packaging gives away the message for this one: It shipped at the end of 1985 alongside Hang-On II. Sega even molded the controller body in the same bright red plastic as the revolutionary Hang-On ride-on cabinet. While a controller designed for a single racing game that arrived in a state of instant obsolescence (due to the arrival a few months later of the Mark III port of Hang-On) might seem an effort in futility, in fact the BH-400 like the SH-400 before it didn’t reach the end of its life when the SG-1000 rode off into the sunset. Sega racers continued to support it well into the Mark III/Master System era, and even some early Mega Drive titles could reportedly make use of this bold, tactile device.
SR-1000
What good is a computer if you can’t save anything you create on it? Sega offered SC-3000 owners two options for storing the fruits of their computing labor. A bulky diskette drive, the SF-7000, could load and record data via 3” disks similar to the ones Nintendo would use for its Famicom Disk System, but the price of that peripheral—¥79,800, loosely amounting to $800—made it nearly three times as expensive as the computer itself, a price that only mounted when you factored in the need for proprietary disk media. Coming in at an eighth of that price (¥9,800), the SR-1000 made for a more sensible way to save data and wrote to inexpensive standard cassette tapes. Granted, it also wrote data at about an eighth of the speed of a diskette…
SK-1100
Literally only one functional difference distinguished the SC-3000 from the SG-1000: The former included a keyboard and allowed players to use software based around text input. The SK-1100 narrowed the gap by attaching a keyboard to the SG-1000. While less elegant than the SC-3000’s all-in-one solution, it gave console owners an easy upgrade path that actually cost slightly less than the standalone computer.