There are rumors flying around lately about new consoles coming to VC, and one of the ones I'm more excited about personally is the Saturn, since it's one of the few consoles I've never actually played.

But thinking about it, there's a problem.  Saturn has six face buttons.  GC and Classic Controllers each only have four.

Can anybody think of a way to transfer Saturn games to the Wii while keeping a manageable control scheme?

I guess you never picked up an N64 controller. 

If they did it, they'd probablly have you use the shoulder buttons also (Did saturn have thos?) or the Z1 and 2 buttons.

Off Topic: I don't think that this is one because it was CD based and it'd take up a lot more space, then say, a N64 game. But I could be wrong.

There's a bigger problem than that: how big saturn games were. Ninty's console just have 512MB of onboard memory and there's no way that a Saturn game can fit into it.
Not unless they provide an external HDD.

You say that there are 6 face buttons on the Saturn controller, but I don't remember having any shoulder buttons, so GC and Classic controller will be just fine since they have each 4 face buttons + 2 shoulder buttons, making a total of six.

C-stick replaced the C buttons... honestly I haven't Virtual Console'd any N64 games that used the C buttons yet, though, but my assumption would be that C-button functions moved to the C stick. OoT-type GC controls just wouldn't work for every game.

Well, games on the Playstation and Saturn didn't use much of the CD's storage space for the actual game assets and most of the storage space was used on uncompressed video and audio. Now it is theoritically possible to modify games so that you could take advantage of DivX and MP3 but that would (probably) require some effort from the companies who initially developed the game.

The Classic controller doesn't seem to be best for N64 games. But anyway, Classic has 6 (7 if you count in Home-button) face buttons, 4 shoulder buttons, D-pad and 2 analog sticks. GC controller has 5 face buttons, 3 shoulder buttons, D-pad and 2 analog sticks. So i don't think the problem will be in the number of buttons, but how they are used, is a different matter.

Regarding the file size, the amount of memory required depends highly on how much the Saturn games can be compressed. The Saturn disc held about 600MB of data (if i recall), but i don't know how the data was compressed. N64 games could have had 10:1 compression ratio, but i don't know about Saturn. So, assuming the games can be compressed to 1/3 of the original data size, it takes "only" 200MB per disc, but i would assume that the compressed data size could be closer to 100MB than 200. Edit: @Happy Squrriel: Or another compression method, since they existed even then. You should keep in mind that neither Saturn or PSX were powerful enough to decompress video or audio real time. Anyway, i find DivX unlikely, since you need to pay for it. I don't think the effort for videos would be a problem, since you need to modify the games anyway.

Saturn games can be stored on the internal memory of the Wii. NeoGeo is already bringing their CD games to the virtual console. Back during the N64/PSX era, Resident Evil 2 was released on two CDs for the PlayStation. Capcom was able to compress Resident Evil 2 for the N64 into a single 64mb cartridge.

Compression Technology has developed greatly from that time period. Therefore Saturn games could be on the VC. Whether they are or are not depends of Sega/Sammy.

Compression technology could certainly get the filesize down but may not work with some games.

Could happen and I hope it does!!

 Even if that and what bdbdbd says is correct (compressing games to 100MB), the storage space that the Wii has is less than enough to keep 3-4 games at once erasing or transferring to SD all the rest.

Let's face it: if another console, such as Saturn, comes to VC, NIntendo need to put some more space onto the Wii with a HDD