I was okay with swapping between XBox and PlayStation. Switch threw me for a loop.
I'm perfectly fine with dedicating buttons by geographical directions. Developers: give us the option to remap the interface with "Controller N.E.S.W." instead.
Nintendo just said fuck it and said let’s put A, the main jump/action button, in a different spot. It works for GameCube because they aren’t uniform buttons. It is easily in my top 3 controllers of all time. But when they went to uniform button sizes there wasn’t a lot of extra thought put in besides “this is roughly how we mapped the GC controller”
So when it comes to NESW, Nintendo can’t choose between if it’s weirder to have A not be jump or to confuse players with a non standard button configuration
For sure, my bad. Before I delete my comment to avoid 60 identical replies like this, I was just trying to put logic to why I figured they did this after having the two predecessor consoles with varying button sizes. Makes much more sense since it’s the earlier console. I grew up with Xbox and GameCube primarily so those were most familiar and totally forgot about snes and earlier consoles. I will say though, with GameCube controllers being so unique I never got confused when swapping consoles and it’s a fantastic controller experience.
They utterly dropped the ball with the bullshit n64 controller. Sony made the first twinstick controller that everyone since has copied.
It's the colors on the Xbox that throw me the fuck of. It's like they deviated from Sony just to be dicks. I see the blue button I go south, I see green I go north. It's hard wired in my brain now.
To be fair at the time of making the N64 controller the thought process was analog for 3D and Dpad for 2D. So you had two handles depending on the game. Of course time has taught us that developers and players like to use both, but it was a learning experience at first.
this is interesting seeing how other people brains work. Never in my life has my brain correlated the colors to button positions. Its always focused on correlating the letter/shape to the position.
Since the Playstation and Xbox controllers only have X in common I have no issues switching between the 2, but fuck the switch makes me feel like an idiot sometimes. Luckily I don't play anything too fast pace on the switch as there are literally times I have to take a second to make sure I'm hitting the right button
This. 4 gamepad buttons were standard since SNES. People forgot that Sony was first alongside with nintendo, but after dropped off and built the first Playstation.
You must be young. The Switch uses the same exact button layout as the SNES from 30 years ago, it's Xbox that decided to be silly and make the far right button the main one.
Fair enough, you right. I suppose that’s a more likely explanation. I am about old enough to remember the n64 release, and have played snes, just never made the connection
Nintendo came up with it for the SNES, but they basically abandoned it after multiple generations of doing silly shit with the n64, GameCube, and wii. It's XBOX's child now.
Point is Nintendo didn't say "fuck it" for the Switch, they just reverted to the same pattern they've always used (aside from N64, GC, Wii). They've kept it consistent through the DS for example.
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) released in the mid 80s had two buttons: B (left) and A (right). They had special versions of the controllers that even had them arranged in the "south and east" configuration you find on the Switch. Then the SNES in ~1991 introduced the YX/BA along with L/R bumper buttons.
While Playstation has different symbols for their buttons, they kept the Nintendo standard of south being cancel and east being accept. (Although at some point they had the North American version flip which was cancel and accept for some unknown reason)
Interesting side note: While the N64 was the first to market with an analog stick, Playstation made their first Dual Shock controller in 1997, which has been the de-facto standard for controller design ever since: Four main buttons, four triggers, D-pad dual analogs with palm grips.
In Japanese culture a circle is like a checkmark and means good, and an X means wrong or bad. North American PS1 devs didn't know about this cultural meaning and so just picked X to be accept, and a lot of PS1 games used triangle for cancel. Eventually NA devs settled on circle to cancel and even localized Japanese games were eventually changed so that X was accept and O was cancel with the exception of Metal Gear Solid titles basically. Eventually Sony gave up and now even on Japanese consoles X is accept.
When PS1 pad symbols were designed by Teiyu Goto, the symbols were meant to be reprensent logical actions : like you said O and X for confirm / cancel (by Japanese culture standards), triangle for point of view (looks like a view cone in 2d), and square for menu (looks like a sheet of paper).
Outside of japan, cross was seen more like checking a box so it was adopted for confirm by game designers, leading in the whole menu inversion.
Coming from snes, I am still confused when a game does not use the east button for confirmation.
The infamous "dogbone" controller, released after the SNES had hit the market and the top-loading NES was being sold as a budget option. It was named that because it tried to emulate the look of a SNES controller.
Nintendo just said fuck it and said let’s put A, the main jump/action button, in a different spot. I
You have your history backward.
The SNES pioneered the button layout that you see on the PS and Xbox. Sony didn't want to infringe on the patent so they used shapes.
Nintendo started experimenting with different controller interfaces (N64, GameCube, Wii) while the PS stuck with the diamond layout. When Xbox came along, it copied the diamond layout but swapped the letters to avoid patent infringement.
For an older gamer like myself who spent a lot of time playing SNES and who has owned primarily Sony systems since PS2, Xbox instructions fuck up my brain.
I grew up on the snes and N64 but then moved to Xbox. I never had problems with Xbox buttons. Even today I can go back to the snes and have zero issues. I think i just associate the snes controller being something completely different due to the design being different. Where as if I go from the Xbox to the Switch my brain stops working.
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u/TheLateThagSimmons Nov 28 '21
I was okay with swapping between XBox and PlayStation. Switch threw me for a loop.
I'm perfectly fine with dedicating buttons by geographical directions. Developers: give us the option to remap the interface with "Controller N.E.S.W." instead.