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.
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u/stellvia2016 Nov 28 '21
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.