I’ll never get over Nintendo’s decision to not have the button letters alphabetical like Xbox controllers do (or even just use shapes like Sony). Whenever I play on my Switch, the Y X buttons almost always throws me off, heh. I know Nintendo is Japanese and they tend to write from right to left, so I’m guessing that’s how it ended up like that initially.
Nintendo set the standard in 1990 with the SNES. Microsoft broke it in 2001 with the Xbox.
They set the standard with the NES in the 80’s. SNES was the second generation.
NES only has two buttons, but it did establish the “A on the right” norm. The SNES established the four-button diamond labeled A, B, X, and Y.
Ah that’s right. I forgot it was only a two button controller. I was just thinking about the A button.
Tbf hasn’t the ABXY layout of nintendo consoles been consistent since the snes days, predating xbox? Unless your argument is that you wish they flipped it for american consoles a long time ago or something.
Also that interpretation behind the ab/xy difference kinda blows my mind lol
Yeah, I don’t fault them for sticking to their original layouts. Maybe Xbox et all should have used numbers instead of letters. Or symbols, I really like the PlayStation’s symbols.
Even the NES was B to the left of A.
to be fair, nintendo set that standard before both microsoft and sony were even in the console gaming space.
How are they alphabetical?
Maybe you’re right on the Japan thing, I always thought it was about distance from your thumb. Like A is closest and most common, then B, and some games mostly only use those, and then X, Y, and Z are for menus or less common actions, and of them, x is closest to your thumb. Makes more sense on an N64 controller or GameCube controller, and then the switch controller is just keeping the letters as consistent as possible.
When going counter clockwise starting from the bottom, the Xbox controller reads: A, B, Y, X.
It’s not alphabetical unless you’re reading it like a lightning bolt for some reason. If alphabetical is what you want, a mixture of both would be ideal, making it: A, B, X, Y.
Besides, Microsoft are the ones that changed the layout, not Nintendo. The confusion when switching controllers is likely by design.
Besides, Microsoft are the ones that changed the layout, not Nintendo. The confusion when switching controllers is likely by design.
Sony also made their bottom button the default “confirm/execute” button and the side right button the “cancel/backout” button. It just feels more intuitive to me.
I’ve been gaming since the late 80s, so I understand Nintendo was the “first” of the current 3 hardware sellers. Doesn’t change the fact that they’re the outlier now. And it’s not like their controllers have even had the same layout more than once, the SNES and Switch being the only two to share a relatively similar button layout.
the SNES and Switch being the only two to share a relatively similar button layout.
And the Wii/U pro controllers. And Wii U tablet. And the DS and 3DS.
Holy fuck I’m not the only one. My partner and I watched The Last of Us and I wanted to play the game. He had it on his ps4, which I have never played. I made myself the same thing with the dumb ass square, circle, triangle, dodecahedron layout on the PS controller. He laughed at me too :C
deleted by creator
They learned on the MadCatz
Just to make controller layouts more confusing:
The PlayStation buttons were designed as:
⭕ = YES ❌ = NO
But Notth American gamers were used to these options being in the other position so the function the buttons were designed for is backwards on a lot of games.
Where did they get used to them being in the opposite position? Nintendo was using down button for no and right button for yes on the SNES, and Xbox wasn’t around yet.
To be fair, the commenter to whom you’re responding might have been engaging in hyperbole.
Maybe not. Just a theory. (But I was similarly confused)
As a guy who has been gaming for decades, don’t feel bad, I still look at the controller every time it says “Press X to do thing!” even thought I know by muscle memory what every button does, as soon as it references a button or keyboard key by name it’s like my brain just flows straight out my ears and I am suddenly an old grandma using technology for the first time, hunting and pecking for each lettered button.
Which X are we talking about? PS? Xbox? Nintendo? Where am I?
You know, the button.
This is why, if I ever develop a game, I won’t use the letters or symbols on the buttons. I’ll show a set of four buttons, with the one that needs pressed highlighted.
Ho do you confuse an X for a dodecahedron?
Chrono Trigger’s ZABIE was what solidified it for me
When I’m playing a complex game on the PC such as KSP or even something like Eve online I have tons of documents posted up to help me with navigating it.
Eve online sounds like real life simulator woth spaceships
Its cut throat corporate mixed with space battles.
Real life is EVE without space battles
Except for the the whole mortality thing.
I could use something like this - I use a ps3 controller on PC and lots of games show the Xbox buttons by default.
I can’t remember which game it was (something on the Switch, so maybe a Nintendo game) where the game itself told you which button to press by showing four circles on screen (e.g. next to the speech bubble) and only one of these circles is filled out, so instead of a letter, you know you have to press the right button or whatever… I really like this design choice because it’s so intuitive
Playing games on pc and getting xbox button hints while using a Playstation or Nintendo controller is a special kind of frustrating. Like anything else, you get used to it, but I think I would like the position based hints you describe a lot better.
Just remap the controller so the letters correspond to the right spot on the controller
Then thé controls become unintuitive. Press the button on the right to jump? Ludicrous.
Depends on the system and what you’re used to. I use an Xbox controller for dolphin and the first thing I did was unfuck the right joystick and map the GameCube ABXY onto the xbox’s corresponding buttons. For PlayStation I’d imagine you’d just map it to the buttons that are normally for specific actions. Eg X to jump instead of A on other controllers
I play some Nintendo games on my Steam Deck, and the only thing I have to rewire my brain around is navigating menus (confirm with B). I wouldn’t want to remap the buttons though, because then the in-game actions would feel unnatural.
PlayStation uses different icons though.
Fair enough, forgot PlayStation was like that!
Legend of Zelda?
Oh god, I want to experience this game for the first time again.
I got back into video games again during lockdowns and after leaving a very soul-crushing relationship. It was probably the perfect time in my life to experience BotW.
Have you ever played Shadow of the Collosus? If not, I think it’ll give a lot of the same vibes that you’re looking for.
Oh yes, I love Shadow of the Collosus and Ico! Played them as a child, and played Collosus during lockdowns as well. It really can use a control update, but otherwise the game holds up really well!
How would one go about playing it if they don’t have an Nintendo console?
You’ll have to pirate it, then use the Ryujinx emulator.
Or you can use CEMU to use the Wii U version of the game.
Ah cool thanks, with some news articles recently I wasn’t sure if there were still emulators available.
Yuzu got shit down but Ryujinx is still here
edit: I’m keeping the typo
You could probably still find a fork of yuzu, if that’s what you want.
Buy a switch?
I don’t spend a lot of time gaming. It would almost certainly be buying it to play just this game.
Also Nintendo are kind of ducks, so I don’t really want to give them any money.
You could buy a used Switch and install a modchip to play pirated games.
But yeah, not really worth it if you only want to play 1 specific game and already have a pc powerful enough for emulating it
You can also buy one of the older switch consoles from 2018 which are not patched and you can inject a payload via rcm mode.
I think it’s all the games, or at least most of them. It’s part of the system font. It’s at least any game that can be played with a single joy-con because the traditional layout doesn’t match the labels in that configuration.
The “by feel” of Nintendo buttons started on the SNES. X/Y were convex, A/B were concave.
Most Nintendo Switch games do this. I think part of why is you might be using a pair of Joy-cons or a Nintendo brand controller with the Nintendo ABXY layout, 3rd party controller with the Xbox ABXY layout, a sideways joycon with ABXY buttons but rotated 90 degrees including the labels, or a sideways joycon with unlabeled buttons.
There’s no way for the game to consistently the way your controller is labeled, but it can know which of the 4 buttons needs to be pressed based on location.
I don’t have this issue with playing PS and Nintendo games because PS wasn’t dickish enough to use ABXY in different positions like Microsoft. Everyone jokes about X being in all 3 layouts, but the PS one is actually called “cross” and doesn’t look like an X from a font, so I don’t get them mixed up.
Why does Nintendo use a backwards button layout?
I think the real answer was actually Japanese reading right to left, and applying that to alphabet buttons. What I find more interesting is the insistence that A must be the Accept button and B the back button; Nintendo games and OG Japanese games in general tend to use that layout, including PlayStation X and O (which to be fair makes even more sense for no/yes). US games afterwards flipped out, even for PlayStation games.
Really, Microsoft changing that up is genuinely evil to anyone already gaming, although I believe Sega also was left to right, but their three/six button layout doesn’t count. Not sure how they handled accept/back though.
Sega had the dreamcast with an “A on the bottom”, basic xbox style layout about 3 years before the xbox came out, as an extension of their genesis six button layout. With how friendly sega has been with microsoft historically, and especially the similarities between the classic “duke” controller and the dreamcast controller, the increasing focus on online play, I think maybe there’s a through-line from the classic sega button layout and the modern xbox button layout.
Sega controllers predate XBox by a lot and their layout was left to right (ABC/XYZ).
I believe because because they consider the outside buttons to be more natural to press first, then you work your way in.
Even starting with the NES controller, button A was primary and on the outside.
I’ve seen a video with the history of all of the button layouts
It’s a long enough video and just goes through the history of different layouts for different controllers and tries to reason why they are what they are.
Thank you! I’ll make sure to give it a watch.
I was thinking, “I need this for the first 2 hours every time I switch to/from a Nintendo game.”
Division between console camps. “No, mine is the right layout!” Frustration when switching, creating a soft lock in effect.
The real question is why they deviated from the GameCube controller layout. Throws me off all the time when learning a new Switch game. “Y is on top” is something deeply ingrained in me from those days.
…did…you not play on a GBA/DS? The Switch is the exact layout progression of those + extra sticks.
GBA only had A and B.
“Layout progression”
Oh, I see what you’re saying.
Correct, I did not. I’ve been a home console guy.
Real talk, I have never met someone who didn’t own a version of the DS. It was such a huge thing at school and being out and about, especially collecting street passes with friends/kids you’d just met.
Sorry if I came across as a dick. Just genuinely didn’t even consider someone might not have grown up with a Nintendo handheld of some sort lol.
You didn’t
I always assumed it’s because they are from Japan and there they have a lot of things right to left. For them it may seem natural to start at the right and go left.
The real answer is that nobody knows because nobody wrote it down.
The most likely reason is because the old game and watch was a single button where the A was on the original NES (famicom) and that was the primary button, then the secondary button, or B, was placed slightly inward where it was assumed it would be used less.
It thought of that but the old Sega controllers were ABC XYZ.
A better question would be why Microsoft went with a nonstandard layout when they designed the Xbox controller. Nintendo had been using the A-to-the-right layout since 1990.
Sega consoles used the ABC/XYZ left to right format. If you assume X and Y are axis, then X on the left (horizontal) and Y on the right (vertical) makes more sense than Nintendo’s Y on the horizontal and X on the vertical.
I’ve never figured out the reasoning.
I mean it kind of, instinctually makes some level of sense to me. With nintendo’s stuff, the A button is on the right, and the B button is on the left, so you’re reading it right to left, instead of left to right. Hence, the accompanying swap in X and Y.
Where do you feel Playstation is on this
They have funny shapes.
Playing with shape blocks without a care in the world
I wish I were them
Playstation still basically conforms to a on the right, since O is generally used as a “confirm” button, and X is generally used as a back out button. So, they fill the same role as the conventional layout, they just abstract it in a kind of more fun way.
Playstation games over the years have used X for confirm in many (western) regions. I’m not sure the origin of this but it was always that way growing up.
Circle was used in Japan. Localisations like Final Fantasy using circle were the exceptions to the rule (I guess it was too hard to change it?)
X being confirm for everybody is a relatively recent thing
Patents, probably. A needed % of deviation.
You must be trolling her the buttons are swapped!
No they’re not. The Nintendo button layout has A/B and X/Y swapped from the Xbox one, and she’s clearly playing Super Mario Oddysey
We realize that but the buttons are still wrong. Nintendo is wrong.
And they’ve been wrong for a long time.
Sony is actually also wrong. The OK button is the circle on the right. The Cancel button is the X at the bottom. In western games we just have the buttons swapped over. What’s on them no longer makes any sense, but we’re happy as long as the main button is OK.
This probably goes back to Japanese being written right to left in the dim and distant past.
Nintendo had already been using that layout for 11 years when the Xbox was released.
Well yk Nintendo was first with the x & y position, but Sega did x & y reversed to keep the alphabet order I assume (so a,b,c on the bottom and x,y,z on top row for the Sega Saturn controller) and then xbox copied the Dreamcast controller (i say copied but there might have been some sort of cooperation between the two ??). The rest is history.
Really it’s annoying to switch between the different layouts for sure, but Nintendo has just kept to their standards set since they did the SNES
I don’t even remember the last time I played Xbox, and I definitely spend majority of my time on Nintendo, but I still see Y as on top and A on bottom lol
Because it is objectively correct
Fun fact: XBOX, Playstation and Switch all have an “X” button. And it’s in a different position for each of them.
Is it just me or has someone gone through and down voted every single comment in here?
Edit: actually every Lemmy world post is showing all comments as having 0 points. Interesting.
There’s either a core contingent of professional haters, or there’s a single simple smarter-than-the-average Lemmy admin bot doing the downvoting, because I swear to god every post that’s on this site for more than a few hours gets at least one downvote.
Yeah everyone is just set to zero, no matter how innocuous the comment. So a bot makes sense
This is adorable.
As someone who mostly uses an xbox controller and occasionally uses a switch, I could use this too.
Happens to me too.
On steam, I have every controller that I might use mapped to the Xbox layout, just so that I don’t have to change my muscle memory.
Fr. That switch one pisses me off. I always press the button from Xbox instinctually.
Other way around for me. I was trained to use the Nintendo layout in 1991 and the Xbox one still annoys me since it’s what PC games usually use.
Yeah I never had Super Nintendo, had NES, 64, then switch, so by the time that button layout hit me, I was already used to Xbox. I also hate PlayStation as well. Shapes? What are we toddlers?
First thing I did on my steam deck was to change it to Nintendo layout haha
I got so sick of getting confused switching layouts that I went and got GameCube layout joycons for my switch. I really liked the wavebird controllers.
anytime I switch systems it takes too long to remember the 4 right thumb buttons
I stopped playing totk partially because I kept hitting the wrong buttons. But the Switch has a way to remap them so I used that and it was still confusing somehow lmao
There needs to be Mavis Beacon for consoles.
Mavis Beacon doesn’t even type 90
That’s because she was never a real person.
A name I haven’t heard in a long time
Between PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo and Nintendo again with the Gamecube, the X has been in all 4 cardinal positions.
Man, why did they not keep the Gamecube layout? That would help with memorizing, too, if the buttons actually felt different…
This is genius. I’m going to copy it
Was thinking the same thing. Suck it, stupid quick time events!
First off, genius and I don’t know why I never thought of this! So smart. So obvious.
Second, what game is she playing?
Looks like Mario Odyssey
It’s definitely Mario Odyssey. Also, I recommend it, it’s fantastic.
I’m repulsed by this and I’m not sure why.
