Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

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SAM
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Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by SAM »

It just occours to me. The standard Arcade Control Setup put the joystick on the left side and buttons on the right side. But most people are right handed. By puting the joystick on the left hand side, the setup are forcing players to use their left hand to do the job which requires more delicated contol when compare to the buttons. :?
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To Far Away Times
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by To Far Away Times »

You could always try crosshanded if the joysticks and buttons are close enough together. Though I've found that makes it harder.

Kinda like a guitar, I guess. They are designed for right handed people (unless you get a lefty model), but the left hand does the more complicated stuff on the fret board as opposed to strumming with the right hand.
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dark
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by dark »

When did the conspiracy start? Seems like some 80s shmups allowed for either option, like Xevious with its duplicate buttons on either side of the joystick

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And the gravis gamepad and atari lynx each allowed for a switch to be flipped to allow for the dpad (and screen on the lynx) to be inverted and the device to be used upside down with the dpad on the right... though I have never heard of anyone in the history of the world preferring to play that way.
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by MathU »

Inputs that need to be mashed are best suited to the stronger dominant hand. Directional inputs, which are merely held down for comparatively longer periods of time, are fine handled by the weaker hand. I can't imagine trying to play a fighting game with complicated inputs like Guilty Gear XX with my hands reversed at any level of competency. I've always wondered if lefties are underrepresented in video games played at a high performance level.

What we should really address in this thread is the complete ineptitude among Japanese doujin PC game developers in mapping the default inputs to garbage like ZXCV and arrow keys so you have to control your hands in the reverse manner of every other standard input method. The worst part being when they provide no option whatsoever for remapping the inputs how the player wants (a basic standard in most PC games for a couple decades now). As I understand it, this situation arises because nearly everyone in Japan who actually plays games on a PC has a controller on hand to plug in, so the reason keyboard control is such an afterthought is because few ever actually have to deal with it. The Western PC game world moved on to WASD for movement in the '90s for a good reason.
Of course, that's just an opinion.
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by trap15 »

Came here to post basically what MathU said. Stick on left hand is infinitely more comfortable than the other way around.
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by drunkninja24 »

MathU wrote:As I understand it, this situation arises because nearly everyone in Japan who actually plays games on a PC has a controller on hand to plug in, so the reason keyboard control is such an afterthought is because few ever actually have to deal with it. The Western PC game world moved on to WASD for movement in the '90s for a good reason.
What's weirder to me is how many of them have continued to not implement newer standards for gamepads, most notably XInput, which most PC gamepads made within the past decade now support, they still only support barebones DInput with the D-Pad tied to an axis which makes using D-Pads on XInput based controllers difficult

Personally, when using keyboard, arrow key controls don't bother me for 2D games, but I've put a lot of time into old PC games from the pre-WASD era as well, so its strangely natural to me despite using the opposite hands for control
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by el_rika »

Does anyone else use stick with left (any genre), keyboard directions with left hand fingers (shmups) and right hand directional keys for fighting/platformers?

Can't do it comfortably any other way.
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by Jeneki »

Atari 2600 joystick was made to use your right hand on the stick, left thumb on the button. Could always wire one of those to your cab and try it out. :P
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by To Far Away Times »

kane wrote:
To Far Away Times wrote:You could always try crosshanded if the joysticks and buttons are close enough together. Though I've found that makes it harder.

Kinda like a guitar, I guess. They are designed for right handed people (unless you get a lefty model), but the left hand does the more complicated stuff on the fret board as opposed to strumming with the right hand.
I strongly disagree. Fretting hand is a robot; you teach it what to do and you're done, very mechanical, very straightforward. Right hand dictates sound, speed, and precision; it's often the bottleneck for all of these things and taking it out of the equation makes everything a breeze, e.g., tapping acrobatics at insane speeds are far easier than they look. The physiological and psychological complexity of right hand proficiency becomes more obvious with more technical styles, maybe not typical pop/rock strumming. (I'm a classically educated [oh the horrors of music school], technical metal playing deviant)
Interesting... I am not classically trained per say, but I feel like I put almost all my thought into my left hand, the right hand just matches up with the left automatically, more or less. Finger style does necessitate some thought on the right hand but I still feel like most of that is automatic (especially if the piece allows you to dedicate your thumb for the bottom three strings). I am mostly focused on pop and rock though (with some classical) so I don't have the widest range. I do wonder if the left hand is robotic because there is so much muscle memory already there.

I know some lefties end up playing right handed instruments. My brother learned bass that way and was taught by a teacher who did the same. Might be out of necessity though, finding a left handed bass in a music shop pre-online shopping would be rarer than finding a needle in a haystack.
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by Lethe »

On keyboard I usually end up playing 2D games with movement on the right and 3D games with it on the left. Don't know why, and I'm a lefty (but compromised, like most lefties). The factor of which way round you learn it is probably a lot more significant than any rationalizing of it. Plus in my experience it's totally possible to have both ways as long as the input method is different enough, e.g stick versus keyboard, because you'll need to reacquire the muscle memory when learning anyway. If standard sticks were the other way around I doubt it'd make much difference, your body's going to adapt to it anyway.
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by cave hermit »

I vaguely remember a Guru Larry video suggesting that having joysticks on the left side was part of a scheme to get more quarters pumping by making it harder for people to play effectively being right handed.

Can't say how accurate that is.
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by lazenby »

Apparently in Greece during the 80s and 90s the stick was on the right and buttons were on the left where the dominant hand was was used to input direction.
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by mikejmoffitt »

It's a logical jump to conclude that "right-handed == joystick should be in the right hand".

I would also take any console and PC-game focused "personality" with a lump of salt. Youtube personalities and general "game fans" have historically had really jank takes on the intents of the arcade industry's design choices.
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by FRO »

drunkninja24 wrote:
MathU wrote:Personally, when using keyboard, arrow key controls don't bother me for 2D games, but I've put a lot of time into old PC games from the pre-WASD era as well, so its strangely natural to me despite using the opposite hands for control
Same. I grew up playing shareware games, and computer games in general, using the arrow keys with my right hand, and action keys with my left. It never struck me as counter-intuitive as a kid, because there wasn't any choice in the matter. Similarly, the joysticks on my IBM PCjr were right hand, with the buttons on the left side of it. Same with my next door neighbor's Atari 2600 joysticks. Oddly enough, it didn't feel weird to me to switch to controlling something via my left had when playing on NES, or in the arcade. We just adapted to those changes, and rolled with it. As an adult, I'm more prone to trying to standardize on left-hand-control, right-hand-buttons, however. And more often, I'm trying to use an arcade stick on as much as I can.
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by SAM »

Other then the game contorl settings, nearly all early Arcade games have the screen placed in Tate position. But for human vision, it is more easy follow actions on a wide screen then a tall screen.
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by trap15 »

I don't think that's necessarily true. At least personally, I track vertical actions better than horizontal ones. Vision is larger horizontally but that doesn't necessarily translate to easier tracking.

Is this the shmupsforum pseudoscience thread now?
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by BIL »

More like CUMSPIRACY, how are you supposed to jack it to *~KAWAII ANIME GIRLZ~* ω´ with both hands on the controller? They obviously want you backed up to your eyeballs so you'll fork out them dakimakura bux :evil:

:shock: :idea:

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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by thegreathopper »

lazenby wrote:Apparently in Greece during the 80s and 90s the stick was on the right and buttons were on the left where the dominant hand was was used to input direction.
This is true, I went to a couple of arcades in Crete late 90,s and all the cabs controls were reversed... lots of NEO GEO games and I found it impossible to play any.

Sticks on right, buttons on left.
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by Jeneki »

Joystick with the left hand, HAH.

Joystick with the right hand, HAH.

Joystick with the middle hand, OMG YES!
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by MathU »

Do you operate that with your mouth, or...
Of course, that's just an opinion.
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by BIL »

MathU wrote:Do you operate that with your mouth, or...
GaijinPunch wrote:Someone PM me when we have to play w/ the stick up our asses.
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Re: Conspiracy in the Standard Arcade Control Setup

Post by Blacksheep »

Jeneki wrote:Joystick with the middle hand, OMG YES!
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