Lefties only!!

Awful, awful, awful. The button placement kills it even worse. I don't even understand how anyone could come up with that button layout. I mean he obviously custom built that giant panel to graft onto that classic cabinet, which means he had to wire it up and in learning how to do so he must have seen pictures of other machines, yet somehow he came up with that!

Yet, I am always the jerk on the BYOAC forums when some prospective builder who hasn't touched a real arcade game since they were 14 posts an idiotic layout and I try to persuade them that it is a bad idea.

Lefty controls = bad idea. (Right handed or ambidextrous, even if YOU are left handed).

Creative button layouts = bad idea (the standard Streetfighter layout is what you want).

Ergonomic button layouts = bad idea (lots of people translate the teeny curve layout on japanese cabinets into a massive half rainbow of buttons).

Tron support = bad idea. (The Tron panel puts the controls in the "wrong hands" and that really hurts your ability to play anything else, particularly important since Tron is 10 percent gameplay, 40 percent blacklight art and 50 percent nostalgia about the movie).

Angling your joysticks in any manner = bad idea (and I don't care if a half dozen games that BOMBED did this, it is wrong).
 
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I'm left handed. Being left handed, in general, has nothing to do with button layout. Since you 'learn' how to play games, it's just as easy to learn to play it right handed as it is left handed.

Why anybody (even left handed people) would put all the buttons backwards is beyond me.
 
I'm left handed and wouldn't think of holding onto the joystick with my right hand and pressing the buttons with my left.

I never understood it. To me, most games are set up for left handed people.
Play with your left and press the buttons with your right...except for Tron, Tempest, Centipede etc with the button on the left side.

I eat, throw, write, punch and yes, control the joystick on a game with my LEFT hand because I'm left handed and it's the hand with the coordination needeed for control.... and I push the jump button on my donkey kong with my right....

Don't you right handers hate that setup?
It's perfect for left handed people....
 
I'm left handed and wouldn't think of holding onto the joystick with my right hand and pressing the buttons with my left.

I never understood it. To me, most games are set up for left handed people.
Play with your left and press the buttons with your right...except for Tron, Tempest, Centipede etc with the button on the left side.

I eat, throw, write, punch and yes, control the joystick on a game with my LEFT hand because I'm left handed and it's the hand with the coordination needeed for control.... and I push the jump button on my donkey kong with my right....

Don't you right handers hate that setup?
It's perfect for left handed people....


This is what I always find funny when this discussion comes up. People think joystick on left, buttons on right is a right handed set up but in actuallity it is a left handed set up. Directional controls are more important and require greater hand eye coordination than button pushes.
 
Have these morons who put together shit like this NEVER played a REAL arcade machine before? Raise your hand if you've EVER seen a SINGLE original cabinet that featured 6 buttons... in a 2 column format... on the LEFT side of the sticks? Hell... show me an original cabinet with that button layout on the RIGHT side even.

This guy is a moron.... and he's an even bigger idiot if he thinks he's going to pull anything NEAR what he's asking.

I'd charge $100 to take that thing away.
 
I'm left handed and wouldn't think of holding onto the joystick with my right hand and pressing the buttons with my left.

I never understood it. To me, most games are set up for left handed people.
Play with your left and press the buttons with your right...except for Tron, Tempest, Centipede etc with the button on the left side.

Agree, As a left hander, I like how game are laid out already. I have never had a problem with it. Including Tron, Centipede and Tempest. No problems there either.

It goes back to the Atari 2600 days, I trained on the 2600 joystick for hours and weeks and months and years. It has stick with me since.. Don't know if that made any sense.

Steve
 
I'm embarrassed to be a Canadian I'm hoping it was some kid that put that together, than we can go with ignorance instead of what the hell were you thinking with that layout.
 
As a left hander I sometimes wish Tron, Satans Hollow, Centipede were reversed...but would never want one like that, it's just not 'correct'. Actually scratch that, I want a LH Centipede dammit!
 
Tron is actually just the wrong way around period. Satan's Hollow is ambidextrous, or at least the last 2 machines I played were.

Right handed people have a terrible time operating controls like spinners and trackballs with their left hand. Go ahead and stick your mouse on the wrong side and see how well you do with it. Lefties are much better at using their off hand for things like that because they grew up in a right handed world. My left handed wife uses mouse on the the right just like I do.

I tend to play maze titles that have ambidextrous controls with my right hand on the stick, but the stick goes in the left hand for just about everything else.

So, are there any dualjoy games out there that are reversed from Robotron?
 
I'm ambidextrous but my mouse is on the left side. I wish the buttons on it were reversed.
 
Im a lefty, and i have a cabinet with the buttons on either side. I learned how to play with them on the right, so thats how i play. Being a lefty doesnt completely changes everything, seeing as a play a normal guitar, and shoot bow with a right handed bow (but i can shoot either way). I also can play hockey, golf, and baseball(not very well) with either hand
 
I'm left handed. Being left handed, in general, has nothing to do with button layout. Since you 'learn' how to play games, it's just as easy to learn to play it right handed as it is left handed.

Why anybody (even left handed people) would put all the buttons backwards is beyond me.

I agree here. As a lefty as well I have grown accustomed to the "righty" style of button layout. Imagining playing on this feels so awkward.
 
ugh. I hate lefty controls. My JAMMA cabinet has lefty controls thanks to the moron who converted it so many years ago. Nothing like pounding 'fire' on a shooter with a hand that you're not used to using like that.
 
This is what I always find funny when this discussion comes up. People think joystick on left, buttons on right is a right handed set up but in actuallity it is a left handed set up. Directional controls are more important and require greater hand eye coordination than button pushes.

I agree in theory, but your PS3 and Xbox gamepads have you generally doing motion with your left thumb and buttons with the right. Interestingly though, Atari 2600 - most of my friends and me used the stick with the right hand and button with the left; in fact the stick is geared toward that model, but Nintendo came out with the first game pad in the reverse configuration. Which! seems to agree with many arcade games that came before the NES!
 
The Atari 2600 stick predates the stick on left convention and is also only a single button stick. No one had really decided which side the stick went on yet.

Your left hand may not be able to pilot a stick quite as well as your right hand, but your right hand can pick out those complex button layouts a LOT better than your left hand can.

That is why you want your finest detail control in your right hand. That is why trackball games generally have buttons pressed with your left hand and joystick games with lots of buttons always put the buttons on the right. A few games messed this up (Tron in particular).
 
I've seen some creative vertical SF2 button layouts by lazy ops, but the sticks on the left side take the prize. What I am curious about is what he was trying to save room for laying it out like this.
 
I agree in theory, but your PS3 and Xbox gamepads have you generally doing motion with your left thumb and buttons with the right. Interestingly though, Atari 2600 - most of my friends and me used the stick with the right hand and button with the left; in fact the stick is geared toward that model, but Nintendo came out with the first game pad in the reverse configuration. Which! seems to agree with many arcade games that came before the NES!


The Japanese always did it backwards. I am not familiar enough with their culture to know why, but in my opinion it was their influence that ended up making the standard backwards.


As for modern gaming, the standard is now set. I would not expect to ever find a directional control on the left side again. People have been trained for 30+ years to do it backwards and breaking that is not very likely to happen.
 
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