Upside down controller

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Do you play SNES games with the controller upside down?

Yes, I usually play with the standard controller upside down (d-pad on the right; face buttons facing the ceiling) for all games and want this option in more games
0
No votes
I sometimes play with the standard controller upside down depending on the game (please elaborate)
0
No votes
I only play with the standard controller upside down for tricks and lols
2
10%
I play with a custom controller (please elaborate)
1
5%
No, I never play with the standard controller upside down and it doesn't sound fun
17
85%
 
Total votes: 20

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jeffythedragonslayer
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Upside down controller

Post by jeffythedragonslayer »

In Secret of Mana, if you open the Edit Ring menu and go to "Controller Edit," you can press L/R to change the "controller type." This rotates the image of the controller onscreen by 180 degrees, and inverts all directions of the control pad.

Are there really that many people who play the SNES with the controller upside down? (With the face buttons still facing the ceiling). Do any of you prefer playing like that, and do you expect this feature, or is it considered an idea that flopped? Are there other games that have this setting?
Last edited by jeffythedragonslayer on Tue Jul 19, 2022 1:01 am, edited 4 times in total.
turboxray
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Re: Upside down controller

Post by turboxray »

jeffythedragonslayer wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 9:03 pm In Secret of Mana, if you open the ring menu and go to "Controller Edit," you can press L/R to change the "controller type." This rotates the image of the controller onscreen by 180 degrees, and inverts all directions of the control pad.

Are there really that many people who play the SNES with the controller upside down? Do any of you prefer playing like that, and do you expect this feature, or is it considered an idea that flopped? Are there other games that have this setting?
I dunno. How many gamers are left handed?
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TmEE
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Re: Upside down controller

Post by TmEE »

I may be left handed but I never learned to play games etc. the "other" way (or computer mouse). If all games had this option things could be different...
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rainwarrior
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Re: Upside down controller

Post by rainwarrior »

I don't know of other SNES games with that setting, but the Gravis Gamepad for PCs in the 90s had a switch that did this, letting you use your right hand for the d-pad and left for the buttons. Worked with a large variety of DOS and Windows games.

There are similar controllers available today (and back then), though I don't think this option has ever been particularly popular.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Upside down controller

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

jeffythedragonslayer wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 9:03 pm In Secret of Mana, if you open the ring menu and go to "Controller Edit," you can press L/R to change the "controller type." This rotates the image of the controller onscreen by 180 degrees, and inverts all directions of the control pad.

Are there really that many people who play the SNES with the controller upside down? Do any of you prefer playing like that, and do you expect this feature, or is it considered an idea that flopped? Are there other games that have this setting?
Well that's rather unique. Gonna go look that up now. . . . :D

What I would say is that, while interesting and potentially useful for some people, it's sooo niche that I wouldn't personally bother adding it into any of my games, unless it's so trivial to implement [both in terms of programming and having to design whatever control screens to show it, etc] that it's something you could just add for a bit of fun, I guess. But, let's be honest, literally tens of millions of people played and loved SNES games for many years with the controller the right way up and it never came up as some major [or even minor] issue that needs to be solved. It's 2022 though, and people do like to make sure everyone is being heard and catered to in modern times, so that might be of consideration to some. Not me personally, but if it doesn't harm the game in anyway then no harm done. And, if you're not using the shoulder buttons, it does actually feel totally fine holding the controller that way around too (the SNES controller really is a little marvel).

I can't, off the top of my head, think of a reason why you might want to give it a go, what cool novel use it might have, but it would certainly be a small extra talking point if it were in your game though, assuming it actually got noticed (would need to make it far more obvious than it is in Secret of Mana imo).

Edit: I removed the left-handed references.
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Sun Jul 17, 2022 10:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
Pokun
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Re: Upside down controller

Post by Pokun »

I don't see why you think it's for left-handed players, it's supposed to be used by right-handed players not left-handed ones.

The original Sega Megadrive Control Pad is actually designed with this idea in mind so that it can be held upsidedown, but I don't think many Megadrive games actually supports it. Sega also released a right-handed joystick for Master System, so it seems they had an idea that this was something that was needed.

This is the same reason why many Atari joysticks have duplicate buttons left and right so that the joystick can be held in either hand. Early arcade games sometimes also had duplicate buttons on either side of the joystick (Circus Charlie comes to mind).

Supposedly market research in the arcades showed that most people (left- or right-handed doesn't seem to matter) tended to use the joystick in their left hand, so arcade game makers started adding buttons on the right side of the joystick only, like Donkey Kong does. Donkey Kong (and especially the Game & Watch version which has Nintendo's first d-pad) served as a model to the Famicom which popularized joypads with this design, joystick/d-pad to the left and buttons to the right.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Upside down controller

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Pokun wrote: Sun Jul 17, 2022 7:30 am I don't see why you think it's for left-handed players, it's supposed to be used by right-handed players not left-handed ones.

The original Sega Megadrive Control Pad is actually designed with this idea in mind so that it can be held upsidedown, but I don't think many Megadrive games actually supports it. Sega also released a right-handed joystick for Master System, so it seems they had an idea that this was something that was needed.

This is the same reason why many Atari joysticks have duplicate buttons left and right so that the joystick can be held in either hand. Early arcade games sometimes also had duplicate buttons on either side of the joystick (Circus Charlie comes to mind).

Supposedly market research in the arcades showed that most people (left- or right-handed doesn't seem to matter) tended to use the joystick in their left hand, so arcade game makers started adding buttons on the right side of the joystick only, like Donkey Kong does. Donkey Kong (and especially the Game & Watch version which has Nintendo's first d-pad) served as a model to the Famicom which popularized joypads with this design, joystick/d-pad to the left and buttons to the right.
Well, since you decided to question the conventional way of thinking about it (well, at least I thought it was, right up until now), and you used a couple of quite specific and interesting examples to do so; I decided to do a quick Google search using simply "left-handed controllers" to see what the masses would say on it, and it seems to show that most people consider the d-pad on the left and buttons on the right to be the right-handed design (hence why they're asking if left-handed controllers exist rather than if right-handed controllers exist):

https://www.google.com/search?q=left-ha ... nt=gws-wiz

So, I guess we could all call traditional controllers with the d-pad on the left and buttons on the right (and analogue sticks on both sides on modern controllers) left-handed going forward, but I'd personally prefer that we just continue with the convention, or at least what the Internet masses seem to have already agreed on (and I'm in their camp on this), and keep everything simple. It's going to make it a lot easier when I go online and try to do some research on controls and the like.

At least we don't have to think about what to call this:
QABlI9e.png
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Sun Jul 17, 2022 11:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Upside down controller

Post by rainwarrior »

I don't think a person's handedness is a very useful way to think about these. It's really just about user comfort and preference.

Atari's very popular and widely support/copied joysticks were initially designed as a right-hand stick, but lots of alternatives appeared on the market supporting either hand. Arcade cabinets varied in their stick position. PC games now still frequently have either or both of WASD and cursor-keys available as controls.

On consoles, at this point we have a lot of years of d-pad on the left hand that's established a norm. Not too many people think about the alternative, unless there is something that makes that configuration uncomfortable for them

30 years ago when Secret of Mana came out we'd barely had 1 generation of popular consoles with left-hand d-pad. Before NES (and concurrent with it) the Atari style right-hand stick was probably the most widely used and standardized controller type. I think there were a lot more users who had opinions about where the d-pad might go. Presumably somebody on the team for Mana was vocal about it.

Nowadays, we're on our 7th generation or so of left-hand d-pad consoles? I don't think many would think too much about it, and often these things can be solved at the system/OS level, or the minority of users who want a right-hand d-pad get their own special controllers. Personally I still think it's pretty nice of SoM to provide the option, even now, though probably very few people ever used it.
Last edited by rainwarrior on Sun Jul 17, 2022 9:03 am, edited 2 times in total.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Upside down controller

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

rainwarrior wrote: Sun Jul 17, 2022 8:52 am I don't think a person's handedness is a very useful way to think about these. It's really just about user comfort and preference.

Atari's very popular and widely support/copied joysticks were initially designed as a right-hand stick, but lots of alternatives appeared on the market supporting either hand. Arcade cabinets varied in their stick position. PC games now still frequently have either or both of WASD and cursor-keys available as controls.

On consoles, at this point we have a lot of years of d-pad on the left hand that's established a norm. Not too many people think about the alternative, unless there is something that makes that configuration uncomfortable for them

30 years ago when Secret of Mana came out we'd barely had 1 generation of popular consoles with left-hand d-pad. Before NES (and concurrent with it) the Atari style right-hand stick was probably the most widely used and standardized controller type. I think there were a lot more users who had opinions about where the d-pad might go. Presumably somebody on the team for Mana was vocal about it.

Nowadays I don't think many would think too much about it, and often these things can be solved at the system/OS level, or the minority of users who want a right-hand d-pad get their own special controllers. Personally I still think it's pretty nice of SoM to provide the option, even now, though probably very few people ever used it.
Probably true in 2022.

When did the Game & Watches with the d-pad on the left and buttons on the right come out? I think those were very popular at the time, and they basically started the whole d-pad on the left and buttons on the right, two-thumbs convention that pretty much all controllers have used since then.

Edit: 1982. And 43.4 million units sold. :shock:
Pokun
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Re: Upside down controller

Post by Pokun »

Yeah G&W was all the rage in Sweden too. Almost every kid (and possibly a good number of adults) had at least one.
When Nintendo made the Famicom they initially used a joystick, but someone wired up a Donkey Kong G&W to it as a controller and they noticed that it worked perfectly so they then designed a joypad like that to make it smaller and probably cheaper to produce.
Famicom initially had square rubber A- and B-buttons just like G&W games typically has (except they are round on G&W games).

Rainwarrior pretty much sums up what I wanted to say. There are no left-handed or right-handed controllers since generally everyone use and are comfortable with the same type of controllers. But the idea to use the joystick with your right hand was initially thought to be easiest for right-handed people (which is probably why the official Atari 2600 joysticks did so). Then market research showed differently, and Donkey Kong and Famicom went and popularized the other way.

As for the Nintendo 64 controller, those 3 types are not literary for left-handed and right-handed people, they are simply different ways to hold the controller to be able to reach different buttons that games can use. The controller is not symmetric so there is no way to do a reverse controller in most games (the all-important A- and B-buttons that most games uses would be missing). The Japanese names for the 3 types are Right Position, Left Position and Famicom Position, no handedness there.

OK I don't really know if Sega really thought their reverse controller was better for right-handed or left-handed people, I'm just assuming so for the same reason Atari's joysticks were like they were, and that Sega questioned Nintendo's standard with the Famicom (that they mimicked themselves with the Sega SG-1000 II and Mark III) and therefore released a reverse joystick.

The masses in your search results probably just assumes that a reverse controller is better for a left-handed person because most of them are right-handed themselves and logically assumes left-handed people would prefer everything in reverse, but it just happens to be wrong.

I am left-handed myself, and just like TmEE, I can't imagine using my inferior right hand for precise things like a joystick. It's better off doing mundane things like pressing the fire buttons, and let my much more dexterous left hand do movement. I'm quite bad at rapid firing in games though, and I suspect that is because my right hand is slower than the left one.
That's my reasoning around what's good for left-handed and right-handed, but apparently it isn't all true since right-handed people seems to be perfectly fine with the joystick to the left as well. Being handed in one particular way doesn't seem to be as simple as one hand is better at doing everything.
I can only say that a reverse controller is definitely useless to a left-handed player like me and TmEE, so doing controls for left-handed people is a flawed idea to begin with, based on incorrect assumptions.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Upside down controller

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

I guess none of us will ever be able to ask the developers of Secret of Mana directly, so none of us will ever truly know the actual truth of the matter and why they implemented such an option, but I would certainly now be very interested to discover why they did it. Maybe one day someone from the Secret of Mana team will come in here and provide the definitive answer. That would be cool.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Upside down controller

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

jeffythedragonslayer wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 9:03 pm In Secret of Mana, if you open the ring menu and go to "Controller Edit," you can press L/R to change the "controller type." This rotates the image of the controller onscreen by 180 degrees, and inverts all directions of the control pad.

Are there really that many people who play the SNES with the controller upside down? Do any of you prefer playing like that, and do you expect this feature, or is it considered an idea that flopped? Are there other games that have this setting?
To answer your questions directly based on what I personally believe to be the case:

1. No
2. No. No. Basically.
3. Don't know.

Does this forum do polls?

Might be interesting to use a poll and see if you think it's worth implementing based on the results.
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jeffythedragonslayer
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Re: Upside down controller

Post by jeffythedragonslayer »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun Jul 17, 2022 10:51 am
jeffythedragonslayer wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 9:03 pm In Secret of Mana, if you open the ring menu and go to "Controller Edit," you can press L/R to change the "controller type." This rotates the image of the controller onscreen by 180 degrees, and inverts all directions of the control pad.

Are there really that many people who play the SNES with the controller upside down? Do any of you prefer playing like that, and do you expect this feature, or is it considered an idea that flopped? Are there other games that have this setting?
To answer your questions directly based on what I personally believe to be the case:

1. No
2. No. No. Basically.
3. Don't know.

Does this forum do polls?

Might be interesting to use a poll and see if you think it's worth implementing based on the results.
Good point; I enabled a poll in the original post. This isn't the kind of thing that I think is hard to implement - I just am curious how people play because when I first saw this option in Secret of Mana about 10 years ago I thought it was pretty bizarre and wondered if it was a common way to control RPGs. I don't think "controller type" is a good name for this feature though because it sounds like the game is requiring you to go to a menu to setup a different kind of controller instead of detecting the hardware id code (https://problemkaputt.de/fullsnes.htm#s ... areidcodes). I think a better name is "controller orientation."
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Ben Boldt
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Re: Upside down controller

Post by Ben Boldt »

If anyone prefers an upside down controller, it wouldn’t be too hard to rewire it inside. Then you can just use the modified controller with any game you want.
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jeffythedragonslayer
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Re: Upside down controller

Post by jeffythedragonslayer »

Sure. Maybe Peebs has seen this in other games. I see nothing about this on pages 8, 9, or 34 of the manual:

https://archive.org/details/secret-of-m ... 2/mode/2up
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