Why did the genesis launch with the same amount of buttons as an NES controller?
Nintendo's willingness to experiment with controllers was a major benefit for the gaming industry.
Its main competition was the NES.It would be enough buttons to play pretty much anything during that generation if wasn't for fighting games.
>>12465023Why would you need more?
>>12465124why did the snes have 8
Both had too many buttons and history proves it.>Genesis’s top sellers only used *1* button>SNES’s top sellers all got ported to GBA, two fewer buttons, all worked fine
>>12465023I think the main reason was the Genesis/Mega-Drive was mainly an effort to bring Sega's arcade game home and most arcade games at the time used two or three buttons. Obviously this was not in Sega's favor as time went on and Fighting games grew popular>>12465089You could also make the argument for the PC-Engine/Turbografx-16
The most baffling decision in regard to Sega controllers is the start button on the console and not the controller of the master system Litteraly what were they thinking
>>12465162Japanese kids sat on the floor with their console right next to them. The pause button being on the system wasn't that odd of a concept given the time period and context.
>>12465202The pause (and select) buttons was used extensively on the NES and not just for pausing, 2 buttons is not enough and putting the start on the console is super impractical
>>12465162They didn’t want it to appear too similar to the Famicom controller. NEC, conversely, didn’t give about a fuck about that when they released the PC Engine.
>>12465023Why do Jeet trannie bot keep making the same old bait threads?
>>12465218>They didn’t want it to appear too similar to the Famicom controllerI'm not buying this, because it still looks too similar to the Famicom controller anyway.
>>12465213It's also a holdover from Sega's previous consoles, the SG-1000, SG-1000 II and Mark III.>>12465219It's a dedicated effort to make the board less interesting for the userbase so less people use it over time.
>>12465129Fighting games. SF2 World Warrior launched a year after the NTSC/UC console. Nintendo knew.
>>12465089>>12465149>>12465241Yeah the Genesis and the PC Engine were both trying to just be the NES with better graphics and more faithful versions of 2 button arcade games. Sega probably considered the one extra button future proofing. Nintendo was the one company that looked way ahead and saw what was going to be necessary. But they were the ones ahead of the game since their first console was the one everyone was trying to surpass or emulate, and the SNES came out after the other two so it naturally tried to one-up them. A less explicable question is how the FUCK the 3DO somehow got released without a six button default controller years after the SNES, especially considering Sega had to release a retroactive six button upgrade for the Genesis. If both major console manufacturers agreed six was necessary by that point, how the hell do you look at them, release a console more expensive than both combined that's supposed to be insanely more advanced, and take one button away? If you're going to have 5 why not just have 6? It will never make sense to me, but then again they released a $700 console with one game available so maybe they just had their heads up their asses the entire time.
>>12465023Excessive number of buttons is a major obstacle for a lot of modern games. If i have to keep track of twelve different combinations it takes away from the immersion and fun. The SNES controller was perfect - it let you do everything you needed and to this day most games that are serious about gameplay and a mass market use essentially the same controller pattern - a dpad, a start and select for accessing system options, four action buttons for the main game controls, and two shoulder buttons for less common/side activities.
>>12465202can any gooks confirm this? I know they sit on the floor to eat dinner but TV too?
>>12465354This was the same in America with the colecovision/atari 2600 type consoles.
>>12465162People back then generally had their consoles set up right next to them as they played.
>>12465023a combination of 8 buttons is one byte of input
>>12465407check out the big brains on Brad
>>12465408I wonder if the GBA also pulled that off because it has only A+B buttons but also has shoulders but you can't press left/right or up/down simultaneously on a d-pad
>>12465407It was a 16-bit console.16-bit registers handle 2 bytes (16 bits) better than they handle 1 byte (8 bits), as it will process the data as 2 bytes anyway and then it'll have the overhead of masking it into a 1 byte value.
>>12465457wasn't the Genesis not really 16-bit?
>>12465487You're thinking of the TurboGrafx
>>12465023Because Sega is nothing but a company that made bad decisions.
>>12465124>Why would you need more?
>>12465626>release a game that requires more>release a controller with more
>>12465354>>12465360What zoomers have to remember is that in the pre-VCR, pre-atari era the TV was a standalone thing. You didn't have entertainment cabinets and multi-shelf stands and the like because there wasn't anything going into your television besides the plug. It was actually not common to even have a stand at all. TVs themselves were pieces of furniture that were heavy as fuck and typically just sat on the floor. So yeah, when you plugged shit into your 200 pound zenith with wood trim that was a deep as it was wide you just set it on the floor because where the fuck else were you going to put it
>>12465626I feel bad for the poorfags who actually had to play the game like this. The Genesis held its own against the SNES for the most part and actually dabbed on Nintendo by having the non-gimped version of mortal Kombat but there was just no denying that it wasn't equipped for Street Fighter. Having each button pull double duty was such a terrible compromise
>>12465023>Why did the genesis launch with the same amount of buttons as an NES controller?Mega Drive launched in late 88 in Japan. Six button fighters were not a thing and pretty much every Arcade game made used 2 or 3 buttons. Jump, Attack and Special was usually all you needed and the Fighting game craze was almost 3 years away. Moving the mostly useless select to an action button would have been seen as a smart move, NEC was probably kicking themselves for not thinking of it for their PC Engine.The SNES having four buttons in a diamond layout was very forward thinking on its own but utilizing the top of the controller where your index fingers rest was revolutionary. Perhaps the extra two years of development time let them see which way the wind was blowing. Maybe they wanted a leg up on the competition. It worked out well.
>>12465089It's main competition was the PC Engine which used the exact same layout as the NES controller, so in that regard it was a definite improvement. It wasn't as innovative and groundbreaking as the SNES controller which is a historic, highly influential design. Nintendo has always put lots of thought into their controllers. Going back all the way to the FC/NES itself, the first modern controller.
>>12465689Kind of wild how they gave up on good controller design immediately after the SNES
>>12465129Forward-thinking.They designed an ergonomic controller for open-ended possibilities. And no it wasn't 'for fighting games'. Look at the way early games like F-Zero used the L+R bumpers.>>12465302Sega just moved the select button to the main action button area and renamed it to C. It was backward-focused, solving a simple problem ("select" is obsolete and never used for selecting, games just sometimes repurpose it for some utility).
>>12465702They didn't though. The N64 controller was something of a flop as a final design, BUT it introduced the small, on-controller analog stick as standard input for the console It's an essential feature for 3D gaming. The Playstation immediately responded with the dualshock, but relatively few PSX games were designed for it.
>>12465702the n64 was a good controller design and i’m tired of acting like it wasn’tit had a 6 button design like the genesis but had triggers and allowed you to play with either the analog or the dpad depending on what kind of game you were playingit was a very versatile design only held back by fucking morons
>>12465785Right. I think the N64 controller is overdesigned but you can tell they were trying.
>>12465023How am i supposed to select without a select button??
>>12465894Name one Genesis game that requires a select button
>>12465894Snes to genesis control adapteurs
>>12465302Not to mention the one controller port daisy chain madness. I would absolutely fuck with player 2 if I had the ability to unplug his shit mid match.
>>12465894to be fair even by the middle of the NES' lifespan you weren't using the select button to make selections.
>>12465629This. Back in 1988 Sega's made almost all of their money in the home arcades. The 3-button pad followed the same logic as their three button arcade cabinets. The 6-button pad was made because Capcom demanded it for their Street Fighter II Genesis/ MD arcade port. Though actually the first fighting game on the Genesis to support 6 buttons was actually Mortal Kombat II, due to delays with Street Fighter II SCE.
>>12465785>I’m not out of touch, it’s the consumers who are wrongYeah no
>>12465138>all worked fineexcept the fighting games
it was an 80s design, in fact the Mega Drive was originally going to have an add-on floppy drive
>>12467312I said the top sellers, not the hopeless games in 12th, 15th, 20th place
>>12465162Don't you mean... the Sega System? Haven't seen that guy in a while.
>>12468359currently being raped in hell by the floigan brothers poster
>TRIGGERTrigger buttons? As opposed to what? Some kind of switches?A-Trigger? Maybe it's meant like that?
>>12465626>>12465650Making Combos was a pain, my cousin and I we played SF2 on Genesis around and I gave him my 6 Button Controller while I had to use the regular one, doing combos was impossible, and no shitheass it's no "skill issue", and I can press buttons quick.
>>12468397I call them keys.
>>12465629This should still happen more often. When is the last time a fishing controller came out but I fell like all the retro consoles had one.Is it the costs? You'd imagine it'd be easier now to produce quality peripherals that could justify buying a game + the hardware.
>>12465673The first proto of the SNES was previewed in 89 and that one at first looked like it only had the front buttons but on closer inspection it had the shoulders already.
>>12466340The SNES ww port in that ad was taken from a high quality at the time monitor or rear projector with S-VIDEO, the crappy early outsourced Genny port was just a video and taken with the crappy RF module
>>12465023Pics like this just prove that Nintendo always won because their competitors just didn't have any braincells. Like Sega fans always talk about how the button layout is like that because "they're bringing the arcade experience home" with apparently no thought put into the fact that unlike arcade controls, you hold a joypad in your hands and that calls for a different layout.
>>12465824agreed. There was intent, it just came out in an unhinged way
