bigsocrates

#GuessTheGame #484

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#GameNavigator

https://GuessThe.Game/

Ridiculously easy by guessthegame standards. Whatever happened to providing a shot of some random texture or an element of UI to begin with?

This game is also underrated at this point.

@ben_h: Sony had weird ideas about the symbols on the controller. X and O as "cancel" and "accept" made sense but the triangle was "view" and the square was "menu" and only a handful of games did anything like that because of course most games actually need the face buttons.

I agree that it would have been better if Sony had just standardized across the West and Japan, but they didn't and the West won out because it's the bigger market and because of how much console development shifted here over time. I don't think it was Western developers ignoring Sony because with a few exceptions all the Japanese and even first party games we got here used X for accept and O for cancel.

There are some other differences between the controllers (such as gyro and Sony's continued insistence on including a touchpad nobody uses) but they are mostly the same.

I agree the Gamecube layout was smart, but it is only good for some kinds of games. It's great for Smash, horrible for Street Fighter. It made a lot of sense for Nintendo games but it's less versatile for more complex games where there is no "main" button. I think that's the primary reason it got left by the wayside. Nintendo moved on to the Wii (and the Wiimote was one of the worst controllers for standard games) and then with the Wii U decided they wanted to compete with other systems and went standard. Then with the Switch they needed symmetry between the Joycons so they had to go with a diamond. And it seems they're stuck that way as long as they want to make hybrid consoles.

You can get Switch controllers shaped like Gamecube controllers though. So at least we have that.

@zombiepie: I think we'll see some tweaks and have, such as the more widespread adoption of gyro aiming (to the point where even Microsoft uses it for Quake II on platforms that support it even though Xbox does not) and some game moving toward the obvious truth that the most common actions like "jump" belong on the shoulder buttons rather than in the diamond because you can press shoulder buttons at any time but can only use the diamond comfortably when not using the right stick.

But I think the flipside of this is that control schemes are getting more and more configurable over time, especially with pro controllers adding paddles into the mix, so there's less pressure to change the defaults since everyone can set the scheme they like.

And while it's not based on the controller per se, I think that Street Fighter VI's Modern controls may be a watershed moment in fighting games and get those developers to rethink whether the quarter circle and charge motions are really necessary at this point, since they are a barrier to entry and at the highest skill levels all the competitors have mastered them anyway.

I doubt we're moving away from the basic dual analog controller design any time soon though. It works well for so many types of games there's a reason it hasn't fundamentally changed since Sony introduced its dual analog controller in the late 90s.

@justin258: You're leaving out a key part of the history here. And that's Sony screwing everything up with its weird shape buttons. Not only did Sony not use letters but it also had DIFFERENT buttons for "accept" and "cancel" in Japan and the West. Apparently in Japan X made more sense as a cancel button while O made more sense for "accept" but in the West because we uses X to cross off boxes on forms to make our selection it was confusing so it got swapped. That meant that for most games the lowest button on the diamond was accept in the west while the rightmost button was cancel, and that was swapped in Japan.

THEN Nintendo made the N64, which did not have a standard diamond, and the PS1 was dominant in that generation, meaning that by the time Sega made the Dreamcast the actual standard in the West was bottom button accept, rightmost button cancel, and Sega followed that.

Further complicating things is the fact that in Japan text is read right to left while in the West it's left to right (depending on how you define the west.) That's also why the A button is all the way on the right in Nintendo controllers, which doesn't really make sense from a Western perspective. So if A is accept and B is cancel it makes sense that Microsoft, a Western company, would have their buttons configured left to right, and the A button thus on the bottom of the diamond, matching Sony's layout (which was dominant at the time with no actual competitors on the market, since N64, again, did not have a diamond) in the West.

So it's not really Sega's fault. They were following Sony. And Microsoft was following Sony and what made sense in the West. It was the right decision at the time, and Nintendo should have caved in the Gamecube era, when the Sony layout was REALLY dominant (and by that time Sony had standardized somewhat to using its Western layout even in Japan) but Nintendo is Nintendo so here we are.

ETA:

For the N64 the A button was the bottom button and the B button was shifted to the left and up so "bottom button is A/Accept" was totally standard across all systems at that point. It's also the lowest button on a Saturn pad.

And Gamecube controller's button layout is just weird, so "Microsoft should have followed the SNES even though everyone else in the industry including Nintendo was not" is a HOT TAKE!!!!

I don't even know what this means exactly. If you mean should Nintendo just give in to convention and swap their button labels and confirm/cancel buttons then...yes they should. But on the other hand Nintendo doesn't like to admit it is influenced by other trends in gaming (even though it obviously is in a lot of ways) and there are a lot of Nintendo only gamers who are used to their layout so I doubt it will happen.

If you mean should every system have the exact same controller then...no. I mean obviously you need the joycons for Switch portable mode and you need specialized controllers for VR and motion games. Additionally while I would prefer that Microsoft added gyro controls to their controllers and Sony had Microsoft style analog triggers it's good for there to be options.

I have a friend who gets a lot of hand pain from some controllers and not others and the Dualsense took time for me to adjust to. Having options isn't just a fun variety thing, it's an accessibility thing because not all controllers work with all hands.

#GuessTheGame #483

🎮 🟥 🟩 ⬜ ⬜ ⬜ ⬜

#GameNavigator

https://GuessThe.Game/

This game is seriously underrated.

@therealturk: Of course Mario's not just "wahoo" and "let's a go!!!" He also dreams about pasta!

I don't think this is about money because Nintendo is still paying Martinet to make appearances and has to pay a new voice actor so I'm not sure how much they could be saving. Presumably if Martinet was making huge amounts and is now making peanuts he wouldn't accept the job so I'd guess he was not making enormous money (though I'm sure he's comfortable) and they might be saving a little but probably not that much.

They might think that now is a good time to switch the voice up because of the influx of potential new fans or whatever but I just don't see what's driving the decision. Possibly a desire to decouple the character from Martinet, who will have to really retire at some point, but then leaving him as Mario ambassador is...a little strange.

Well the video is out (edited into my post above) and...uhhh...it sure feels like Martinet got pushed out but they're letting him hang around to do appearances and to minimize friction with the fanbase. No explanation whatsoever was given as to why the change was made, which feels really really weird. All they had to do was have Martinet say "I've decided to step down from voicing the characters in games but I love meeting you all so much I'll keep making appearances" and the fact that he didn't speaks volumes to me.

This feels...bad.

Not like so bad I'm going to raise a fuss or boycot the games or anything, which Martinet definitely isn't asking for, but it still feels bad. And...why?

The voice of Mario is iconic. Why make this change?

@cozmicaztaway: It's a great way to almost certainly get on a variety of "interesting" mailing lists!

@cozmicaztaway: Thanks for the kind words.

In theory an Amico with two controllers is more than a Switch and one with one controller is a bit less.

In reality the Amico costs nothing because the pre-order is free at this point (it used to be $100 with guaranteed refunds that were not all delivered) and the console will never come out.