8 buttons vs 6 buttons

[fantoboy]

Making a cp for a cabinet, I want a Street Fighter layout.  It will be for both Xbox 360 and pc.  My gut says go with 6 buttons.  But there's the 360 as well as console emulators.  For those of you who have cabinets, do you find that you need the 8 buttons?  Did you build a 6 button layout and find yourself needing the 8?  Or did you build an 8 button and never actually use the last two?

[tony.silveira]

me personally i did 8, for two reasons, first is the vectrex, my fave system.  second i think 8 symmetrical buttons helps with console emu's.  here is my layout:

1   2   3   4
5   6   7   8

take snes for instance.  i map my buttons 2,3,6,7 to the snes face buttons.  then i map the shoulder buttons to 1 and 4

playstation, same thing, face buttons to 2,3,6,7, shoulder buttons to 1,4 and 5,8

[fantoboy]

Yeah, I know some consoles can use 8.  Do you actually find yourself using all 8 a lot?  I was wondering if most games that I'd be playing at a cabinet like fighting games would only use 6 or less even though the system has more than 6 buttons.

[tony.silveira]

heck, most games i play are probably 3 buttons or less but it doesn't hurt to have the ability to play more.

[fantoboy]

Yeah- that's my point.  I know all buttons CAN be utilized, but do you actually use them? SNES can be done on a 6 button layout with no problem.  So there's PSone, N64, and xbox/360.  When playing those, do you find the 8 buttons necessary?  I doubt I'll be playing many RPGs and games like that on the cabinet.  Mostly action like fighters, shooters, and beat em ups.  So I'm thinking 8 won't be necessary. 

[paigeoliver]

I find that nearly everything newer than the SNES wants analog controls and often has the buttons set up in a way that doesn't map very well to a bank of arcade buttons.

All those shoulder buttons are particularly tricky (even on SNES) because in many games they have a directional aspect to their function, such as the left shoulder making tony hawk rotate left and the right one making him rotate to the right. Or dodge left, dodge right or any other intuitive directional thing that is lost on basically any control panel layout.

I also think you might find that once you get into the X-box/360 era that most games that aren't classic ports or 2d fighters use every button on the controller, along with all 3 sticks and even when they don't it is unpredictable which ones they don't use. So if you want to support x-box 360 stuff then you are going to need a pretty complicated panel.

Basically I have found the newer consoles aren't worth trying to support unless you are just trying to support a single must have title.

Yeah- that's my point.  I know all buttons CAN be utilized, but do you actually use them? SNES can be done on a 6 button layout with no problem.  So there's PSone, N64, and xbox/360.  When playing those, do you find the 8 buttons necessary?  I doubt I'll be playing many RPGs and games like that on the cabinet.  Mostly action like fighters, shooters, and beat em ups.  So I'm thinking 8 won't be necessary. 

[nick3092]

Yeah- that's my point.  I know all buttons CAN be utilized, but do you actually use them? SNES can be done on a 6 button layout with no problem.  So there's PSone, N64, and xbox/360.  When playing those, do you find the 8 buttons necessary?  I doubt I'll be playing many RPGs and games like that on the cabinet.  Mostly action like fighters, shooters, and beat em ups.  So I'm thinking 8 won't be necessary. 

Generally newer consoles like the one you mentioned are not cp friendly due to analog sticks and specific layouts. You are better off getting a USB adaptor for the original controller.

[fantoboy]

I'm probably going to be using a 360 hack so I can use the CP on a 360 or PC.  I'll probably end up mostly playing cabinet friendly games like SFxTekken and Pac-Man championship on the 360.  I'm 80% sure that I'm going to be doing a 6-button layout to keep it less cluttered.  I really just wanted to see what everyone's experiences have been, or if there's obvious console games that are cabinet friendly and require more than 6 buttons.

[CoryBee]

I prefer the 6 Button setup but my friend wanted his bartop to have 8, only use is for N64 in my opinion.



When I made his bartop docking station I only used 6 buttons because it was mainly for fighting games and things like Mario Kart\Mario Party

[shponglefan]

I have a controller w/ 8 buttons I built for SF IV, but don't think I've ever really used the extra 2 buttons.  Personally, I like the 7 button Capcom/NEO GEO hybrid layout the best.

[StriderDSO]

My cab has 8 buttons for both P1 and P2, and I mainly use it for SF games. For the old classics/arcade games, or Genesis ones, the 6 are all I need. But I love having the extra two buttons for SFIV AE for throw/charged hit. I also find them useful for SFxT.

[Yenome]

I would say most console games that you can play with arcade controls are only going to use 6 buttons anyway. it is my experience that once past snes most all cabinet friendly games use 6 buttons at most. even MK on the ps3 and xbox360 only uses 6 buttons. least it only listed 6 when i checked the controls. Personally for my first scratch built cab im going with the hybrid setup. take the layout cory had drop the last button on the top row and you will have a nice neogeo/capcom hybrid layout. It is so far my fav on having tried pretty much all other layouts for multi games.

[dekar24k]

I have 6 buttons on my cab and I rarely use more than 3. I don't play a lot of vs fighting games and I use my cab for MAME only now, as I play console emulators on other systems.

[capsule]

But I love having the extra two buttons for SFIV AE for throw/charged hit.

Which is funny because the real SF IV cab only has 6 buttons  

[lanman31337]

I did...

 7  start

1  2  3
4  5  6

So I could do SNES/Genesis/Dreamcast as well

[Mysterioii]

My current CP has 6 buttons per player but I'm planning to rebuild it, and I'm really tempted to put 8 buttons per player on there just because I used to play the heck out of imported japanese fighting games on a modded Saturn and it might be nice to be able to hit the shoulder buttons on there....  (Although I think in a lot of cases of those fighting games the shoulder buttons were just mapped to combinations of the regular buttons to make it easier to pull off some special moves).