Button layout .. Neo Geo MVS v AES, capcom...

[thomashenry]

Am putting a general purpose 2 player RPi cab togther for playing arcade games up to the mid 90s. The best thing to me seems to be 7 buttons, a row of four and a row of three, the row of 4 being used for almost everything,(including NeoGeo), with only 6-button Capcom games using the second row of 3 - and these games would ignore the 4th button in the other row.

The layout for Neo Geo MVS cabs and the original AES controller looks quite different - the AES is more or less an arc, and it looks to me as if it's intended to be used with thumb and first three fingers? The MVS looks more laid out for four fingers, without use of the thumb. How do you guys use them? I'm trying to decide the best place for the 4th button.

Do I put it to the right of the 6, meaning it is hit with the little finger ('pinky 'in USA I think?), or to the left of the 6, for the thumb?

     
 

[zestyphresh]

It was only when going through the controls/Colorado file on a machine I’m building that it became apparent that a lot of Neo Geo games don’t use the 4th button, so you may want to check the games you want to play before adding that 7th button.

[thomashenry]

It was only when going through the controls/Colorado file on a machine I’m building that it became apparent that a lot of Neo Geo games don’t use the 4th button, so you may want to check the games you want to play before adding that 7th button.

Lots don't, but pretty much all the fighting games do, and they are pretty important!

[Titchgamer]

Theres actually several different neo geo layouts!

In a nut shell they are:

in a row with A slightly lower
In a gentle arc
In a boxed Layout (2x2) Never seen it on a MVS cab but it has been used.

In regards to which layout you should use thats up to you, but my MAME cab still uses the 6 button layout, I never bothered with a 7th, Instead I have mine layed out like this:

234
1--

My layout has a slight curve to it so its quite comfortable to play that way

[keilmillerjr]

MVS had two different button layouts.

[Howard_Casto]

BITD we often did it like this

  456
  123
7

Two reasons behind this.  First off with that 4th neogeo button on the bottom row the joystick can be put closer to the buttons, saving some space.  Secondly you aren't going to want to use that weird neogeo button unless a game requires it, so make it the 7th button so less remapping is required.  These days I'd probably do it like this though:

4568
1237

With a bit of a curve to it.  The reason being that modern fighters may not require 8 buttons, but they are a hell of a lot easier to play if you have them... particularly games like Mortal Kombat 9/X/11