Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: JoeyJoeJo on February 13, 2011, 10:16:53 pm
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How many buttons should the 3rd and 4th player have? I've seen some with 4 and some with 7 (like 1 and 2). Are there any games that need more than 4 buttons (not including start, coin, etc)?
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To be honest, i went 8-8-4-4 buttons for players 1-2-3-4, and to be frank, i feel it's the best amount of buttons. I've come across tons of 4 player games that use 3 buttons (gauntlets, sports games), but i've never come across anything that i feel i'm missing buttons for. I emulate everything up to N64 (MarioKart64 and Super Smash Brothers) and dreamcast (gauntlet legends), and i just haven't come across any games that need more than 4 buttons for p3 and p4.
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That's what I thought. But I'm curious about your 8 button layout. What does it look like? The 7 button layout I had in mind looked something like this (hope it makes sense):
123
456
7
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Yeah if you are emulating just MAME, then definitely all you would need for players 3 and 4 is four buttons each. Like DillonFoulds said, I don't think there are any games in MAME where players 3/4 need more than that.
The only reason you would need more buttons for those would be for other consoles. That's going to vary on the games you intend to play. But like DillonFoulds also said, most of the 4 player console games also would only need a few buttons too.
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I used the Standard Japanese arcade layout (http://slagcoin.com/joystick/layout/sega1_l.png) from SlagCoin. Definitely refer to their layout page (http://slagcoin.com/joystick/layout.html) for more examples.
i went with:
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
for my first panel, but on my second panel, to be more console friendly, i'm going with
5 6 7 8
1 2 3 4
and using
5 6
1 2
for most of my consoles that use 2 or 4 buttons, and for 3 button consoles, i'll just use 1 2 3, or find layouts on the buttons that best match the controllers, starting with the bottom left button.
for example
N64:
Z R
A B
Dreamcast:
X Y
A B
To me, using the aforementioned layout provides the easiest conversion from console to arcade games. After using the 1234 on the top, it's easy get confused if you are often switching between consoles and arcade machines or even your front end.