SNES button layout

[jcroach]

How have people on the board mapped their arcade buttons to the SNES buttons?

I see the capcom fighter stick was laid out like this:
L X R
Y B A

I've seen another arcade stick laid out like this:

L

[jcroach]

Bump... anyone help me out?

[SOAPboy]

Yours makes sense to me.. seeing as R and L are always Fierce

[jcroach]

Yours makes sense to me.. seeing as R and L are always Fierce

Which game are you refering to? Street Fighter type games?

[SOAPboy]

Yours makes sense to me.. seeing as R and L are always Fierce

Which game are you refering to? Street Fighter type games?

Sir yes Sir..

only games i can think of that might be weird is the MK games having block and run on the right side..

[owenowen]

I've been thinking about this for my cabinet too, and one of the ideas i've been tossin around for my dreamcast cab is something like this


(knocked up quickly in paint so it's a little out of whack)

what i was thinking is the buttons are still in the right place and the left and right are still on the left and right. I havent built a mock up or anything yet but i reckon its the way ill be heading.

[pmc]

I've played with that idea too. Check for historic threads where that's been discussed.

In the end, my feeling is that keeping that diamond button shape leaves you with too steep an angle for any other (MAME) game that uses six buttons in two rows. You'd have to have your elbow cocked 45-degrees to the side to play a six-button game.

I gave up trying and went with a slight angle of two rows like most cabinets have. The diamond shape is not there, but for most games that play well on cabinets, the N, S, E, and W button layout is not hugely critical. If it is, I go back to a true controller.

Of course, if your CP is 100% for a console, set the buttons up just on the console controller!

-pmc

[elvis]

How have people on the board mapped their arcade buttons to the SNES buttons?

I see the capcom fighter stick was laid out like this:
L X R
Y B A

I have an old HES "Tank" joystick, and the buttons on it where laid out as above.  See pictures of it here:
http://pcdb.overclockers.com.au/view.php?name=elvis_mame&page=pics

The unit has since been gutted and modded with a PC USB gamepad.

This one makes more intuitive sense to me
X Y L
B A R

That doesn't make sense.  If you want to go that sort of style, you'd use:

Y X L
B A R

(ie: swap the X and the Y from yours above).  Remember that Nintendo always put their button labels "backwards".  ie: B before A, and also Y before X.

That was the default key config for SF2 on SNES too.

[Minwah]

Y X L
B A R

I'd agree with this one, but I'm open to suggestions also as I haven't setup my SNES emulator properly yet...just thinking of making a 'this button does what' instruction card.

Edit: I mis-quoted the layout I intended before.

[RayB]

THe way I thought about it was this: In most properly configured SNES games, (ie: Super Mario World) I checked which buttons I would need to hold down at the same time. For example, there is the RUN and JUMP which are used in combination. On a pad, you use the same thumb to control both buttons.

I set up the arcade button layout so that RUN and JUMP could be used with my index and middle fingers intuitively. Then I layed out the rest of the buttons around that in a way that didn't break the SNES button layout too much. I off-set the top 3 buttons and bottom 3 buttons so that they were staggered. L and R were the first buttons on each row, but because of the off-set positions, L was more to the left than R was, so it still made sense as "left" and "right" and also worked great in games like SF2 since you can reprogram the buttons in that game.

In other words: Y is run and B is jump so my layout was like the diagram attached (note how off-setting the top row essentiually re-creates a diamond button configuration just like on the gamepad, but rotated)

[elvis]

Y X L
B A R

I'd agree with this one, but I'm open to suggestions also as I haven't setup my SNES emulator properly yet...just thinking of making a 'this button does what' instruction card.

Edit: I mis-quoted the layout I intended before.

It depends on what you play.

If all you care about is fighters, it doesn't matter so much.  But for many games L and R actually where there for left and right scroll or rotation.  Eg: Contra III ("Super Probotector" for the PAL version) needed them for rotation in the overhead levels.  Likewise some platformers (Super Mario World / "Mario 4") used them to scroll the screen about, and driving/flying games (Rock'n'Roll Racing, Starwing/Starfox) to add extra turn or roll to driving games.

So if they are on your list, I'd consider the...

L X R
Y B A

...approach if you absolutely *MUST* have a "6 straight" approach.

If not, something matching a SNES pad would be far more intuitive or general button use, and where the button layout was important (eg: SNES Super Smash TV).
(ASCII-art spacing not to scale):

L       R
    X
Y       A
    B

[edit note: yes, the original post had this layout mentioned]

And of course, colour match your buttons to the much cooler PAL/JAP SNES/SuperFamicom primary colours.  The US SNES with it's all-purple montage was bloody ugly.

To be perfectly honest with you, I like playing SNES games on a SNES pad.  I still have my original PAL SNES and Japanese Super Famicom systems plugged into the game-room's TV, ready for action at a moment's notice.

I leave sticks for arcade games and modern console fighters.

[Minwah]

It depends on what you play.

Yeah you're right...I won't play many (if any) SNES fighters so I might think again.  Playing around with it as we speak...