12th July 2008, 6:01 PM
It doesn't "make more sense to an American". We've used the far right as confirm in a lot of cases. Our enter buttons are on the right too, as are our gas pedals, ignition switches, and so on. Heck even my moniter's power button is on the right. Reading direction doesn't have anything to do with it.
It did catch on with the Genesis, but that's the only system where it did, and most of the games I played let all the bottom buttons be used for confirm anyway.
It is worse though with the PS1 and Sony of American's odd choice. You see, for the first few years Circle WAS confirm in the US versions (FF7, FFTactics, and Metal Gear Solid). For some reason though, they changed it. FF8 and Xenogears had that bizarre choice of sending cancel to triangle, and yes, it was insane. Fortunatly it was a little more sensible with FF9 and onward.
To make matters worse, the Metal Gear series totally ignores this and circle is confirm there, and they aren't the only ones.
On the PSP in particular, the confirm and cancel buttons are reversed from the Japanese PSP (to match their crazy standard they never should have implemented), but when you play any of the Metal Gear games, since the games themselves use the Japanese standard, the standard in the OS is switched around to "match", meaning that for a moment the controls even in the system OS get "reversed" from what you are used to.
Sooo stupid... There's an argument to be made for keeping it this way since it's been like it for so long, but I'd say that if they end it now, then in the longer term it'll make things a lot simpler.
MS adapted this, but Nintendo never did. This creates even more confusion. Look at the DS and the Wii classic controller and you'll see that A is confirm once again (and it's using the SNES layout of the buttons, another confusion was introduced when Sega and MS decided to put A and B in different locations, as well as X and Y).
On the Sony systems, porting old SNES games gets even more confusing. You get the confirm and cancel "reversed" in games that originally had it the Japanese way, so you have to get used to it all over again, and when "cancel" often functions as a "dash" button, it makes it a little more out of the way. Then let's say (as a pure hypothetical) that these RPGs get released again on, say, the GBA or DS (again, purely hypothetical of course, not like this happened to to a total of 5 games already or something), and with Nintendo being true to the Japanese standard, again you have to switch around to the old style controls.
In other words, this situation is pretty messed up.
It did catch on with the Genesis, but that's the only system where it did, and most of the games I played let all the bottom buttons be used for confirm anyway.
It is worse though with the PS1 and Sony of American's odd choice. You see, for the first few years Circle WAS confirm in the US versions (FF7, FFTactics, and Metal Gear Solid). For some reason though, they changed it. FF8 and Xenogears had that bizarre choice of sending cancel to triangle, and yes, it was insane. Fortunatly it was a little more sensible with FF9 and onward.
To make matters worse, the Metal Gear series totally ignores this and circle is confirm there, and they aren't the only ones.
On the PSP in particular, the confirm and cancel buttons are reversed from the Japanese PSP (to match their crazy standard they never should have implemented), but when you play any of the Metal Gear games, since the games themselves use the Japanese standard, the standard in the OS is switched around to "match", meaning that for a moment the controls even in the system OS get "reversed" from what you are used to.
Sooo stupid... There's an argument to be made for keeping it this way since it's been like it for so long, but I'd say that if they end it now, then in the longer term it'll make things a lot simpler.
MS adapted this, but Nintendo never did. This creates even more confusion. Look at the DS and the Wii classic controller and you'll see that A is confirm once again (and it's using the SNES layout of the buttons, another confusion was introduced when Sega and MS decided to put A and B in different locations, as well as X and Y).
On the Sony systems, porting old SNES games gets even more confusing. You get the confirm and cancel "reversed" in games that originally had it the Japanese way, so you have to get used to it all over again, and when "cancel" often functions as a "dash" button, it makes it a little more out of the way. Then let's say (as a pure hypothetical) that these RPGs get released again on, say, the GBA or DS (again, purely hypothetical of course, not like this happened to to a total of 5 games already or something), and with Nintendo being true to the Japanese standard, again you have to switch around to the old style controls.
In other words, this situation is pretty messed up.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)