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The meanings behind the PlayStation controller buttons
- Thread starter eyeball_kid
- Start date
I remember square bringing up the menu in Breath of Fire III (and maybe 4?). I Feel like there were other RPGs that brought up menus with square, too.
In BoF3, triangle wasn't anything to do with "view" though, so there's that.
I can remember that it was in Metal Gear Solid. Triangle switched to first-person view mode, didn't it?
Red circles at that.
Might just be worth it to keep their controllers distinct. You just look like a cheap copy if you mindlessly copy the competition, as I feel the case kind of is with the iOS/Android controllers and the Fire's.
It's also what aggravates me when I see people complain about the fucking letter placement of all things on Nintendo controllers, as if it's a crime to not homogenize and be the same as everyone else (or more specifically Microsoft really.)
Of course they can't explain that. When things are untrue it's impossible to explain them.
Pyccko
Member
I always just figured it was because Japanese is read right to left (and then carried on through tradition, natch)
It seems they may flip pages that way, but will read vertically (though the order of those lines may be right-to-left.) And when it's horizontal it's left to right.
I actually made the case that there might be a thumb logic to it: your finger will first reach the A button, then you put it in further and it reaches the B button, and same for X/Y. Maybe there's a different explanation from Nintendo, but at any rate at worst it's a unique quirk.
Pyccko
Member
Yeah, I was referring to the vertical columns, but I like your theory. Relating back to my problem of having long fingers, I always tend to put my thumbs on Y/Square in a resting position, but a kid playing the NES/Famicom (the audience they were first designing for) would most likely be going for the A button, like you said.
plasmawave
Banned
×　□　○　= X box 360
Sony predicted the future.
Sony predicted the future.
Holy crap.
I figured it had to be a cultural thing. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
X box One
SolidChamp
Banned
For us expats who live in Asia, this whole mix up is super frustrating. I'm used to circle for confirm now, but fuck...pick one for the universal system.
Diablo 3 on PS4 is annoying me a bit because confirm suddenly becomes X.
Red Dead Redemption and Sleeping Dogs both had very serious, game-hindering bugs that didn't properly implement the button swap.
Diablo 3 on PS4 is annoying me a bit because confirm suddenly becomes X.
Red Dead Redemption and Sleeping Dogs both had very serious, game-hindering bugs that didn't properly implement the button swap.
Yes, because we've got common sense here in Europe. It's just normal to say "cross" when you call other buttons "triangle", "square" and "round".
"Round"? It's circle! Triangle, X, Square, and Circle!
They do why?
Wolfgang Jr
Banned
What if you character is facing South?
["Press North to go South"]
Round? Haha; I call it ring, or sometimes hoop. Makes so much more sense!
Wolfgang Jr
Banned
.
Sorry, I'm French and here we say "rond" (round obviously) instead of "cercle" (circle) because it's faster to say this way. Anyway, it doesn't bother you to say "triangle", "square", "circle" and then "aiks" instead of cross. That's just plain logic... to me at least.
Leithkorias
Member
If you played metal gear solid on the ps1 you probably remember hitting x on the title screen only to have it go back to the "press start" text.
O was confirm and x was cancel. It may have even been that way I'm mgs2 I don't recall.
O was confirm and x was cancel. It may have even been that way I'm mgs2 I don't recall.
this is when i first noticed it myself.
That might sound stupid but they went through some interesting research to decide those buttons. They mean what the OP said and they also mean the 1-2-3-4 thing.
In the programming guidelines the buttons are also well defined. X and O are positive buttons and that's why you generally don't see a game going "accept/continue/proceed" with the square or triangle.
In the programming guidelines the buttons are also well defined. X and O are positive buttons and that's why you generally don't see a game going "accept/continue/proceed" with the square or triangle.
GameAddict411
Member
I got my PS4 from Hong Kong, and the O is "select" and the X is "back". If I knew that I would have never bought it. Its just so god damn annoying that if the game is from Europe or the US it gets reversed back. On top of that I use my PS3 quiet regularly and I have quite movies several times because of it.
Catalix
And on the sixth day the LORD David Bowie created man and woman in His image. And he saw that it was good. On the seventh day the LORD created videogames so that He might take the bloody day off for once.
Yeah, back then I thought was just a weird Metal Gear quirk. It was only after playing some imported games a few months later that I realized what was really going on.
Only some Western games reverse it. Most of the time, it'll stay as circle = accept and x = cancel. I liked it (Asian PS3 owner), it makes every game remind me of that initial bewilderment of booting MGS for the first time again. Is it switched back for all Western games on PS4? Shame.
Catalix
And on the sixth day the LORD David Bowie created man and woman in His image. And he saw that it was good. On the seventh day the LORD created videogames so that He might take the bloody day off for once.
The only modern game I know of that uses square as the menu is LBP. I always thought it was weird for that type of game.
I've only seen that button placement in a few RPGs, but never in action-oriented stuff.
I've only seen that button placement in a few RPGs, but never in action-oriented stuff.
GameAddict411
Member
Yes, even PSN games.
Lol isn't this super obvious? I knew this already for a couple of years. It's pretty Japanese with x and o.
The same goes for the abxy layout:
A is accept, b is back.
My question would be how did they come up with it in the first place? Why not use the same shit as the others. Sega, Nintendo did use letters for buttons, so it was mind boggling to see something different in this regard.
The same goes for the abxy layout:
A is accept, b is back.
My question would be how did they come up with it in the first place? Why not use the same shit as the others. Sega, Nintendo did use letters for buttons, so it was mind boggling to see something different in this regard.
Iacobellis
Junior Member
Remember how Triangle worked the way Circle does now on PS1 and PS2 games?
NumberThree
Member
If you only realized it a couple of years ago then it obviously isn't super obvious, is it?
eyeball_kid
Member
Was it super obvious that square denotes a sheet of paper and triangle denotes a point-of-view? I'm not being sarcastic, I'm asking because I'm not a Japanese culture expert. Maybe those symbols are mainstays there also, though I kinda doubt it.
Hydrargyrus
Member
Pretty much, they even know the 180º reversal
X (x) box (square) One (o - one line) 180º (triangle = 3 angles are always 180º)
Yeah cause Gamecube did so well and was so well respected in its time right? I had one since 2003 and loved it but it has so many flaws people want to ignore these days. Weird button sizes, small C-Stick, Crap D-Pad. Far from great.
sixteen-bit
Member
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