Zap! Posted October 30, 2014 Share Posted October 30, 2014 Around 1989, a little after rumors of the Super Famicom first started coming out, it leaked that there would be four main buttons on the controller. Back then, nearly everyone assumed it would be A,B, C, and D. When the controller was finally confirmed, the two new buttons were instead X and Y. Now, I kinda get why they didn't do C and D, because the original NES has its letters backwards (B first then A, which always irked me, but I'll save that for another thread). It might be confusing to do B and A on the bottom, and then D and C on top. Or maybe they just wanted to use early and late letters. Fine, I get that. But why in the world would they not call the top buttons Y and Z (or Z and Y, since they are backwards)? The first two letters and last two letters would be entirely understandable, but next-to-last two buttons? What was the reasoning? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fiddlepaddle Posted October 30, 2014 Share Posted October 30, 2014 It's common in the science/math arena to use a,b,c... for one type of variable, x,y,z for another type, and i,j,k for another. Perhaps it carries over from this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg2600 Posted October 30, 2014 Share Posted October 30, 2014 I figure it was done to make it easier to differentiate between the pairs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zap! Posted October 30, 2014 Author Share Posted October 30, 2014 It's common in the science/math arena to use a,b,c... for one type of variable, x,y,z for another type... But those are still the first three and last three. That makes sense, while Y, and X doesn't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gabriel Posted October 30, 2014 Share Posted October 30, 2014 My guess is that L and R were once C and Z. I've seen something that X and Y were supposed to relate to coordinates because of the SNES's Mode 7 3D powerz. But I really doubt that's the reason. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayhem Posted October 30, 2014 Share Posted October 30, 2014 ^ I was thinking the same thing as above. Nintendo of course ended up using C and Z for the N64 controller... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zap! Posted October 30, 2014 Author Share Posted October 30, 2014 My guess is that L and R were once C and Z. But if there were originally supposed to be only two main buttons, wouldn't the top buttons (now L and R) be C and D? They are too similar to have the radically different letter in Z. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gentlegamer Posted November 2, 2014 Share Posted November 2, 2014 Not only that, but why were the primary action buttons changed from BA to YB? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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