Lives on the Left or Right?

[Cybearg]

I want to know what's most common.

 

 

In the above, which would you guess is which (based on your experience with Atari 2600/retro games)?

 

Note: the point of this isn't to guess which is actually which in the above game, but instead I want to know which a 2600 player naturally assumes is which, so I can organize my HUD intuitively.

Edited May 12, 2013 by Cybearg

[LidLikesIntellivision]

I don't know if lives to the left and power ups to the right is the most commont.

 

I voted that way because it seems the player will be looking at the right side of screen to antecipate action and power ups gives more important information durign game play.

[SeaGtGruff]

I bucked the herd and went with power-ups on the left, on the grounds that people in our culture read left-to-right, therefore it seems to me like it's more natural for the information to be presented left-to-right by priority. You might say that lives remaining have a greater priority than power-ups, but I think power-ups have a more *immediate* priority than lives remaining.

[bomberpunk]

before reading any comments, i voted lives on left, powerups on right. i thought about some NES games (Double Dragon, Battletoads, etc) and the lives are in the bottom left corner.

 

while people do read left-to-right as SeaGtGruff stated, Liduario made an excellent point that players are usually checking out the right half of the screen during a scrolling game (unless the game is Theatrythm: Final Fantasy on 3DS).

[chas10e]

I went Lives to Left & power-ups to right ...

 

trying to remember on other games Defender came up first on the list

 

they were able to make the lives the shape of the ship & smart bombs another shape ... that helps with distinguishing the two

[AtariChris]

I voted Lives to the left, power ups to the right.

 

 

 

Galaga has lives to the left, stages to the right.

 

Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr has Lives on the right.

 

Joust has lives on the right.

 

Pacman and Ms. pacman has lives on the left, fruit to the right.

 

Pretty much even actually. No real set standard.