How many buttons should I have on my arcade machine?
Asked by
tedd (
14088
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April 16th, 2012
I’m making an arcade machine. It’s going to run off emulator technology, which I won’t delve into too much.. but sufficive to say I’ll be able to put multiple game systems on the arcade machine. Along with a litany of classic arcade games I plan on including a number of home console systems (and many games for each). Right now I’m planning on including NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, N64, Game Cube, and Dreamcast. I may end up including playstation 1 and/or 2 as well.
The machine will have joysticks and buttons for four players, to take advantage of the 4 player arcade games and console games. But here is the question, how many buttons do I include for each player. The N64 has the most buttons on it’s controller of the systems I have listed (9, not counting joystick). But not all buttons are functional for most games, or they do some obscure thing that you’ll never need.
It’s a bit of a balance issue, if I have too many buttons it’ll be crowded and difficult to manage. There’s also an issue of how fun will this actually be on an arcade cabinet as opposed to the way it was originally meant to be played?
What do you guys think? The minimum number of buttons for each person is 6 action buttons and two auxiliary buttons (add coin/start).
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7 Answers
Now that’s a fun challenge!
Can you make it re-configurable?
Or maybe a standard config with just a few buttons that cover most situations, plus some ports that let you plug in some extreme controllers?
@dabbler It would be reconfigurable, but not easily. It would basically mean completely redesigning and cutting out a new control panel top when I wanted to change the buttons.
Plugging in controllers is actually something I’m looking into, it wouldn’t be hard to do. But my concern is that it would take away from the “arcade” feel of the cabinet. I mean at some point it just becomes.. “Well why don’t I just hook my computer up to a big tv and we’ll play this on that so we can all sit down and not huddle around this thing?” ya know?
The highest common denominator.
The less buttons the better, I think. It’s a fine line, but people play arcade games, among other reasons, because they can play without thinking too much. The popularity of Pachinko in Japan is an example. ‘Dance Dance, Revolution’ is another example.
I might be biased. I grew up with pinball machines and was actually a pinball hustler while in University. When games like ‘Pong’ came out, I thought it grossly lacked the feedback a pinball machine offered. Haptic controllers have solved this to some degree but …
But, like I implied, I am older in dirt so probably not your best source for research.
I played way to much street fighter 2 in jr high and highschool. So I am going to go with six buttons.
@tedd ”“arcade” feel of the cabinet.” An admirable goal, Game On !
Six buttons is probably your best bet, especially if you’re making this cabinet for four players. I’d really stick to six buttons and one joystick for each set.
As far as including games for the GC or PS, you’d probably be way better off just including the ability to plug in the controllers…or including GC/PS games that only require the face buttons to play. (although I’d love to play SFA3 on an arcade cabinet)
I guess shoulder buttons could easily be relegated to the two leftover buttons on your arcade though. If you pick some PS games, you’d probably want to make sure not to pick any that use the R1 and R2 buttons in any real important way.
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