The symbols on the PlayStation controller

[George Lucas]

You would actually press Start to start the game.
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It's a mode toggle into and out of game, between game and menu. Pause is just another form of menu/non-game, but it's weird to have the button called that when "pause" isn't applicable in all games. However all games do have a Start.

The modern equivalent of toggling between content and menu is the 3 lines. That's fine as design language for an app, but applying that to a game that already has a better concept is lame and gay.



But Japanese is read from right to left. If you have some symbols (letters) in a list, and you tell a Japanese designer to write out that list, the first on the right is A, and the next one to its left is B. Who cares how those gaijin do it, why do they want Jap games anyway?

Nintendo did rename the Start button to Start/Pause for the Gamecube, and then it became the ‘+’ button.

 

[The Masked Sneed]

You can blame the Dreamcast for putting A where B was on the SNES controller. The Xbox is the same because it started as a Dreamcast follow-up.

Really, it goes all the way back to the Genesis. A B C. The six button controller added a new row, X Y Z. So,  X Y Z
                                                A B C
This way kept on the Saturn, but with the decision for the Dreamcast to only have 4 face buttons, they simply chopped off Z and C.
Now, If you want to be really pedantic, you can blame the Master System* for labeling it's buttons as 1 2, as opposed to the NES's B A.

*(but not the Mark III, since its buttons were unmarked. Yet another genius SoA decision)

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Triangle
Circle
Square
X

Only faggots call it cross.

Calling it cross or calling PS1 the PSX is pretentious.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

calling PS1 the PSX is pretentious.

It was called the PSX. Sorry for remembering a time before the jews started putting black women in video games.

 

[Asian tech support]

These strange symbols are indicative of devil worship and gay sex. Turn in your playstation for a praystation, young man.

 

[skykiii]

Really, it goes all the way back to the Genesis. A B C.

I always thought it was genius that the Genesis got a Michael Jackson game.

Cuz ya see...

A-B-C! It's easy as 1-2-3! I'd settle for Do-Re-Me....

Calling it cross or calling PS1 the PSX is pretentious.

It was called the PSX. Sorry for remembering a time before the jews started putting black women in video games.

Exactly. Sorry Ness but this is like saying its pretentious to call Mega Man... Mega Man, when its literally his fucking name.

Also, the Sega Saturn had media labels for its buttons,

What are you talking about? Those look like ABC to me. Easy as 123.

Shame that both Sony and Microsoft put their buttons in the wrong orientation. Nintendo got it right.

This fucks me up so often when I either play an X-Box or else play a PC game that has X-Box button display but no option for Playstation or Switch. I can't count how many times a game has said "press the Y button" and I think I am pressing it, until I realize it means the Y button on the X-Box.

I wish there was some universal fix for this, but I'm not sure how you'd do it.

You never have to stretch your thumb to the right, which is the most unnatural direction to stretch your right thumb in that direction. Don't believe me? Try pretending Square is the primary button and sensing how weird it feels to stretch to the other three.

Like, you kinda make sense but I have to agree with the other guy... I guess because I grew up with stuff like the SNES but I just don't see this "its hard/uncomfortable to stretch to" thing you're talking about.

These strange symbols are indicative of devil worship and gay sex. Turn in your playstation for a praystation, young man.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Exactly. Sorry Ness but this is like saying its pretentious to call Mega Man... Mega Man, when its literally his fucking name.

That's not the same. According to Wikipedia, "Early advertising prior to the console's launch in North America referenced PSX, but the term was scrapped before launch."

Clinging to some brief early advertising is your prerogative, but the actual released console was never called PSX, and was retroactively called PS1, which makes the most sense.

 

[George Lucas]

That's not the same. According to Wikipedia, "Early advertising prior to the console's launch in North America referenced PSX, but the term was scrapped before launch."

Clinging to some brief early advertising is your prerogative, but the actual released console was never called PSX, and was retroactively called PS1, which makes the most sense.

Wikipedia is fucking gay. PSX is the proper abbreviation for it. PS1 refers to the PSOne, the slim variant released after the PS2 for a discount.

 

[George Lucas]

What are you talking about? Those look like ABC to me. Easy as 123.

Look closely. They are above the buttons. The first gen US controllers (which everyone hated) don’t have them.

 

[Slav Power]

IIRC the convention was like this:
Circle and X, the nip way of doing Yes and No
Box, meant to represent a container like the inventory
Triangle, meant to represent up, was often used as the back button in menus

All of which of course was to not get sued by Nintendo for their totally-not-a-SNES controller.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

That's not the same. According to Wikipedia, "Early advertising prior to the console's launch in North America referenced PSX, but the term was scrapped before launch."

Clinging to some brief early advertising is your prerogative, but the actual released console was never called PSX, and was retroactively called PS1, which makes the most sense.

Listen to your niggerpedia all you want, you had playstation magazines called PSX[whatever] that covered PSX games. Go back to (((shucking and jiving))) our vidya.

 

[The Cheese Aisle]

Square is square because it looked like a menu iirc

 

[Mad_Dog]

Triangle = Trinity
Circle = Eucharist
Cross = Cross
Square =Tabernacle

 

[Lone MacReady II]

That's not the same. According to Wikipedia, "Early advertising prior to the console's launch in North America referenced PSX, but the term was scrapped before launch."

Clinging to some brief early advertising is your prerogative, but the actual released console was never called PSX, and was retroactively called PS1, which makes the most sense.

According to wikipedia niggers fought in sengoku era Japan as samurai, just because a limey jew self-sourced and edited his own fanfiction page.

 

[skykiii]

Clinging to some brief early advertising is your prerogative, but the actual released console was never called PSX, and was retroactively called PS1, which makes the most sense.

Dude I lived thru the era. Magazines, fans, websites etc. always called it the PSX in abbreviation. Yes it came basically from an early name for the console but whatever. Some jonny-come-lately does not get to come in and rewrite history.

 

[ZMOT]

It's apparent whoever designed the symbols was a fan of JRPGs.

All About the PlayStation 1's Design​

Sony designer Teiyu Goto discusses the system, the controller, and the weird symbols on the buttons.​

By Kevin Gifford, 08/25/2010

Teiyu Goto, who joined Sony after graduating from technical school in 1977, has worked on the external design of every PlayStation console, as well as their controllers and other accessories, for the past 17 years. In an interview with Famitsu magazine this week, Goto divulged the internal process that went into crafting some of the most iconic images in video games.

As Goto put it, he first got involved with the PlayStation project in the spring of 1993. "My boss at the time asked if I was interested in some game console work," he recalled. "I liked games and PCs a lot and messed around with them in my spare time, so it was great for me to work on what I liked doing the most. So I started traveling to the Aoyama office and talking with [Ken] Kutaragi about assorted things, and before long I began work on the design of the system."

Goto began his design work at around the same time the development staff put the final touches on Dinosaur, the first PlayStation tech demo. "It was a huge shock to me," he said. "I couldn't tell you how neat it was to move the dinosaur around as much as I wanted. Having the hardware behind that get sold as a home game console was revolutionary to me -- if this actually happened, I thought, there's no way it wouldn't be a hit."

Since game systems were a new category for Sony, Goto was given carte blanche to go in any direction he wanted with the design. "I thought up assorted designs for the console, but we wound up going with a very simple one in the end, a basic box with a circle on top for the CD-ROM," he said. "The console itself was a relatively easy design process, but we went through a great number of stages with the controller."

What was so hard about coming up with a controller? "The Super NES was a huge hit at the time, and naturally we wanted SNES gamers to upgrade to our system," Goto said. "That's why the management department didn't want the controller to be a radical departure -- they said it had to be a standard type of design, or gamers wouldn't accept it."

Ignoring management's request for a flat, Nintendo-like pad, Goto came up with a design that had grips on both ends and showed it to Norio Ohga, Sony's president at the time. "I still clearly remember him saying that 'the control stick is the most important part of any game,'" Goto recalled. "Ohga flies airplanes and helicopters, so he used the term 'control stick' to talk about the controller. He really liked the grips on the controller because it let him get a 3D-style grasp on the situation."

Management, however, was still pretty hostile. "They told me that the grip design was simply no good, that gamers wouldn't like it," Goto said. "We did wind up switching to a flatter controller design, and that survived all the way to the point where it was time to start making molds. Just around then, though, we had a 'creative report,' an internal presentation where assorted groups showed their current in-progress work to the top brass. During that report I showed off the flat controller design, explaining that this is how game consoles work right now, and Ohga was totally livid at me. 'This is no good! Change it! What was wrong with what you showed me earlier?' It was a huge boost for me, him saying that in front of everybody -- it made me feel like I had it right all along."

"Despite that," Goto continued, "management's opinions didn't change at all. They showed Ohga the flat controller again later and said that this is what they wanted, but Ohga was about to throw the model right back at them. I was there and I didn't want him to break the model, so I stopped him, but looking back, I think that was Ohga's way of saying 'Hang in there, Goto' to me. Management was still pretty peeved, but they felt like they had no choice but to follow him."

That explains how the controller got its look, but not how the buttons got their rather unique names. "That was also pretty tough," Goto revealed. "Other game companies at the time assigned alphabet letters or colors to the buttons. We wanted something simple to remember, which is why we went with icons or symbols, and I came up with the triangle-circle-X-square combination immediately afterward. I gave each symbol a meaning and a color. The triangle refers to viewpoint; I had it represent one's head or direction and made it green. Square refers to a piece of paper; I had it represent menus or documents and made it pink. The circle and X represent 'yes' or 'no' decision-making and I made them red and blue respectively. People thought those colors were mixed up, and I had to reinforce to management that that's what I wanted."

Looking back, Goto sees his work on the PlayStation controller as the sort of chance that comes once in a lifetime. "Getting to use such simple symbols in a design is an extremely rare opportunity, and it was really a stroke of luck to me," he said. "When you think of the Madonna in painting, most people come up with the same image of the same woman in their minds. In a similar way, the combination of those simple symbols has come to represent both the PlayStation and the fun of video games, and being able to communicate that is a great thing."

There's little doubt that he's been successful -- not every designer can say that his work shows up in 100 million households worldwide, after all. "I was at a PlayStation party in Los Angeles once, and a man came up and asked if I was the designer of the PlayStation," Goto said. "I said yes, and he said 'I develop games for a software company, but we started supporting the PlayStation because of the system's design.' I was really moved by that -- I thanked him and shook his hand as strongly as I could. That moment made me really glad to be involved with the design. Being able to launch a new brand and have people around the world use it can make a designer very, very happy."

https://web.archive.org/web/20110705174449/http://www.1up.com/news/playstation-1-design

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Clinging to some brief early advertising is your prerogative, but the actual released console was never called PSX, and was retroactively called PS1, which makes the most sense.

people give you shit, but look at it this way: why do you call it an xbone?

 

[eDove]

I miss the colors.