I've been playing a lot of Megaman 9 lately. I bought it for the Wii the moment it came out and have enjoyed it, but one large flaw with the game is that it won't work with the Gamecube controller which prevents me from using my Gameboy Player control pad. Using the Wiimote on its side for extended periods kind of sucks so I eventually bought the Wii Classic Controller in order to play the game more effectively.
I'd held off on buying on of these things because I knew the Wii's Virtual Console controls couldn't be changed by the user, thus forcing you to use the crappy ass, lay-your-thumb-in-between-B-and-A-and-roll-it technique one should never be forced to employ on any controller designed after the Super NES era.
Of course, Nintendo - the very ones who popularized control schemes for 2D games that necissitated laying your thumb across one button constantly as you hit a second one (the first being the "B" button to run in Mario and the second being the "A" button to jump, in case you're really dense) have themselves morphed into the most evil, vile and sinister opponents to this rational in the time since then.
The origins of the issue occured when the Super NES named what should have been the B button the Y button and the natural A button became B. I'm not a hardware guy, but I've heard that the SNES used the same set of electronic signals to communicate with its controllers as the NES, except the signals used to acknowledge the NES's A and B button were mapped to the SNES's B and Y- proof in some way that the SNES B and Y buttons were intended to carry the mantle of the original red duo (it also may be why the Retro Duo plays NES games on its SNES like controllers as God intended- with Y for B and B for A).
Yet, despite the epic paradigm shift required to change from associating A and B to associating B and Y, the world continued to spin.
However, when implementing GBA compatability with the Nintendo DS, the big N had a dilema - they could have either named the DS's front buttons differently than the SNES, which would have limited the nostalgic appeal, or they could have boldly done what made sense for actual usage and mapped the GBA's B and A buttons to the DS's Y and B. If this confused people, they could have included an option to change it to this setting so only "advanced" players who cared would risk being confused by such a concept.
But the Nintendo of this century is not the same one I grew up with in the 90's- the one that seemed to get details like this right. The current Nintendo seems great when it comes to broad strokes of innovation - motion control, touch screens, etc. - but has started phoning in the details when it comes to important issues like making sure the software could be configured so people could effectively use these new pretty Apple White controllers to play games.
The Gameboy Player - perhaps one of my favorite devices ever - committed the same sin of forbiding customizable controls. Somehow, I got used to it, although perhaps it was simply because I had no other choice.
The Wii's Virtual Console follows suit with NES games, although in this case it appears somewhat more rational. The thinking must go that if you're a mouth breathing idiot (the key demographic targetted by Nintendo these days) and bought the classic controller, the idea that the button physically marked as "B" might not correspond to the NES's B button in the game you're playing may cause your head to explode, even the configuration only worked that way because you'd changed the control options yourself earlier (remember, in this scenario you are in fact a mouth breathing idiot).
Anyway, at least mapping buttons to the same buttons they were named on the original system makes sense.
Getting back to the subject, perhaps because Megaman 9 is not actually an NES Virtual Console game and Capcom had more control over it, it does allow you to configure the game so that SNES style thumb positioning can be used with the Wii Classic Controller.
I had such a good time playing Megaman 9 that I kind of got hungry for more downloadable Wii goodness, and thus bought Sin & Punishment, the late N64 era, import only Treasure game that was the second import game released for the US Virtual Console.
I like Sin & Punishment. A lot. I always figured when I actually played the game I'd find it to be overhyped and overrated, but it isn't. It's too soon to say yet, but it may be my favorite Treasure game after Radiant Silvergun and Guardian Heroes.
Here's the problem, though - this game could end up giving me carpel tunnel syndrome.
I'm kind of serious. Usually when I complain about controller configuration problems in the past, it was just because the schemes annoyed me. I didn't enjoy holding my hands in an unnaturual way, but the actual physical duress involved was pretty low.
However, I had to stop playing Sin & Punishment yesterday after about an hour and a half because my hands were hurting.
The issue is that the game requires you to press the top buttons a lot. These buttons are the worst part of the Wii Classic Contoller - they're kind of mushy and springy like the Gamecube's, but offer no groves for your fingers and sit in a position that necessitates a somewhat unnatural grip on the controller.
So tonight I dusted off my trusty Wave Bird Gamecube controller in hopes of using its bountiful, cushy shoulder buttons instead, and encountered another issue.
You see, Sin & Punishment involves moving two things - the aiming reticule for your gun and the protaganist itself, who can move left and right.
The original game used the N64 trident controller and assigned aiming to the analog stick and movement to both the d-pad or the C-buttons. The Z trigger fired, and the shoulder buttons jumped, which meant those actions were linked to the same hand that was manuevering whatever they corresponded to (the game character's body or the gun's bullets).
The way most people would interpret such a scheme on a modern day dual-analog control pad would be to map one analog stick to movement and another to aiming. The Gamecube's left analog stick is even called the C-stick. Given Nintendo's penchant of making sure old games use buttons on new controllers with the same names as the buttons on their original platform's counterparts, you'd think they'd map the C buttons to the C-stick.
But they didn't do that. Instead, they employed moon logic to create their own control scheme where both analog sticks control aiming the gun.
This is kind of nice in that you get to choose which hand will do what. Unfortunately, each choice is subpar.
If you control the character with your left hand using the d-pad, you'll have to actually use the Gamecube controller's d-pad, which was originally added to the controller as some kind of sick joke. Even if this works for you, firing the gun is assigned to the left shoulder button, which means you're firing with the hand that isn't controlling the cursor.
If you use your right hand to move the character, the shoulder button will be the same- except you're going to be using the Y and X buttons to move left and right, respectively. This is the kind of nonsense you can get used to but I can't imagine its easy to play the game at a high level using this scheme.
Even in its native form, the game's controls would have taken some getting used to. But thanks to Nintendo's nonsense, they somehow become even more of a problem.
Of course, none of this would even matter if I could just do what I friggin' wanted and didn't have someone's strange idea of a control scheme forced on me. Unless Nintendo is using a different N64 emulator for every Virtual Console game they release, its apparent that Nintendo knows how to change the controls for it's N64 emulator since they themselves change the button configurations from game to game. So why then in the name of everything sacred can't they let the user do change the config themselves?
What adds insult to injury is that the game itself references the N64's still unique and alien looking control pad, which regardless of what control setup you use on the Wii is still going to look different than what you're holding in your hand.
So Nintendo is already ok with the idea that the end user is going to have to understand that the buttons he or she is pressing are associated with a very different imaginary controller that the game wants to pretend they're using. So withholding the ability to change the controls doesn't even make sense as a pandering move to avoid confusing simple minded consumers.
Honestly, when I sat down to play the game for a second time a day later I immedietely felt a sense of dissapointment when I recalled how the controls operated. The fact that I still am enjoying the game so much is a testament to how great it is - I'm actually thinking of buying a real copy of the game and fixing my N64 so I can try it on its native platform.
For the time being, I've found the best option is to go into the game's control options (the screen within the game itself that assumes you're using an N64 controller) and set it to use Type 3. This type maps movement to the left and right to the left and right shoulder buttons, aiming the gun to the analog stick and firing and jumping to the B and A buttons. This configuration, while better than the ones previously mentioned, is good but not optimal. Its just a drag not to be able to use the trigger like shoulder buttons to fire the gun. Additionally, there's actually a worse seperation of concerns between each hand because both now handle movement and the right presses face buttons to fire and jump.
All things considered, I really can't see how Nintendo's continuing refusal to allow us to reconfigure the controls on its emulators or backwards compatabile hardware makes sense to anyone but them. I almost wonder if its part of a secret agenda they have to make any less than current game format seem crappy.
