One button philosophy in classic Sonic games

I don’t think it’s really fair to count the 8 directions of a d-pad as separate buttons. I mean, yes, technically they are, but the intention was to have a platform game with only one “action button.” You can’t get rid of the d-pad on a platformer unless you’re going for an endless runner/autoscroller-type game like Mario Run or Sonic Runners.

As to it being a good idea in general, it depends on how you’re measuring that. I think most of us would prefer additional buttons due to the factors you mentioned (retaining certain moves, not triggering super by accident, etc.). But maybe it was the case that limiting the actions made people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to understand/play the game go ahead and buy a copy. We don’t really have any data to support this either way, but the prevalence and overwhelming popularity of simple, single tap games on phones may indicate that it’s likely.

But yeah, Balan Wonderworld needed to have a dedicated jump button. It was incredibly frustrating when you were using a costume without one and had to swap just to jump. Though I’ve actually been getting an itch to play it again lol. Not sure if I should get a copy for my Series X or put up with the less than stellar performance on the PS4. I think the game’s negative reception is wildly disproportionate to its quality. I can’t help but feel part of it was from wanting to dunk on the “creator of Sonic,” who ironically probably dislikes how the game turned out more than anyone.

 

Yeah, I get your point but I really don’t think it negates the description of Sonic as “one button.” The designers and players take the existence of the d-pad and its directions as a given, and the “one button” is just the additional button you need to press while maneuvering. If someone described 2D Mario, they say it has 2 buttons, run and jump. They wouldn’t mention that you can press down on slopes to butt slide or press up and release B while holding an item to toss it up.

Do people make this claim? I usually just see it being linked to Naka’s desire to make the game accessible rather than an indication of the game’s “masterful design.”

 

I've never heard that claim made by a large group or consistently brought up throughout the years. It sounds made up.
This is all splitting hairs. I know we're experts at this, but come on.

 

Can't believe nobody's calling the Start button out.

Yeah, the original 2D games are "one button" games, for all intents and purposes. Roll, spindash, and peelout all use the same button that is used for jumping. I think the Super transformation is the only case where this was a clumsy hill to die on so it's good that AIR and Mania mapped that to another button.

Like BlueSkies said, the NES Mario games are typically thought of as having two buttons. One of them is for running. Sonic took Mario's movement system and (in addition to other things) found a way to remove the run button by widening the gradient of movement speed.

As for rolling, I think the way it is mapped/activated and the way it functions is very natural, building on and combining different abilities which already existed in platforming games at the time. In Super Mario Bros., when you're Big Mario you can duck if you press down on the dpad, and if you duck while you're running you can perform a slide. In Metroid, once you've acquired the Morph Ball pressing down on the dpad turns you into a ball. Sonic takes the mapping and behavior of these two elements and combines them. Sonic is always the size of Big Mario so he can duck. If Sonic ducks while running he performs a slide that is also a Morph Ball, which is also in essence a Screw Attack. So Sonic has a "melee attack" that is tied to his own inertia, which also doubles as both a defensive maneuver and a strategy for gaining speed down hills. I just think that's really cool design which is elegantly implemented, using one less button than Mario did. Sure, it's not actually "One Button", but I think that's fine?

 

I do. I very much do. And I stand by it, though it's not because of Naka himself, but because of what Yasuhara did with it. Rolling can't be counted as a separate action ability here because what Naka wanted was always one action button and rolling isn't an action for this discussion, insofar as it's extremely context dependent. If you're still, it does nothing; if you're on a slope, it does a lot -- and it's, for all intents and purposes, a movement skill. Jumping is an action because it's the one thing you can do to apply your intention to Sonic's movement and change it relative to the level's geometry, and it just so happens that that's how you attack (whereas, in Mario, you can attack with another button, and his movement is basically never context dependent).

The amount of tradeoffs you have to do because of it is what makes it elegant, beautiful, unique and simple to learn, but difficult to master. It's sad that OP simply doesn't like it, but he acknowledges that it exists and it works while talking about why they hate it. The description I'd use for Sonic's gameplay core is "the inherent tension between Sonic's access to power being reliant on the environment and Sonic's source of threat also being reliant on the environment", which more action buttons would undermine (take how, because spindash is mapped to a different button in Adventure, you can spindash while running, which takes away any tradeoff it may have). And it's a difficult balance, because further games did try to surpass it just a little, but with elemental shields and the spindash. However, that they still used combinations of buttons that were already used before speaks volumes about how confident they were in that philosophy.

Also, it was not Yuji Naka that mentioned the philosophy in an interview, and why it works. It was Yasuhara, for Game Developer. Besides, it would never work for the Adventure games, so they did away with it. No 3D game uses it because it's basically impossible.

 

...well it should be impossible

 

You can't spindash while running in the original Sonic Adventure, only in DX. Pressing the button while running simply makes you roll, as in the classic games.

It was a deliberate change in DX, not a result of being mapped to a face button. Amazingly even in 3D it's possible to code "if moving roll() else spindash()".

 

I don't know if this is true. I mainly play DC but I've never noticed a difference on DX. I don't feel like pulling out my PC or turning on the shitty Xbox version to check, but judging by the speed runs of both versions, it looks exactly the same.

I googled for info about this but didn't see anything outside the changes listed here: https://tcrf.net/Sonic_Adventure_DX...om_the_Dreamcast_Version#Gameplay_Differences

Do you have any links regarding this?

 

Amazing! Interesting that programming works in a 3D environment too. I wonder if in 2D games you could make it so that pressing the jump button while rolling made you spindash too instead of well, jumping.

I'm fairly sure SA doesn't work like that, as per the manual (see: Spin Dash, page 10), but Sonic 3D Blast does.

 

Sonic Adventure's controls are identical between all versions. DX and onward are just glitchier and uglier.

Anyways, I think using only one button was okay but ultimately unnecessary. It made a decent bragging point for Sonic Team vs Nintendo EAD back in the day ("we made a mechanically deeper game with less buttons!!") but I think that desire to be as minimalistic as possible holds back what you can do with 2D Sonic. Things like grabbing objects, secondary attacks, voluntarily turning Super, or any other new ideas get scrubbed because of a need to stay true to the philosophy. I think Amy is a great example of this, since I feel like Advance allowing two buttons is what made her gameplay good; meanwhile Origins (and most fan-made Amy mods) seem less interesting to play due to oversimplifying.

And as for 3D Sonic, trying to keep to this mindset actively harms the game design. SA1-06 are proof of this, with how many actions overlap in frustrating ways. Can't talk to an NPC, grab an object or pet a Chao without accidentally launching a Spin Dash. Can't do a light dash without accidentally bouncing into a pit. Try to Spin Dash but accidentally does a halting melee attack. Et cetera, et cetera.

It's best to just let any game use as many buttons as it reasonably calls for. Not to say Sonic should ever have to get as maximalist as a modern AAA title, but Sonic games can use a lot (if not all) of the buttons on a controller and still keep the core simplistic.

 

Really, they should have mapped Super transformations to Up + jump (like the Peelout), or to A + B + C. That way they would have avoided the aforementioned issues while keeping the one-button design.

 

I don't think there's a good way to make the Super Sonic transformation work in terms of buttons. I don't like that once you jump, you go super. But any alternative risks the player never figuring it out. At least with Sonic 3, they had an excuse to tie it to a double-press, because of the insta-shield. (Although it doesn't work as well for Knuckles given you need his signature moves to progress at certain points).

 

I think maybe just having to hold the jump button for half a second (or longer) to trigger it could do the job. Have the character start glowing as soon as you hold the button so players get the idea. If we go in the direction of needing a specific button I think the Sonic World DX way of just giving you the prompt when you have the option to do so is also perfectly functional honestly and would probably be preferable for 3D Sonic.

 

I'd like holding the jump button for a period of time if there was some sort of potential danger attached to it. Like holding for longer than a whole second so you can't jump rapidly in succession to avoid multiple threats. Although it'd be frustrating at times, too. Anyway, I like the idea of never letting the player have it too easy.

The point I very haphazardly made to @DigitalDuck earlier is that tradeoffs and compound commands maybe weren't what Naka wanted exactly, but it's an extremely healthy byproduct that makes the most sense when you're consciously working with the one action button paradigm. I don't even think it's simpler: I'd have learned how to spindash much earlier if it had been mapped to a different button in S3&K than I did. They could have made the spindash mapped to a different button in the classics, but they didn't and, because they didn't, it comes at a (very small) cost (having to be still to perform it, so you have to go from your most vulnerable state).

You can design a game as focused as Sonic without this philosophy, but the philosophy enforced it in their case, and is crucial to what Sonic is. This is only effectively attainable in 2D for a number of reasons: as soon as 3D comes in, many other factors become more important than these small situational tradeoffs, so the conversation stops making sense.

However, relieving Sonic of such direct control of the environment via additional attacks, object-grabbing etc. is what makes the gameplay what it is.¹ Any change to the idea would severely undermine Sonic's core concept, and the almost imperceptible loops by which you become more skilled at using the environment in your favor to gather speed -- and thus power, since the faster you are, the more power you have relative to most perceived threats (as long as you're curled).

¹ That and the life system;

 

My take is that one button design was a neat design choice for Sonic 1, but for every classic game after it started to feel like more of an odd caveat than anything. Things like the Spindash, Peelout and Super Sonic do work fine enough with one button, I'd be lying if I said it was actively detrimental to the game, but just giving them dedicated buttons is just a bit more intuitive IMO. Not a dealbreaker by any means though.

And of course when the 3D games rolled around it started actively hurting the games, ironically making things more complex and context sensitive than they need to be as a result of keeping the control scheme simple. But I think most people can agree on the 3D games being worse for it.

 

That's fair and I'm sorry for misinterpreting your original point.

As pointed out by Palas, I'm probably confusing it for Sonic 3D where this is the case, as well as a bit of SA2 where the uncurling is different; apologies for that.

 

For what it’s worth, I always felt that down + action(repeatedly) was like revving-up an engine of a car when in roll position, so it came pretty naturally to me. A separate action button for the spindash effectively becomes the boost.

 

One benefit to the "one"-button system as far as the Genesis games go (and I guess the Genesis-like fangames too) is that it's not actually one-button and you have two free buttons to help you mash out fully charged spin dashes. Not sure if intentional and probably a little broken but oh so satisfying whether it be on controller or destroying your spacebar. The car revving analogy feels appropriate here in that this feels flooring it with both feet.