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Damn You Muscle Memory
"What bothers me about this game is just one simple problem: They swapped the buttons! B is Jump and A throws shells! How did they fuck up the controls for a Mario game?! Why change what we grew up with? Why change what's been firmly planted in our brains since childhood?!"
—The Angry Video Game Nerd, on Mario Clash

There are many, many Video Games out there. With so many video games, it stands to reason that most will be somewhat similar, and have similar control schemes.

But then, if they're merely similar, it also stands to reason that they're somewhat... different. And maybe this difference is what completely throws you off your game.

Any game where you can change the control scheme will obviously avoid this by default, though the effectiveness depends on how far the game will let you remap its controls. Emulators, special controllers and 3rd-party utilities can function as a workaround of sorts as well. Of course, allowing you to change the control scheme in a game with different characters who need different schemes can lead to this within a single game.

This is why we have Stock Control Settings.

See also Reflexive Response.

This is sometimes done intentionally as a game effect; see Interface Screw. This can go beyond gaming, as well. Any control system for a device which can be easily confused for another falls into it.

Examples:

Video Games
  • First of all, we all know the pause button is the Start button, right? Well, some games have pause on the Select button, like Turtles in Time on the SNES.
  • Clive Barkers Jericho has the primary and secondary fire all switched up. Left click shoots the grenade launcher, the shotgun, and throws grenades, while right click does the standard actions.
  • The Guitar Hero series and Rock Band have similar "guitars", but totally different timing. In particular, Guitar Hero III has a far larger timing window and a completely different hammer-on system than Rock Band.
    • There's also different timing windows between the various Guitar Hero games themselves, so switching from GH3, with its relatively large timing window, back to GH 2 (or one of the more recent titles) causes some frustration.
    • That's just the guitar parts. The drum controllers for Rock Band and Guitar Hero have different layouts for the pads (4 pads vs. 3 pads and 2 raised cymbals, respectively), so switching between them can be a lot of trouble.
    • Also, even if Guitar Hero and Rock Band share a song or two between games, due to differences in note charts, players can be royally screwed over if they're used to playing the song on one game but not the other. The debatably worst example of this is Motorhead's re-recorded version of "Ace of Spades", which appears on both Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: Metallica, but whose note charts have absolutely nothing in common at all.
      • And in the recent GHVH, We have Judas Priest's Painkiller. Guitar Hero Van Halen vets who proceed to try Rock Band 2's charts for it will note that the drum solo in the opening IS there in its entirety in RB 2 (half of it is removed in GHVH), there are HOPOs all over the place (instead of having to strum every last note), the drum chart feels overcharted on the bass kicks, and then the guitarist gets to solo number one and finds out that all those easily-done passages on GHVH are scattered all over the frets and the OTHER guitar is followed at the end of the solo. Rock Band Vets only have to deal with accurate bass kick charting and correctly noted HOPOs in the guitar chart, in addition to completely relearning both solos.
    • It get's even worse when you have Guitar Hero/Rock Band Guitars and ACTUAL Guitars.
  • Devil May Cry has a radically different button arrangement between the first and third games. Any player who claims they didn't press Triangle in an attempt to jump at least once in the third game is lying to you.
    • Even worse if you did the opposite, and played three first.
      • Just going from three to one? Try going from pretty much any game with "jump" and "attack" buttons since the SNES to the first DMC. It was (and still is) the accepted standard to have the bottom button of the diamond jump and the left button attack. Yet for some unknown reason, Capcom decided to make the top button jump and the right button attack.
  • Many games have the "Select" and "Go Back" buttons for menus and start screens perfectly reversed from 99% of PS 2 games.
    • This is only true in Western territories. In Japan, it's still common for the Circle button to be "accept" and the X button to be "cancel." Compare that with the SNES (and NDS) layout. You'll notice that the A button ("accept") is in the same place as the Circle button, and the B button ("cancel") is in the same place as the X button. Heck, go back and play Final Fantasy VII. Circle was "accept," and X was "cancel." Sometime between 1997 and 1998, Sony Computer Entertainment America seemed to start enforcing that all games use X as the accept/select/OK button, and circle or triangle as the cancel button. In Japan, this is not the case, as post 1997 games (such as Final Fantasy VIII, IX, X, Dragon Quests IV, V, VII, and VIII, and Chrono Cross) still use the same configuration as Final Fantasy VII and the Metal Gear Solid series.
    • MGS 4 has X as 'OK' and O for 'Cancel,' making it standard in general but backwards to anyone familiar with the series. *facepalm*
  • Most Nintendo platformers ape Mario games in having the A button be the "jump" button and the B button be attack. The occasional game that switches things, like the Metroid series, can be rather jarring, to say the least.
    • Actually, super Metroid HAS A to jump and B to shoot. It's just that it just so happens to be in a console where the standard was Y to shoot and B to jump. Metroid just likes being contrary.
    • How about going from a 2D Metroid (A to jump, B to shoot) to one of the Metroid Prime games (A to shoot, B to jump)?
    • It at least makes some sense: On the Gamecube controller, A is a much larger button than B, and much better placed for rapid mashing-something necessary for a game primarily about shooting. Still, first time you pick it up...
      • At least Prime 3 allowed you to reverse the buttons. But because the B button is a trigger on the Wii remote, you'd think it'd be the default fire button, but it isn't.
      • Well, after years of video gaming, my thumb, at least, is far twitchier than my index finger.
      • Unfortunately, the switch buttons option is broken - it makes A jump and B shoot, but only in regular mode - in morphball form, A reverts to dropping bombs. Making it a confusing mess. Maybe they'll fix it for Metroid Prime Trilogy?
  • An infamous example is the Gamecube release of Mega Man Anniversary Collection, a compilation of ten classic games from the Mega Man series, all of which had the jump and shoot button positions switched from their original release.
    • Playing a Mega Man marathon with the Anniversary Collection reverses the usual frustration the moment you go from Mega Man 8 to Mega Man & Bass. And it certainly doesn't help that Mega Man & Bass is the Nintendo Hardest of the classic Mega Man games.
  • Done intentionally with the Punch Out series. All your opponents are right handed save Soda Popinski. As such he marks the point in the games where you need to start relying less on instinct and more on strategy.
  • The release of the Ninja Gaiden Trilogy SNES collection of the original three games. They mapped the jump button where one would expect the attack button and the attack button where the jump would be expected.
  • Go from playing Viewtiful Joe to Super Smash Bros Melee. Attack goes to Jump, Jump goes to Attack.
  • Go from a Super Smash Bros. game to any other fighter. Smash Attacks are a fine strategy... in Smash Bros. only. And what do you mean holding the triggers doesn't block like they do in Mortal Kombat?
  • The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons/Ages do this, because their graphics are so similar to those of the earlier Link's Awakening, but your sword starts out on the opposite button from that of Link's Awakening. The real problem, though, is that the button combination used to save in Link's Awakening is used to reset the game in the Oracle games. A player who started playing the Oracles immediately after just finishing a run of Link's Awakening could end up losing quite a bit of progress...
    • To be fair, A+B+Start+Select was always the standard "Reset" gesture for Game Boy games (you know, since the GB didn't have an actual reset button); Link's Awakening was the deviant here.
  • While the N64 Zelda games and The Wind Waker had three configurable instant-use item buttons, the GCN version of Twilight Princess hardcoded the "Z" button to the Exposition Fairy, typically resulting in a trip to the item selection screen several times in the same fight to swap out one of the two item slots left.
    • Then there's Minish Cap, which used the R button for lift/throw, which had been A in Link to the Past, and wasted the L button on the game's fusion function.
    • There is also the port of Link to the Past to the GBA, which awkwardly had the inventory mapped to the select button and the save dialog to the start button — the inverse of the SNES version.
      • The inverse of most games, in fact, and definitely more than most Zelda games. It's very hard to go from playing this port and then playing the Gameboy Zelda games.
    • As well as Gamecube incarnation of Twilight Princess, which had the inventory mapped to "UP" on the d-pad, instead of start.
  • Halo 3 and Call Of Duty 4 came out roughly at the same time. The controls are similar with the very important change that Halo's "pick up weapon / reload" button became "drop grenade" in Call Of Duty. This led to multiple instances of one blowing oneself up.
    • Additionally, attempting to aim down the sights makes you go prone in every non-Call Of Duty FPS.
    • A similar "blow yourself up" bit appears when switching between Halo 3 and Rainbow Six: Vegas 2.
      • Or even between Halo 3 and the rest of the series.
  • The US release of Final Fantasy Tactics uses O for confirm and X for cancel, while the other Play Station Final Fantasy games use the reverse (in Japan, they all work like Tactics). This is more or less endemic; most US games default to X to confirm and O to cancel, and most Japanese games do the reverse.
    • The PSP remake of the original game reversed the reversal, making X confirm and O cancel leading to some problems for fans of the original since actions can not be canceled after being selected.
      • Final Fantasy VII had the same problem as Tactics, making the set controls the Japanese version. Unfortunately, though you can change the control scheme, the chocobo menu wasn't coded properly for the changed controls, meaning that you can't navigate it if you switched X and O as a fan of a later Final Fantasy would almost certainly do.
    • This troper had the opposite problem, having grown up playing SNES RP Gs where A was used to "confirm" and B to "cancel." As a result, this troper was right at home with the "Japanese" default controls of Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy Tactics, as O and X correspond to A and B. When later RP Gs released in the US reversed that control style, this troper just remapped the buttons using the games' Options menu. Unfortunately, Final Fantasies X and XII don't offer that option. If this troper had a nickel for how many turns he's accidentally wasted in FFX...
  • In 99% of PS 2 games, the right joystick controls the camera. This is almost true in Final Fantasy XII, where it controls the view. In other words, to pan the view to the right, you push the joystick to the right. Sounds intuitive to you ? WRONG ! In 99% of video games, pushing the joystick to the right moves the camera to the right, thus the field of view is expanded on the left. Same goes for up/down controls.
  • The Orange Box includes Portal and Half-Life, where pressing E picks up objects and opens doors, and Team Fortress 2, where it calls for a medic.
    • Try playing Portal, where both mouse buttons fire different portals, and then try playing the Flash game, in which Q and E fire one color each of the portals, the left mouse button fires alternating portals, and right click opens the useless Flash menu.
    • Or go from HL: 2 to ordinary Half-life. You're being machine gunned, you want to sprint into shotgun range, you press shift... and start walking very slowly.
  • For years, Start in the Pokemon games opened the menu, and an inventory item could be assigned to the Select button as a shortcut. Diamond and Pearl changed this completely; Start and Select are not used, the X button opens the menu, and the Y is the shortcut button. Damn You Muscle Memory will inevitably occur when switching between Diamond and Pearl and any previous-gen Pokemon game on a Nintendo DS.
    • There is at least an option to reenable Start as a menu button.
    • Diamond and Pearl also messed with the battle screen so that you no longer pressed left+down to run, adding hours to the time I spent getting away from Zubats.
    • Start and Select are on the left beneath the D-pad for the Game Boy Advance, or on the right and above the four button on the original DS, or on the right beneath said buttons on the DS lite. Not so bad in a Pokemon game, though you can reach for start on the right, then start on the left, then X on the right, but if you're playing any action games that have healing items available in the start menu...
    • Another example is your bag. Once upon a time, you could scroll quickly through your items using the arrow buttons. Now the arrow buttons move as quickly as a fat kid playing in mud and you have to use the touch screen to rotate a pokeball. And it takes FOREVER when you need something from the bottom of your bag and you have an assload of items.
      • This was avoided in the old games by having a cap of how many items you could keep in your bag. Any others could be stored on the player's section of the PC. Now, if you want to store items so the scroll list isn't as daunting, you have to attach them to pokemon, which can make finding a stored item difficult and irritating.
      • If you press Select to move an item, you can scroll much faster through the list, even faster than you can spin the poké ball. If you press B when you arrive where you wanted to go in the list, you'll stay where you are and the item won't be moved. Sadly, T Ms and berries, being numbered, can't be moved this way.
  • Happens quite a bit on driving games. Go from playing any Grand Theft Auto game after III to Gran Turismo, and you'll find yourself trying to look behind with L2 and R2 at the same time, and braking while trying to hit the reverse.
    • That and the fact that reversing in the GT series requires you to hold square to brake until you stop, then hold triangle to actually reverse, in contrast to just about every other driving game ever, where you just hold square.
  • In Famicom Wars / Advance Wars, you hit the primary key on an empty square to get the end-turn menu, because the series started on button-limited consoles (NES). Disgaea, on the other hand, started on the PlayStation, so it has a dedicated menu button. Going from playing Advance Wars: Dual Strike on the DS to playing Disgaea on the PSP is nice and confusing. Thankfully, they're both turn-based games, so you don't get killed because you're hitting the wrong button.
  • As another Strategy example, after playing X-Com, much difficulty will be had in other games of similar design, like Rebel Star and UFO: Alien Invasion due to the similar weapons names, differences in stats and AI, and the subtly different controls and mechanics involved. Expect much cursing as a soldier who'd normally survive in X-Com somehow gets picked off in UFO.
  • The Looking Glass sneak-em-up games Thief: The Dark Project and its sequel The Metal Age allowed the player to save their key bindings under a specific name. It also came with several popular sets already pre-installed. These had names such as "Quake" and "Half-Life" mimicking the controls in those games.
  • The first two Age Of Empires could be played with one mouse button (C&C Style), or two (Warcraft/Starcraft style). Age of Mythology had only the two-button option.
  • Comparing trying to make units do something in Starcraft/Warcraft and Age of Empires to accidentally deselecting them in C&C Red Alert 2 at least, the left mouse button and right mouse button got switched.
  • Most RTS games have a technique that lets you save a selected group of units with Ctrl-1 (etc.) and then just hit 1 to call them up again. Total Annihilation had this, except that you have to hit Alt-1 to call them up again, which is an awkward and scarcely used combination. So many people complained about pressing numbers out of habit and getting nothing that Cavedog changed it in the last patch before the company went bust.
    • TA uses LMB= Move, attack, reclaim, what have you. RMB= Deselect current unit or group. Spring, the 3d remake for people too poor to upgrade their computers for Supreme Commander, reverses this.
  • Dance Dance Revolution and Pump It Up are two Rhythm Games which are played by stepping in arrows, but the disposition and quantity of arrows in each one for songs of seemingly similar levels can be very different. Most notably PIU introduces mines and hand plays much earlier.
    • Even more notably, PIU's arrows themselves are on the dance-pad equivalent locations of the 1-3-5-7-9 keys of a standard keypad, whereas DDR's arrows are where the 2, 4, 6, and 8 would be.
  • Mega Man ZX and Mega Man Zero. While both games have customizable controls, the default set for ZX maps the attack button from Zero as the jump button and the jump button to the OIS System. Given that the latter uses a gauge, this can get frustrating very quickly.
    • Similarly, Mega Man X has the dash button in the same place as ZX's OIS System.
  • Any number of Jamma platform games, where you have a button for jump and one for fire. Swapping between the two control layouts is frustrating.
  • Although not messing with the interface, Mario Kart takes full advantage of this by including "Mirror Mode". It's the hardest difficulty level, and the only difference between it and the next one down is that all the tracks are flipped horizontally; forcing the player to relearn the courses and make left turns where they previously took rights, and vice-versa.
  • Any 3D game with camera control, because both X and Y axes can either be inverted or not - and many games don't allow you to change this setting, while others only allow you to change one axis.
    • This is confounded further as different games differ on what they consider to be 'normal' and 'inverted'.
  • Some early games that used isometric views had trouble getting the keyboard (or, I suppose, joystick) control straight. It is somewhat weird to press "up" only to have the character move to the top right direction. Examples include Q-Bert and Cadaver.
  • A number of fighting games have similar control schemes but radically different systems and methods. There's no way in which you can suck at Guilty Gear that cannot be aggravated by having spent a long time playing Bleach: Blade of Fate.
    • Going from Melty Blood's four or five button setup to other, similar games can have similar results, from the merely annoying (Arcana Heart, with extremely different non-attack buttons) to the aggravating (Fate/Unlimited Codes, where the combo system tends to leave one open to counterattack).
  • A rare example of muscle memory failure within a game: in Achaea, there are multiple worldwide chat channels. Each message typed is directed according to the prefix at the start. This can lead to players getting used to automatically rattling off their favourite channel's prefix - which is fine... until they're trying to say something private, and forget not to do it.
  • Several straight iterations of the Playstation(2/3) versions of football/soccer games FIFA and Winning Eleven have had identical default control schemes....EXCEPT that the "shoot" and "cross" buttons are reversed. Cue a patient 20-pass move to get your player through on goal, and then facepalm when he crosses instead of shooting.
  • The Touhou fighting games Immaterial and Missing Power versus Scarlet Weather Rhapsody; the control schemes and sprites are just similar enough for you to be familiar while still being different enough that some controls are forgotten.
    • And if you played the former a lot, good luck figuring out the latter's air dash controls. Ever.
    • Also, if you try switching between the shooters the fighters, it's not uncommon to press Shift and wonder why your character's not using physical attacks (shooters use Shift/X/Y for control, fighters use Z/X/C).
  • Namco switched two buttons between Ace Combat 5 and Ace Combat Zero: The select button switched weapons and the square button toggled the minimap in Ace Combat 5 and vice versa in Ace Combat Zero. X does the same as Zero.
    • Try going from Ace Combat 5 to AC 6. For the most part the controls are the same...except the "change to special weapons" and "display map" buttons are swapped.
      • Try Ace Combat 6 to Tom Clancy's HAWX. In AC 6, A is cannon and B is missile. In HAWX its the other way around. Countless missiles were wasted.
    • Between 4 and 5, down on the D-pad changed camera view for 4, but 5 uses R3. Down on the D-pad for 5 affects the order given to the wingmen, while R3 for 4 turns the camera to be face-on with the plane and thus allow the player to see behind the plane.
  • The Metal Slug titles use the 'Fire' button to confirm all selections on menus. In the PS 2 ports, this is the 'Square' button. Nearly every other game on the system uses the X.
  • While nowhere near as bad as the other examples on this page, as it has no effect on gameplay, but it's still quite jarring to go from playing Super Robot Wars to Advance Wars, as SRW has your character shown on the right and the enemy on the left during battle screens, while the opposite is true of the other series.
    • What's more, cities are the means of healing units in Advance Wars. In SRW, they *might* do that, on certain levels.
  • Another example of this happening within the same game is World Of Warcraft. My main is a healing-specced Shaman. When I rolled a Rogue alt, I would often press the "2" key when a fight started going south. On my Shaman, that's where the "Healing Wave" spell is, but it was obviously something different for my Rogue. This has led me to saying "Oh fuck" and dying more times than I care to remember.
  • Go from Disgaea to Phantom Brave, the End Turn command goes from the triangle button menu to the X button menu.
  • The Street Fighter series has you hold the opposite direction (backwards) to block. The Mortal Kombat series has a block button.
  • In Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, the C button sheaths your sword. In Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, C throws your alternate weapon, and there is no "sheath sword" button.
    • Well technically you are sheathing the weapon into an enemy... or a wall.
  • The changes between Homeworld and Homeworld 2 can be very irritating. Homeworld uses the left mouse button for selection and actions. Homeworld 2 uses left for selection and right for commands. It's also frustrating to forget that you can't pan in Homeworld, where you could in Homeworld 2.
  • DJ Max Portable 2 is a rhythm game; in 4 button mode the middle columns use the 'upmost' buttons on both sides of the PSP, and in 6 button mode the middle columns use the right button on the d-pad and the left button on the right. Moving from 4 to 6 was annoying because when I swapped from one middle column to the other I kept trying to hit the up button instead of the central one, and if it went one column outward again I'd be hitting the outer button. I drilled it into my head eventually, though.
  • Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft consoles all have a X button. It is in a different position on each console.
    • To make this simple to understand, the SNES (and NDS) buttons reading clockwise from top are X A B Y, while Xbox and Dreamcast are Y B A X.
    • Taken to the extreme by the Gamecube: not only are all of the buttons in a different place, but they are irregularly sized and placed in an irregular arrangement. Y and X are pushed over as the no-longer-round top and right buttons, B is the smaller round button to the bottom left, and A is the bigger round button in the middle.
      • To make things worse, if you try and play a Super Nintendo game on the Wii Virtual Console with a Gamecube controller, the buttons are the same for each letter, not button placement. The SNES X becomes the GCN X, which makes certain games completely impossible. Take Contra 3 for example where Y shoots, B jumps, and A uses bombs... yeah just try jumping and shooting with that big bomb button in the way. The controls have no customization options as well, so you better own a classic controller.
      • Though games with custom controls like Super Metroid made the GC controller more bearable.
  • The Xbox Live Arcade version of Ikaruga alters some enemy placements and bullet patters. Not a big deal if you're just casually romping through the game, but when you're trying to go for those S++ ranks...
  • NES Shoot Em Ups Sky Shark and 1943. The former uses B for bomb and A for fire, and the latter flips them around.
  • Variation in Bionic Commando Rearmed after just about any other 2D platform game. You will instinctively try to jump, despite the complete lack of a jump button.
    • Same for the original Bionic Commando.
  • Tales of Innocence looks and handles not unlike Tales of Symphonia in battle, but Innocence takes a page from Abyss's book and allows the player character to free-run by holding R.
  • A typical Beatmania IIDX cabinet has the turntable on the left side of the keys for player 1, and on the right for player 2. Now, play on one side for a few weeks, then try playing on the other.
  • In certain emulators, pressing the "Esc" key will pause and pressing it again will un-pause. In Cave Story, pressing "Esc" once will pause and pressing it again will exit the game.
    • That's nothing. Earlier versions of MAME (the original one, not any of the spinoffs) quit immediately if you hit escape, unless you're in a tab menu. In that case, it goes back one menu. On the main tab menu, it closes the menu. Careful not to hit that key too many times, especially because most arcade games do not have any form of game saving aside from save states and high scores, so you're SOL if you quit without making a save state. For those curious, the P key pauses, but it's not absolutely clear without checking the default binds.
    • Even worse combination: From the pause menu, Cave Story uses F1 to go back to the main game and Esc to quit. Spelunky uses Esc to go back to the main game and uses F1 for the SUICIDE COMMAND.
  • Final Fantasy VIII, (unlike almost every other game with a save function) defaults to the last save slot that you saved to, not to the one you loaded from. This makes it ridiculously easy to save in the wrong slot, especially if you're sharing a memory card with someone else.
  • Tetris has many different rotation systems, and you will get screwed over going from one rotation engine to another. Try going from a game that uses the Super Rotation System (the rotation used by all games in compliance with the Tetris Guideline) to say, Game Boy Tetris (pieces lock upon hitting the stack, no wall kicks) or Tetris: The Grand Master (game hits maximum drop speed, but without infinite spin or the kicks necessary to get an I block on the stack to easily slip into a hole one cell wide). Or better yet, play the fan game DTET, which has even freakier block physics, the ability to rotate a piece 180 degrees, and a feature that lets you spawn the next piece right away, and back to any other Tetris.
  • Both the Playstation and X Box controllers (and their next-gen counterparts) have buttons labeled X, but for the PS its on the bottom and for the X Box its on the left. This causes a serious problem with Shenmue style Quick Time Events.
  • The most irritating thing about the PSP game Legend of Heroes IV: A Tear of Vermillion is saving. The confirm button in-game is the cancel button when saving, and vice versa.
  • Resistance: Fall of Man, and Halo and other first person shooters. Resistance was already hard. Stop making me go back over a section because you put 'throw grenade' where 'whack enemy across face until dead' used to be!
    • Especially aggravating because the the player has seconds to sit and realize just how badly they screwed up before the grenade goes off. In an ironic twist, Resistance's grenades have decent and realistic splash damage as compared to other games 'bunny fart' grenades. There's no way in hell your getting away in time even with the three second delay.
  • Try playing this Flash version of Doom if you've ever played the original. I promise you, you'll be shooting at doors and trying to open enemies...repeatedly.
    • I'm used to the xgen version which has d and a as strafe this version though uses a and d as turn
  • Rampage on the PS3 is a perfect port of the old arcade title. But the Square button is mapped to jump and the X button to punch, a total reversal of the system's conventions.
  • Go from Soul Calibur to Super Smash Bros, and you'll find yourself taking lots more damage, because the command for Guard Impact translates into "roll into the attack".
  • The C button of the Sega Genesis controller was used as jump button for just about every Genesis platformer. However, every Simpsons game on the system awkwardly used the B button to jump, and none let you change the button assignments.
  • Moving between roguelikes is always a harrowing experience because all the monsters and classes are different, but this trope makes it even worse. As an example, some of the more crippling differences between ADOM and Nethack, two of the more popular roguelikes:
    • In Nethack, you can use yuhjklbn to move. In ADOM, you have to use the numpad.
    • In ADOM, all equipment management is done on the [i]nventory screen. In Nethack, you have to [W]ear and [T]ake off armor, [P]ut on and [R]emove jewelry, and [w]ield weapons. But in, ADOM, T changes tactics, P, W, and R display different kinds of statistics, and w turns a subsequent move into a long walk.
    • Perhaps the worst: In Nethack, you can to [Q]uiver your missiles to make shooting them easier...but in ADOM, Q is Quit.
  • In most Kirby games, you can rapidly tap A to fly. In Kirby's Adventure, you can only fly by holding Up.
    • Then came Squeak Squad, which made B use your power, while Y and A made you jump.
      • Oh, so that's where the whacked-out control scheme for Kirby Super Star Ultra came from? Oh, and holding Up to fly applies to most early Kirby games; seems like the original Kirby Super Star was the one to introduce mashing the jump button. Though I also recall some games did let you press/hold jump once you'd already pressed Up to inflate.
  • Two common actions in PC FPS games tend to be swapped around for some reason. For example, the "Use" command tends to be either E or F (If you were playing Deus Ex it'd be Right Click, which prompts an immediately remap). The other is crouch, which is mapped to CRTL or C. Another common action, if you're a multiplayer nut, that gets moved around is the chat command and the scoreboard command. For example, in Half-Life games (or games using Gold Src or Source), it's normally T. However in Unreal games, it's R. For scoreboards, it's Tab in Gold Src/Source and F1 in Unreal. Tab in Unreal unfortunately is enter console command.
  • A few RP Gs between the late 90's, early 2000, decided to be different and totally screw up the button mapping for no real reason. Examples:
    • ''Final Fantasy VIII's default mapping was as follows: X - Accept, O - Menu, Triangle - Cancel/Run. Funny when it's predecessor used the Japanese default controls and the successor used the US default controls.
    • All of the Breath of Fire games past 2 use something like: X - Accept, O - Run, Square - Menu, Triangle - Cancel/Special Action. A few of Capcom's other games followed this pattern too.
  • Go play The Elder Scrolls Oblivion on the 360. Now go play Fable 2. Try to open your menu screen in the middle of a crowded town square. Lemme know what happens. If people aren't running away from you scared, and the menu screen pops up... you did it right.
  • In Japan, the standard for Playstation game menus is O to select or confirm, and X to go back or cancel. In North America, the standard is X for select/confirm and triangle for back/cancel.
    • Very confusing for the Gretzky NHL (2005) port on the PSP at least, in which in-game menu navigation uses X for enter and triangle for back, while the system menus (which do pop up in-game when loading or saving stuff) are X and O.
  • Dance Dance Revolution in particular has multiple menu control schemes for different platforms. For examples:
    • Arcade: Left triangular button to go up or left, right button to go down or right, square button to confirm. Hold both left and right buttons then press square button to sort songs (some versions only require left + right) or go back at options menu. Down arrow twice to increase difficulty, up arrow twice to decrease difficulty. Right arrow twice to switch to edit data for currently highlighted song, left arrow twice to back out of edit data selection. To access options menu, hold square button when confirming a song selection; exiting the options menu starts the song.
    • PS 2 (Japan, DDR EXTREME and older): Left to go up or left, right to go down or right, O or Start to confirm, X to go back or toggle in and out of edit data selection, hold X to quit. Up twice to decrease difficulty, down twice to increase difficulty. Hold O or Start when confirming song to access options menu, and exiting the options menu starts the song.
    • PS 2 (Japan, DDR SuperNOVA and newer): Same as above, but to access the options menu, move difficulty selection past the bottom of the list and hit confirm while difficulty is on "Options". Exiting the options menu kicks you back to the Song Select menu. Edit data is usually in its own folder.
    • PS 2 (US): Same as PS 2, Japan, SuperNOVA and newer, except X or Start to confirm, triangle to go back.
  • In the first Drakengard, the circle button summons an ally, while the triangle button is the magic attack. Simple enough. However, in the sequel allies are summoned from the "weapon wheel" (pressing R2 and selecting their weapon), so the circle button is magic, and the triangle button is an upward slash attack. This can cause frustration when playing the first game after the second and summoning allies by mistake (mostly because there is a time limit to using them).
  • I hope you didn't play through Resident Evil 4 just before 5 came out. Your shoot and reload keys have been swapped.
    • Oh, its even worse than that. The standard control set (type D!) has you aim with left trigger, shoot with right trigger, and you STRAFE if you hit left or right.
    • Or played RE 4 for the Gamecube then switched to the Wii version, more bullet wasting in a game where no bullets=a quick death
  • I just bought Samurai Shodown 2 on the Wii Virtual Console, and in my naivete got the Classic controller. It wouldn't be so bad if we could remap the buttons from those old games, but here SS 2 shows two problems. One was the original Street Fighter-like attacks. Six levels, but four buttons, so if you want the heavy shot you hit both slash or both kick. Well, that's true to the original. But then the kick and punch buttons were reversed, causing..issues.
  • I was incredibly thrown off when, in Sonic Unleashed, the Homing Attack was changed from the A button to the X button (going by 360 controls), and know a few people who also found the sudden change rather jarring.
  • Try swapping between Jak And Daxter and Ratchet And Clank games without tinkering with the controls. It'll cost you a fair amount of Ratchet ammo, because you'll be using the Jak punch button to shoot, and you'll crouch every time you try to fire with R1 if you're up to Jak II.
  • If you didn't really pay attention to the swoop race controls in Knights Of The Old Republic and are used to driving games where you hold down a button until your thumb hurts to accelerate...yeah, you're gonna lose.
  • Space sims don't all use the "like an airplane In Space" model of Wing Commander, X-Wing, and the like. In more realistic games that have at least make a passing nod to Real Life physics. For those who use both methods, depending on the game, it can be confusing to attempt a maneuver in one Game Engine physics model, while actually using the other model.
  • Spyro the Dragon. It used to be that Square was Charge and Circle was Breath ability.They change it almost every game.In Legend of Spyro, R1 is charge, Square is breath and Circle is Melee combat.
    • In A Hero's Tail, they didn't even give you the nice fancy extra things to take the place of these buttons and give a reason for moving them - they just switched the charge and breath. For no freakin' reason.
  • Beware which position you keep the save files in. Godfather for the XBOX. Game 1 for one annoying playthrough was in Slot 4. So many dead people. Game 2 was in Slot 1, played in the awesomely fun style of 'Be so awesome, everyone agrees to what you say'. Decided to play annoying character after long stint of not playing. Went to save and muscle memory had me save right over the one save file. Of course, if I had two save files of each game like I usually do...but no. That'd make sense. And yes, I liked the playthrough better where I didn't shoot everyone. It surprises me too.
  • So how many people, when returning to Golden Eye for the N64, switch the controls to 1.2, and move with the D-pad, so you can play it like a modern shooter?
  • In Red Alert 2, the "S" key is "Stop". In Homeworld, double-tapping the "S" key is "Scuttle".
  • Ape Escape. Thanks to the goofy marketing gimmick (the use of the original Dualshock controller), the X, circle, square, and triangle buttons are mapped to selecting gadgets, and jumping is mapped to R1. Camera controls are mapped to the D-pad (meaning you can't rotate the camera and run at the same time). Go on, play Ape Escape and then play any other platformer on any Sony system. You will die many, many times.
    • And then the PSP has X as jump (thankfully) and gadgets as the other three buttons, but the player still can't easily rotate the camera and move at the same time.
  • More of a 'Damn you ingrained response' situation, but it turns out going straight from Swat 4 to Call Of Duty 4 is a bad idea, regardless of the identical numbering. Having your default response to a hostile be 'Shout compliance, shoot to scare' rather than 'kill em' doesn't work too well when F is now use and enemies don't surrender.
  • Between two of the Splinter Cell games, they decided to change the "hanging from a pipe" controls. Everywhere else, jump was still jump and crouch was still crouch. When hanging from a pipe, where you once had to press crouch to jump down, or jump to pull your legs up, you now had the choices to crouch against the pipe or jump off... to your inevitable doom, as you shout "Don't jump in the sea! Why would I want you to jump in the sea!?!
  • If you have a Game Cube, and you enjoy action-adventure games of a persuasion similar to The Legend Of Zelda, heed this advice: playing Star Fox Adventures and then going straight to playing Beyond Good And Evil (or vice versa) is very unwise. Why?
    • Both games feature staff-based combat. However, the "Attack" button (as well as the "break crates" button) in Beyond Good and Evil is "A." It's "B" in Star Fox Adventures. The "dodge" command is similarly swapped. Also, both games use entirely different styles of combos.
    • The action-adventure-game-standard forward roll is X in SFA. In BG&E, X is mapped to item use, and B is a forward roll.
    • The Z-button enters first-person view in both games. However, to fire a projectile attack in first-person, you press B in BG&E. In SFA, you press Y.
    • In BG&E, R is "run." In SFA, R is "stop dead in your tracks (to shield)."
    • You select items and change the one you have set with the C stick in SFA. In BG&E, you use the D-pad.
    • Finally? In SFA, your NPC partner controls are mapped to a menu. In BG&E, they're hard-coded to the Y button and context-sensitive. While you can set a partner command to the Y button in SFA, it remains the same, regardless of context. The Y button in SFA can also be used for items (which are always set to X in BG&E).
      • So do yourself a favor—either put some time between each of these games, or don't play the 'Cube version of BG&E if you've been playing SFA, or else your fingers will hate you.
  • Switching between Animal Crossing: Wild World and the DS game Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times can cause some serious awkwardness in the An Interior Designer Is You segments. In Animal Crossing, the A button moves and flips furniture, as well as activates certain items. Others (like chairs and beds) can be used simply by walking into them. The B button picks up furniture. In Magician's Quest, though, the A button picks up furniture, while the B button is the one used to move and flip it. To make it more confusing, the Y button is used to activate it (such as opening dressers), and to sit in chairs or lie down on beds.
  • Most games use the X button to confirm, the O button to back out of a given screen; Xenosaga flips the two, resulting not only in moments of confusion while playing but also similarly irritating mixups while playing other games. Also, the Save Points and Menu? Reached with the Triangle button.
  • Jade Empire's controls reset whenever the player runs the game. This is incredibly annoying since any custom scheme has to be remapped every time, and because the game is so old, it will never be patched.
  • Red Alert 3 has a control scheme different from all other titles of the series (including Generals), that makes the right-click do something else than simply deselecting... And is different from Blizzard games too.
  • Play a Valve shooter, any Valve shooter, after playing Left 4 Dead. Whoops! I just blew myself up with a grenade while trying to punch a Combine soldier with my MP7!
  • In the Mario series, A is usually used for jump. However, many DS Mario games use B to jump and A to attack/throw fireballs, meaning that someone coming from Super Mario Galaxy to say, Super Mario 64 DS, or from a past Mario game can seriously end up slightly confused playing a DS port/series game. Yoshi's Island is pretty much under this as well, the original (at least the GBA port) used A to jump, B to eat enemies and R to throw eggs. DS sequel uses B to jump, A to throw eggs and Y to eat enemies. Particularly problematic if the player forgets and picks a tough level to randomly play in either of said games. However, the player can change Yoshi's Island DS controls to the GBA remake's layout.
  • For a devoted player of Timesplitters 1 and 2, picking up Mercenaries 1 or 2 is especially painful. Timesplitters uses R2 for main fire, while Mercenaries uses R1 to fire and R2 is change weapon. Timesplitters is an FPS, and Mercenaries is a TPS, so there's no problem... Until the first sniper mission, because using the rifle switches to a first-person camera.
    • Let's not forget Timesplitters 2 and Timesplitters: Future Perfect for the Gamecube, in which Future Perfect decided to swap many of the controls in the map editor, even though they function nearly exactly the same, feature-wise. They really didn't even add any new controls, just moved them around... it's very disorienting, making me spend double the time on my maps in Future Perfect because I end up having to repeat so much because I've deleted/moved rooms when I was just trying to select them.
      • They also removed the secondary fire button (making you actually have to switch to secondary mode on weapons) and replaced it with grenade throw...
  • Kingdom Hearts manages to use three different camera control schemes in all three PS 2 games that have been released to date, as well as three different battle schemes (although KH 1 and KH 2's are relatively similar).
    • The final boss of Kingdom Hearts II has a final attack you must alternate pressing X and Triangle to defend against. Everything else in the game uses Triangle.
    • On top of that, when Kingdom Hearts came out, the only other real Squaresoft action-RPG (not counting the RPG minigame in Ehrgeiz) was Vagrant Story. The movement controls are the same. The camera controls are exactly flipped.
  • Play Resident Evil 2 or 3 on the PSX. Now, play Code Veronica X on the PS 2. Just so you know, that button you are hitting to open the inventory does the same as the X button. Its start now, so the only way your are NOT going to be disoriented is if you JUST came off Resident Evil 1.
  • A good way to start an argument on an indie game design forum is to put the jump/shoot functions on 'Z' and 'X' "backwards". Which way is considered backwards? Whichever way you're using. Do yourself a favor and just make the controls remappable.
  • Play a shooter on the PC. Note the control mapping. Now, play System Shock 2. E is now "lean right", crouch is now X, and right click uses. As if the ship wasn't bad enough, now you have the control setup against you, too.
    • Lo-lo-l-look at you-ou, h-hacker. A ppp-pathetic creature of meat and bone, pa—aa-panting and sweating as you r-run through my options s-s-zzz-screen. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal control layout?
  • You can edit the control scheme for the original PS 1 version of Tales Of Destiny, but its default setting has O as select/attack and X as cancel/special skill- the opposite of every other Tales game released in America on a Sony console.
  • The X Box controller's have two buttons, black and white, and every controller has them in radically different places. My personal favourite was they were over the triggers, on either side. For this reason, someone using this will use triggers with their middle fingers, and use their index fingers for the black and white buttons. However, on other controller designs, they can be on the lower left, lower right, upper right, or possibly elsewhere.
  • In Half Life and related games on PC, "e" uses items and Space jumps. The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion has otherwise very similar controls, but those two keys have their functions swapped.
  • Fallout 3 especially, for it runs on the same engine as Oblivion (and the rest of the controls are the same).
  • Play Resident Evil 4 a lot using the sniper rifle. Notice how you zoom in using the c-stick and use the y-button to open up your inventory. Now play Killer7 and use the sniper pistol. The y-button is used to zoom in a pre-set distance, but that's no problem. Unfortunately the c-stick is used to reload, which is a fairly lengthy process. Not fun when you're in a tough fight.
  • Play any of the Prince of Persia Games with the original Prince, then go to another game, and try not to press the rewind button.
  • This was endemic enough among the DOS Side Scrollers that games assigned jump to up, space, Z, X, control, and shift, and shoot to any of those except up.
  • This trope can cause Fatal Frame players to panic when switching from the first game to the second (or vice-versa), especially when the ghosts manage to come right up to you as you try to figure out just which button is for raising the camera.

Non-Game Examples
  • TV and DVD player remotes can vary drastically between different brands — not just in layout, which is frustrating enough, but even in how correspondingly labeled buttons behave.
    • What is the "Top menu" button anyway? How is that different from the plain Menu button which is more used? Or, sometimes, the regular menu button is above left of the arrow buttons, and sometimes it's on the above right.
  • The standard TiVo remote control and the DirectTV-branded version are identical in all respects other than markings — and the placement of two buttons. One of them turns your TV off.
  • Then there's the buttons on the front of the set. Apparently some brands put Power on the right end of the row rather than the left. Um, okay... why?
  • Macintoshes use the open Apple (A.K.A.: Command) key as their standard "meta" key for keyboard shortcuts, while Windows spreads most of the same shortcuts between Control and Alternate. Home/End goes to the start/end of a line in Windows, but to the beginning/end of a document on Macs (Apple-Left/Right goes to the start/end of a line.) Damn them.
  • Any switching between different keyboard layouts, especially where the key printing and system setup differ will be extenuatingly frustrating. This is most noticeable in non-alphanumeric characters, obviously.
    • This is just one of the reasons why the "Dvorak" keyboard layout has never really caught on; everyone's too used to the standard "QWERTY" layout.
      • Well, everyone except those who are used to "QWERTZ" or "AZERTY".
  • It's fairly common for small laptops to have slightly smaller keyboards (90% size or similar). It's amazing how difficult this apparently small change can make it, especially when one is a reasonably fast typist on normal keyboards.
    • Relatedly, even the resistance of the keys can affect your typing. When switching to a less resistant keyboard, it's easy to end up holding the button down too long. Switching to a more resistant keyboard makes it likely that some keys won't be pressed down hard enough.
  • Western comics read left to right, and manga reads right to left.
    • The same problem occurs to students of the language. Reflexively, we Westerners start at the top left. New students of Chinese (in its many forms) and Japanese wind up staring at the end of a piece of writing at times.
  • Most vehicles with automatic transmissions have a brake pedal that's one-third-again to twice as wide as that provided on manual versions, with the extra width going well into the zone where the clutch pedal would be. Result? If you're used to Driving Stick but occasionally drive automatics, you will clip the brake pedal while going down for the clutch that isn't there, at least once.
  • The Wikimedia software used by That Other Wiki is so all-pervasive that many editors automatically start using its formatting tags on Wikis using non-standard software... like TV Tropes Wiki. And we have a trope for that.
    • And of course it works the other way around, if you've spent enough time on here.
      • And it only gets worse the more types of wiki-like software you use. TiddlyWiki, for instance, formats wikiwords as [text|page to send to] (only with double brackets, obviously), which is the exact opposite of most other Wikis.
  • Okay, Tropers, 'fess up. How many of you start looking for the "Edit" button on non-editable web pages when you find an annoying, easily correctable spelling or grammar error?
  • Often happens to pianists who switch between full sized pianos and small keyboards. Whilst the size of the keys may only differ slightly, it's enough to throw you off completely.
    • Pianists also must deal with the differences between individual pianos. Using one piano while practicing at home and another for a performance is really hard without adapting to the new piano. Especially differences in resistance in the keys throws you off.
      • Differing resistances between pianos is nothing compared going from practicing on a full piano (with very resistant keys) to playing a keyboard (with unweighted keys.) The upside is that you can then play much faster on unweighted keys if you practice with weighted ones.
  • An ancient example: in the 80s, the prominent text editor was WordStar, which defined several standard controls that the present Windows editing controls are based on, such as WASD. Their scheme was based on control+letter for functions, and interestingly was written before cursor arrows became prominent on keyboards. Then in the late 80s / early 90s, the upcoming text editor was WordPerfect. WP took advantage of the rapidly expanding computer market to push their own standard instead of supporting existing ones. The result is that anyone familiar with WS is completely incapable of handling WP, and vice versa. F1 for help? Nope, that's F3. ^Q for quit? No, better try F7. And so on and so forth. The scheme relies on control/alt/shift+F1-F10 for literally everything. About a decade later, Microsoft pulled the same trick with expanding markets to push the Word standard, but at least that one is comprehensible to a novice.
    • WordPerfect's keyboard shortcuts were so complex (and, at times, unintuitive) that there were overlays one could put above one's function keys as a reminder of which key combinations did what.
  • Non-Home editions (which continue to imitate Windows 95) of Windows NT-based Windows OSes made CTRL+ALT+DEL act differently. Instead of bringing up the task manager by default like "DOS-based" versions of Windows, they bring you to a "lock out" menu, where you can choose to lock the computer, open task manager, switch users, etc. CTRL+SHIFT+ESC brings up the Task Manager on all Windows NT based computers. Also this works sometimes on public computer when CTRL+ALT+DEL is blocked and the admin had an oversight.
  • Some keyboards have an extra [| \] key just to the left of the Z key, which unfortunately takes up half of where the left Shift key should be. As if one [| \] key wasn't enough. \try hitting the left \shift key on those keyboards and not accidentally typing like that.
    • There also have been keyboards where the left half of the space bar is replaced with an extra backspace key. This does not refer to ergonomic keyboards.
      • The person who thought that one up will be subject to a nasty accident involving as many of those keyboards that haven't been obliterated by their users already, and the contents of the "ergonomics" section of several well-stocked booksellers.
  • The new color scheme for Troper Tales pages. On the main wiki, available links are in blue and links to pages not made yet are in red. On Troper Tales, it's the other way around.
  • Back to automotive examples: anyone who has a regular, daily commute will, at least occasionally, get in the car to go somewhere in the evening or on the weekend — and automatically start going to work.
    • And one more - most cars have the indicator stalk on the side of the steering wheel opposite the gear lever (theoretically to share out the work of changing gears and indicating, although that's less of a problem with automatics). This isn't normally swapped when a car is changed to right or left-hand drive - with the result that most English and Japanese cars have indicators on the right, and American and European cars have them on the left. Cue starting one's windscreen wipers before changing lanes...
      • Most, if not all French cars This Troper has driven had the indicators on the right, while the German cars had them on the left. As far as I can remember that has been so even with cars that are now half a century old.
      • Speaking of windshield wiper switches, some cars have them laid out with "off" as the uppermost position, others have "off" as the lowest one, with seemingly no rhyme or reason as to which is which. Oh, and most left-hand-drive Japanese cars do have a standard LHD control stalk layout, not sure about British ones.
      • Not to mention older cars that put the gear shift on a steering wheel-mounted stalk. That's not just embarrassing; it's dangerous!
      • Bah. If you think steering column gear shifts are dangerous, maybe you shouldn't be in traffic.
    • And just try having a different gear layout in a manual car than you're used to...
      • Or motorcycle. Most modern ones have a sequential gearbox that has the (foot-operated) lever on the left, with 1-neutral-2-3-4-(5)-(6), moving the lever up to select a higher gear. The right foot operates the rear brake. Some not quite that modern ones have the lever on the left but the sequence reversed (down to select higher), and a fair number of older British bikes have the lever on the right (with either pattern), the rear brake on the left.
    • Using a right hand drive car while in Ireland, this continental European troper occasionally found the window crank when he reached for the shift stick. Also, to look in the mirrors would normally mean left and slightly down, right and slightly up. That didn't quite work either.
  • The MIDI composer Anvil Studio uses Ctrl+S not to save (like every single other Windows program), but to create a new audio track.
  • Black And White features gesture recognition, including the ever useful ability to shake your mouse left and right to get rid of whatever special mode or spell you have attached to the cursor/hand of god. A decent number of people have tried to do the same thing to get out of zoom mode while using Microsoft Word.
    • The majority of the game is controlled by combinations and gestures of the right and left mouse buttons. Imagine the frustrations caused when B&W2 switched the function of those two.
  • Windows: Ctrl-C is copy-to-clipboard. Unix: Ctrl-C is terminate process. Oops!
    • Ctrl-C is terminate process at shell prompts in both operating systems, and is copy-to-clipboard in GUI applications (at least most of the time in modern Unix applications). It's quite consistent between the two operating systems, but still well falls under this trope (just try copying from a Windows cmd shell, or worse; a UNIX ssh session running on a Windows desktop).
      • Ctrl-Insert and Shift-Insert for copy and paste, respectively, tend to work fine both in GUI apps and in shells. Microsoft has discarded any reference to these, because they originate in the bastard child they had with IBM: OS/2.
    • Similarly, ctrl-z is undo in Windows. Except in Emacs (even the Windows versions) where ctrl-z is minimize-window.
    • In Mac OS' Finder, Cmd+D creates a duplicate copy of a file. In Windows Explorer, Ctrl+D deletes a file.
      • In Finder Enter renames a file. Instead of opening it, which is obviously Cmd+O.
  • Windows Command Prompt: dir to see the contents of a directory. Unix Command Prompt: ls to see the contents of a directory. This becomes very frustrating when using the command prompt to navigate files in Unix and then trying the same in Windows. It's made slightly better because dir is a valid command in the Unix Command Prompt. ls shows the directory contents with formatting. dir does it without formatting.
    • Only because some distros cater to Windows users by aliasing "dir" to "ls", possibly with some default options. And if "ls" shows formatting, it's aliased too. Futhermore, there is no "Unix Command Prompt". It's a) called a shell, and b) can be one of several (e.g. sh, csh, ksh, bash, or zsh, whichever one you prefer).
  • Switching between standard and ergonomic keyboards, even if they have the same key layout (i.e. qwerty), can be difficult because of the way the keys are positioned, their sizes, and the elevation of an ergonomic keyboard. Ergonimic keyboards aren't produced very much any more.
  • Modern keyboards have three extra keys: "Wake Up, Sleep, and Power." The "Power" key is located right above the pause key.
    • There was also a keyboard with a Back key above the left arrow, and the forward key above the right arrow. Imagine: You are playing a game on the Internet and want to hit the left arrow key. You accidentally hit the back key. Damn. Now you have to start all over.
  • Also, in Microsoft Word (or the Office software group), sometimes people may find that the text to the right of their cursor suddenly gets eaten up by whatever they're typing next. This is because the Overtype mode often comes on without them knowing they accidentally hit the Insert key, which is right next to the Backspace key. Good thing at least one keyboard type doesn't have an Insert key (except for zero when Num Lock is off).
  • English-style riding (also known as classical or European style riding, and is the type seen at the Olympics) places a lot of emphasis on the rider looking like they're doing nothing at all. This isn't a factor in Western riding. So, to use a bending (weaving in and out of poles/around barrels) exercise as an example, an English-style rider will touch the horse's left flank very gently with their heel to get them to turn to the left, and increase the pressure depending on how much of a turn is required (pressing firmly with the calf will usually get a well-trained horse turning almost 90 degrees.) In Western style riding, all steering is done with the reins; touching your heels to a horse or applying pressure with your legs will only tell it to move faster.
  • ANY keyboard that has "Fn" where Control is supposed to be.
    • Likewise, keyboard that put caps lock where control should be.
  • Anyone that has ever got used to vim surely has filled lots of files opened in other editors with "jjjjjjjjjjjjjkkkkkkkkkkkkkk<esc><esc><esc>" trying to scoll down.
  • Speed skaters and roller derby players often find that they spend so long going anticlockwise around the track (the direction races and bouts go in) that they stumble over basic footwork when going clockwise. It's very frustrating.
  • Microsoft Word and Hotmail: Crtl+I is italics. Other pages on Internet Explorer, even ones that let you write: Ctrl+I opens the Favourites bar.
    • The same is true of Firefox, too.
  • Microsoft Office products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) use Ctrl+Y to redo, whereas plenty of other programs use Shift+Ctrl+Z.
  • Rare literary example: In Dune, Paul is used to attacking slowly while sword-fighting in order to circumvent the deflector shields that are common in the empire. However, he ends up being a bit sluggish in normal, shield-less combat (at first).

TV Tropes Wiki
  • That "make a to do" button. This Troper keeps hitting it when he means to hit "go to watchlist" which was, previously, the button on the far right.
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