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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.

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.

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Examples:

Video Games

• 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.
• 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.
• Metal Gear Solid games have the "Select" and "Go Back" buttons for menus and start screens perfectly reversed from 99% of PS 2 games.
• 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.
  • 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.
• 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.
• 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?
  • Even happens within one game: Snake's medium attacks are much better then his smashes, which sucks for someone who's been playing since Melee and can't figure out how to not smash anymore.
• 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...
• 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.
• 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" 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Dance Dance Revolution and Pump It Up are two Rhythm Games who 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.
• 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, Megaman 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.
• 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.
• 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.
  • 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. This Troper took way too much time on some missions on 6 because I kept bringing up the map when I needed to swap weapons.
    • 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.
• 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. Usually not. And they won't give you an increase in defense either.
• 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 Mortal Kombat series has a block button. The Street Fighter series requires you to hold back to block.
• 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.
• 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.
• More hardware than software-related, but this editor recently got a new keyboard, which he discovered has three extra keys: "Wake Up, Sleep, and Power." The "Power" key is located right above the pause key. After accidentally turning his computer off six times thanks to this key, the editor decided to pry it off of the keyboard.
• 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.
  • One troper has serious problems with Xbox and X Box 360 games in general, because he was practically raised on his SNES and the Xbox family conveniently followed the Dreamcast in swapping the A/B and X/Y buttons on its controllers. Characters in in-game tutorials in X Box games always yell at him for failing because they told him to hit "Y" to do the special move and that's not where Y is. Thankfully, at least Nintendo stuck with its good old SNES-style layout for its Wii Classic controller.
  • 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.
• 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.
  • This troper fell foul to this exact thing. He was attempting to complete the secret level (Which, I might add, it hideously difficult). He'd finally defeated the mini-boss, with very little HP lost. He paused the game for real life reasons before facing the boss. When he came back, he pressed the escape button, meaning to continue, but instead, exited the game.
  • That's nothing. MAME (the original one, not any of the spinoffs) quits 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. I didn't think it was possible to pause at first.
• This Troper has deleted COMPLETED saves in both Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy III just because he forgot to switch over a slot. Thanks Square, you could at least put up an "Are you sure?" screen.
  • Made even more annoying in VIII, since (unlike almost every other game with a save function) it 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.
  • This Troper has accidentally saved over files for games that do have "Are you sure?" screens. Why? Because he trained himself to push the Accept button a second time (or push left and then the Accept button if the "Are you sure?" screen starts out on "No") when saving. Damn You Muscle Memory indeed.
• 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.
• 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.
  • This Troper was equally frustrated by those games in which C was the jump button with no option to change it. His preferred arrangement was A for main attack, B for jump, and C for special attack.
• 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.
• 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 (and this editor keeps thinking you can reload in the game, cue humiliating death). 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.
• 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.
• 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?
• This Troper had an amusing incident while playing Homeworld after playing Red Alert 2. The "Stop" command in RA 2 is the "S" key , while it's the "X" key in Homeworld. Issuing a frantic "Stop" order to my entire fleet in Homeworld, I repeatedly hammered the "S" and promptly ordered every ship I had (except the Mothership) to "Scuttle" (Self-destruct).
  • Also, having done Marching Band, the Step Aerobics for the Wii Fit are painful, as the Balance Board measures when the foot is removed or placed on the Board, instead of when the foot lands, resulting in a forced delay whenever you have to step off, otherwise it occurs too early.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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. This Troper switched his weapon back and forth 3 times before finally pulling the trigger of the rifle.
• This troper knows several people who hate, hate, hate Metroid Prime because the control scheme does not mirror Halo. Nevermind that you can get through the game with quite a lot of grace, nevermind that all your weapons double as tools for exploration, nevermind that you don't have running fights through open maps, nevermind that the environment is as much an enemy as the Space Pirates and that bosses are more like puzzles to be figured out rather than fragged to smithereens, nevermind that enemies can take quite a beating and therefore your best thing to do is to lock on and just keep pounding on them—to them, the game sucks, is trash, got sold for five bucks brand-new, because you can't walk around and aim at the same time. He despairs of their taste.
  • And the same troper in about 8th Grade visited a friend's house and discovered the friend had Sonic 3 & Knuckles on a disc at the computer, the game being a beloved favorite in elementary school. The friend swore blind that the special stages were impossible, but the troper kept trying, eventually realizing that with the normal scheme involving the left hand using the Enter key to jump, and the right hand to turn, he was doing it the opposite of the Genesis layout (right hand to jump, left hand to turn). The problem was corrected by playing with crossed wrists and the friend was forced to concede that the special stages were indeed possible, that Super Sonic was cool, and, after a week, that Hyper Sonic's speed was unholy.
• 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 last time This Troper started playing KH 2 after Re: Chain of Memories, he predicted that he'd spend the first few hours thinking "damn it, where's my deck?" before he readjusted - he was right.
  • Nevermind the button setup in the first game. This troper still can't play the first game (much less any of the others, hasn't tried them) due to the button layout. Quite jarring after all Action-RP Gs that I played on the PS 2 use similar (x is jump, square is base attack) button setups.
  • 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. My friends and I spent a week stuck at that attack alone before looking up a FAQ.
• 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.

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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• An ancient example: in the 80s, the prominent text editor was Word Star, 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 Word Perfect. 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.
  • Word Perfect'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 O Ses 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. This editor found later that CTRL+SHIFT+ESC brings up the Task Manager on all Windows NT based computers. So in order to save time, this editor had to relearn the three finger salute. Also this works sometimes on public computer when CTRL+ALT+DEL is blocked and the admin had an oversight.
• 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...
  • And just try having a different gear layout in a manual car than you're used to...
• 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.
• 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).
  • Similarly, ctrl-z is undo in Windows. Except in Emacs (even the Windows versions) where ctrl-z is minimize-window.
    • Hell, This Troper even instinctively reaches for Ctrl-Z while writing or drawing in real life.
  • In Mac OS' Finder, Cmd+D creates a duplicate copy of a file. In Windows Explorer, Ctrl+D deletes a file.
• 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.

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