If you cast your mind back to 2018 and the release of the excellent Dark Souls: Remastered for Switch, you might remember a tiny issue we (and many other players) had with the game. Oh, for the most part the Switch port of FromSoftware's inscrutable masterpiece was just fine and dandy, but beyond any frame rate hiccups or minor visual disappointments, one issue blighted the game's good name and has continued to do so to this very day.
We're talking, of course, about the use of 'B' to confirm and 'A' to cancel in menu screens. The issue stems from the fact that on PlayStation and Xbox the 'confirm' button ('X' or 'A' on those consoles' respective pads - in the West, at least) sits where Nintendo's 'B' resides at the bottom of the diamond button formation. This has caused headaches in a few games, but none where quite so vexing as the Dark Souls example. The fact that the option to change the confirm and cancel buttons was visible in the menu but inexplicably greyed out made the issue all the worse!
Fortunately, the latest firmware update for your Nintendo Switch has introduced the option to remap any button on your pad and finally gives us the option to play Dark Souls, or more precisely, navigate the game's menus, the way they were meant to be navigated on a Nintendo console, with the 'A' button confirming and the 'B' button cancelling.
If like us you fancy swapping 'A' and 'B', all you have to do is head into the console's settings, scroll down to Controllers and Sensors and select the minty fresh 'Change Button Mapping' option. Here you can remap any of the buttons on your controllers on a per-controller basis. This is particularly handy, as if you have more than one right Joy-Con you'll be able to designate it your Dark Souls Joy-Con and crack it out when you're heading back to Lordran. You're also able to save up to 5 presets, so it's as simple a process as you could reasonably expect.
It should be noted that there are some issues to think about when doing this, though. Firstly, once you've changed the buttons, you'll have reversed their functions for the console's menus, too. This means you'll have to navigate back to the game with care or (and we recommend this in handheld mode) simply use the touchscreen. When returning to your Switch's system menu a prompt informs you that user-defined button mapping is in use and gives you the option to disable it without going through menus again. Handy!
Secondly, swapping these buttons for the in-game menus also swaps them for gameplay. Assuming you've committed the default control layout to memory, you can address this by swapping their functions again (in the game's menus this time) and returning the gameplay buttons to their usual configuration. Ta-da!
The in-game prompts will still be labelled incorrectly, but ignore them and you can imagine that Bandai Namco itself patched in the tiniest of updates and improved your Soulsian experience by a factor of at least 10,000. Our resident Video Producer, the lovely Alex, will certainly be pleased with this new option. Hopefully it's not too late for him...
Yay for accessibility and optional loveliness! It's not ideal, but it's now possible. Will you be using this feature to swap the buttons for Dark Souls on Switch? What other games might benefit from this new feature? Gonna switch 'X' and 'B' for jumping in Splatoon 2? Gonna rejig it to play Animal Crossing one-handed? Let us know below.
Comments 54
Lol. I got used to it eventually
I'm too used to it being the 'wrong' way round!
This is also good news for SAO: Hollow Realization. “A” to talk to NPCs but also to Cancel in the menu was a head scratcher.
I've been use to the wrong way for a long time. It's easy for me because I don't game on other consoles.
Bought the game cuz of its good name, could NOT get into it at all, which was mostly because of the confusing control scheme. This sounds like I could finally get into it. Thanks for the heads up.
The way nature intended is 10fps on Blightown.
I wish Nintendo always had the A button below and to the right of the B button. That's one thing the N64 controller did right.
People tend to complain about that on Nintendo consoles but the position of A being used to confirm has been used on Nintendo systems since the NES and has only been considered an issue since the western PSone games started using X to confirm. Even many Japanese PSone games used O to confirm since it was familiar to them as the controller was essentially a Snes one with two more shoulder buttons. Even today in Japan on the PS4 O is still used as confirm so it only became a western thing and continued to this day on modern systems.
@Zenszulu Also cause of the Japanese marking systems maru (O) and batsu (X) aka correct and incorrect.
My one and only impressive gamer skill is adjusting quick to new control schemes so it wasn't a big deal after a little bit.
In the future, I hope they'll introduce a button remapping option on a per-game basis, rather than a per-controller or system basis.
It's odd cases like this where button remapping shines, but correcting an issue for a single game introduces an issue for every other correct game.
Well done for using the word "blighted"
This would have been great to have around the time this game was released. I already finished Dark Souls and I don't plan on going back to it this soon at least.
A nice feature to have none the less.
@Daniel36 Hope u get on better with it this time. I had a phase of being into them , similar to people who are into music have a kraftwerk phase!. When u learn the game and the best route it is intoxicating, some of the bosses are Hard! Don’t be afraid of using a guide to defeat some and actually where to go in the late game. With all the different weapons and builds it is highly replay able. Some of the YouTube videos are crazy one that stands out from dark souls 2 was the Olympic torch run where they never used a shield! Have fun x x x x x x
@Shiiva As someone who only occasionally fires up my PS4. Playing through FF7R has me frequently mix up whether to use O or X to confirm / cancel.
It would be nice if all consoles were consistent, but nope, they have to mess with us somehow. I'm glad computer OS's don't do this. Imagine if a standard right click required clicking the left mouse button on Linux.
PRAISE THE SUN! Think I'm ready to dive back into my new game + then. That B - A switch bugged me through my entire 60 hour journey.
Never had an issue with Nintendo's button placement, so I won't be making use of this "useful" addition to the system. It's just basic muscle memory. I can alternate between my Switch and my Xbox One with no problems whatsoever.
Nintendo almost lacked in each their game to change controls. Mario Sunshine is unplayble for me due the camera movement with the C button. No option to reverse it and it feels weird and it's not working for me
I think it only took me about 15 minutes to adjust to this? Didnt realize it was causing others fits lol
I didn't even think about this! Thanks NL! You can get used to it after a few minutes but the menu part always gets me, such a mess when I have to act like I'm not playing with a Nintendo controller.
Yep, Dark Souls was the first thing I thought of when hearing about the new feature.
The weird games like Dark Souls which swap A/B for the western release are really bizarre. I guess some devs are too used to Sony practices.
Dark Souls is the first game I thought of with the recent button mapping update. Praise the Sun!!!
However, I don't understand why there was never a game specific update to remedy this issue.
@Stu13 It becomes more of an issue when you change games as the standard on Switch is to confirm with A. You get used to it pretty quick in Dark Souls, but then you start trying to push B for games that require A. And vice versa, of course.
The inability to switch the buttons in the game was maddening. Glad there’s a way now, but Dark Souls should have had it from the start.
@Stu13 It annoyed the crap out of me when the Dark Souls stress test demo came out and was half the reason I didn't buy it (the other half was the difficulty, ha). My colleagues didn't understand my problem with it because they didn't know it's pretty standard that A is OK and B is cancel for Nintendo and didn't believe me when I told them it was so, even though they have Switches themselves.
I believe Shovel Knight had this problem too until the Switch version.
I know I'm weird but I absolutely love the controls being unique in Dark Souls. It makes me more immersed in the game. 🙃
Thank goodness. I have all of the modern systems, and the Switch's switched buttons messes me up.
Sony has one setup for Japan, and the reverse setup for North America. Why can't Nintendo simply do that? Nintendon't. (I'm mostly joking; don't kill me)
@brandonbwii Perhaps, since I played it on 3DS first, but I got used to it pretty quickly.
I even mapped controls in the Switch version to match the 3DS scheme.
This is amazing for the Megaman Zero/ZX collection since Megaman Zero uses the GBA layout which just is not comfortable.
@ThanosReXXX The issue is not with Nintendo’s button placement but with the game in question. But I also don’t have too much of a problem switching.
@brandonbwii Yes, Shovel Knight had the problem on its initial release (Wii U and 3DS at the time) but one of the first updates (if not the first) allowed to change it in the options.
its immensely annoying that Nintendo's traditional select and cancel buttons are switched from PS/Xbox's. Not an easy way to fix it though
@Spanjard I know, but some of the other commenters seemed to imply this, and that is what I also responded to, alongside commenting on the article.
This fix won't satisfy me. Like you said it changes controls in the Switch menu as well, and once again I don't understand why I should take the time to do that when developers are just lazy. I have never seen another game doing that except Battle Princess Madelyn... -_- I've contacted Nintendo, Bandai Namco and Virtuos; nobody cares. And yet it would be incredibly easy to program a fix - I could even do it myself (if I was given the source code of course).
"She pressed A and she went baaaaaaaaack"
More importantly, are we ever getting Dark Souls 2 and 3 on Switch? I was just thinking about this the other day.
@ThanosReXXX Gotcha.
Like others, I got used to it eventually. You don't think about it anymore after a while, but then it's when you go back to play any other game on Switch that you have to revert to how you're used to play. I'd rather get the other Dark Souls games on Switch really XD.
Sounds like alot of hassle for one game. I'll stick with the default setup. I got used to it in the mega man collection on gamecube and i can deal with it now. So could we please get more dark souls on switch? At least complete the trilogy. Surely it can be done.
If only a similar remapping could allow me to use sideways joycon for Lets Go Pikachu (docked mode) 😕 Until they allow full analogue re-orientation that's still a no.
@Mando44646 to be fair, it's the other way around, as Nintendo has been doing this since before Sony and Microsoft even entered the gaming industry. And let's not forget that the PlayStation too was meant to work like that (and still does in Japan), but they swapped the buttons' function for the West for some reason.
@Denoloco Getting a Toxic ailment while being chased by flaming dogs at 10fps. The good, old days.
lol wow talk about cutting corners, that should have never been an issue in the first place!
I'm going to move the run button to ZR for all Super Mario platformers in order to be able to run and jump completely independently without the nonsense of sometimes pushing two buttons at once with my thumb.
@bluesun Isn't that also the standard for Japanese Nintendo games? I think some of them are because they forget to switch them during Western localization like they usually do.
@brandonbwii The Wii U version (at the very least) of "Shovel Knight" still has this issue in some menus of Showdown no matter how you map the controls in-game.
I never could get used to the controls on switch. I had played to many hours of the PlayStation versions
@BulbasaurusRex
Swapping confirm/cancel for the west is a specifically Sony thing.
Nintendo games usually use A=confirm, B=cancel everywhere, so it's usually just devs wrongly applying Sony's button swap that causes the problem.
Japanese Switch Dark Souls uses A=confirm, B=cancel,
Western Switch Dark Souls uses B=confirm, A=cancel.
Japanese Switch Sword Art Online:HR uses A=confirm, B=cancel,
Western Switch Sword Art Online:HR uses B=confirm, A=cancel.
I've even seen some eShop demos which use B=confirm, A=cancel only if the console language is English.
I haven't played Shovel Knight, but I looked up its JP 3DS/WiiU manuals, and it seems Shovel Knight uses A=confirm, B=cancel by default in Japan. (though I don't know if JP versions suffer from similar bugs)
So even Shovel Knight, a western game developed with the buttons backwards, was corrected for Japan.
Will the button remap make me stop dying in the sewers?
@VR32X Unrelated, but the Super Game Boy w/ Castlevania Legends is amazing! I still play that game on my Pocket GB!
@Zenszulu No. SNES used the B and Y buttons as defacto. Hence why on N64 they moved the A button to where the B would be on a N64, and the B button is where the Y button was.
@RootsGenoa if B is select in Dark Souls, why is it a problem in the menu?
@Octorok385 Hail! Thank you. (Horns up / metal fist) I hope we see it in the next Castlevania Collection. You play Dark Souls on Switch by chance?
@BLUESUN: Dang Shovel Knight!? Like many comments above, I have/had begrudgingly gotten used to the 'wrong way' of confirm/cancel over YEARS playing Wii/U/Switch...and then Shovel Knight comes along (Wii U, for me) and says, "No, this is they way it should be...remember, what you were complaining about all those times? We got you, my dude, it's fixed!" Playing King of Cards 4 months ago was "hilariously" retrograde in that department.
So, yeah, button mapping is in many ways a dream come true. A dream I let die around 2014... Now 'East Diamond' is (and should be) Confirm, no matter what system I'm on! Nintendo FOREVER!!
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