Sega, Xbox, Steam - and functionally speaking, even Sony all default to a face button scheme with the action/enter/accept button on the bottom, and cancel/back on the right. Nintendo’s control scheme is really the primary thing that throws a wrench in retro handheld setups. It’s also just a bad layout. X on top? What is that nonsense?


Hard disagree, most people play Nintendo games on retro handhelds. Retro handhelds usually emulate PS1, which also mostly had circle to accept and X to cancel (and still does in Japan). Nobody is emulating xbox games. Following what most people are playing is the right choice, and that’s usually NES/SNES/N64/GBA.
This right here. Nintendo is Japanese, It’s the Japanese layout, just like Sony uses.
Just like Sony uses? Circle being enter/accept and X being cancel/back was the original intention, but that got mixed up in the US almost immediately and it wasn’t long before X became equivalent to A in most games in all regions even on the original ps1. For the vast majority of games, the Sony layout is effectively the same as the Xbox layout, just with idiosyncratic glyphs.
For people that have only played N64 and GameCube, the A button has to be in the south/center, and then the B button somewhere to the left/below.
Nintendo messed up their own user base with the change they made for the classic gamepad in Wii. They definitely pushed me away as a user.