Japanese freeware games and the "Z" and "X" key.

The question has already been hinted on in the title.


How come most japanese freeware games tend to make use of the "Z" and "X" key, the arrow keys and little else. There must be some kind of explanation to this apparant standardisation.

This is entirely speculation, but I recall many games (Western) from the Commander Keen era used CTRL and ALT for controls. Since Windows reserves these keys for special functions, perhaps Z and X are a shift to the nearest available keys?

That's just my guess anyways. And as a note, if you have a joystick/gamepad, most Japanese freeware games will respond to that also, if for some reason you don't like the key setup.

Dunno, but I seem to recall that was pretty common with very old computer games (I'm thinking of 1980s home computers). It must screw up people with azerty keyboards.

ZX Spectrum keyboard

Z and X also seem to be the default keys bound to buttons in some Japanese emulators. I actually prefer them over Control and Alt - besides being the Windows system keys, and the risk of accidentally hitting the Win key, I find Z and X are in a comfortable place to put my hand when playing games. Of course that doesn't matter half the time anymore, because whenever I need a control scheme like that, I just use my gamepad.

Back on my old BBC computer, on space invaders (among other games) Z and X where left and right and SPACE was fire

heh, z & x...strafe left and right

deathbringer said:

Back on my old BBC computer, on space invaders (among other games) Z and X where left and right and SPACE was fire

AH! Someone else had one access to one of those fine machines!
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