The fan theory about the Switch 2 having the same button layout as the SNES is starting to seem increasingly believable.
Even as Nintendo shoots down multiple Switch 2 rumours, there’s another theory that’s been around for months and which seems so unlikely most fans have dismissed it out of hand. It revolves around the idea that new games keep accidentally showing images of a previously unseen controller layout, which is assumed to be for the Switch 2 – and now it’s happened with two more third party titles.
The theory first arose following the release of footage of the remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (currently the Switch game with the most distant release date) during a recent Nintendo Direct.
In the clip, the normal A, B, X, and Y buttons are shown as red, yellow, green, and blue, as if they’re mimicking the Japanese and European SNES controller. Except The Thousand-Year Door was a GameCube title and never had those colours associated with its controls.
The theory is that the Switch 2, or whatever it ends up being called, will feature face buttons coloured the same as the SNES and that The Thousand-Year Door is already being designed with that in mind, via backwards compatibility (something that Nintendo themselves has hinted the console will have).
The Super Mario RPG remake footage also featured the same colour layouts but since the original was a SNES game, that’s not such a good example.
However, since then there have been two more third party games that also use the same layout, which is where things start to get a bit more suspicious.
They’re not even very high profile games either, so if this does imply that developers have already been briefed on the Switch 2 it suggests it’s not just the big studios.
The first game is Falcom’s The Legend Of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak, which is due out in Japan on February 15.
The other is the recently released Fashion Dreamer, a spiritual successor to the formally Nintendo-published Style Boutique series, which also clearly shows coloured buttons in its screenshots.
To see the same colour scheme being used in non-Nintendo games starts to make the theory seem a lot more believable, and while the colour of the buttons doesn’t matter the implication that even low-profile games will be backwards compatible is certainly welcome news.
Fans have connected the theory with separate rumours from South Korea, which also suggest the Switch 2 will have the same button layout as the SNES and may end up being called the Nintendo Super Play.
Only time will tell if any of that is true but the more screenshots that end up using the same button layout the more convincing it gets.
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