Lefthanded Video Games

[Thad]

So my right thumb is bothering me again, carpal tunnel or whatever consequence of sitting at a keyboard or holding a controller for the better part of the past 35 years. I would like to kick back with a video game but I haven't touched one in like a month. So I thought hey, let's talk about video games that can be played using only the left hand.

So far I've got:

Pac-Man
Suikoden 1&2
Wii Sports (or any other game that just uses the Wii remote one-handed, but I'm not sure I've played any others like that)

And I've got an Xbox 360 and a Kinect and the following games for it:

Kinect Adventures
Star Wars Kinect

(I've also got a CRT TV, so lightgun games are technically a possibility, but I don't know that I really want to haul out the Zapper or the Super Scope.)

Can anybody recommend some lefthanded video games to go with my lefthanded coffee mug?

For now I'm thinking mainly games that are designed to work that way or where the buttons can be trivially remapped to work that way. (Twitch platformers designed to use face buttons are probably not a good answer. I'm sure that, given enough time, I could learn to play Super Mario Bros with A and B mapped to the two left shoulder buttons, but that's probably not an ideal choice.)

[Friday]

Earthbound can be played left hand only, as well as 7th saga. Both games use a simple A/B only rpg setup, and they map accept to L and Cancel to Select as well as A/B.

also,

[Friday]

have you

[Friday]

tried

[Friday]

rotating the

[Mongrel]

Can you play using a mouse with your left hand? I do this sometimes to give my right hand a break [joke goes here fap fap fap].

There's plenty of tactics games like Banner Saga which can be played 1-handed if so.

[Brantly B.]

Pretty much any point and click adventure game.

[JD]

Gnilley

[Thad]

Earthbound can be played left hand only, as well as 7th saga. Both games use a simple A/B only rpg setup, and they map accept to L and Cancel to Select as well as A/B.

Don't I need a menu button too?

I was actually thinking now might be a good time to play Earthbound. I did go ahead and order an ASCII Stick Super L5 (one-handed SNES controller) from eBay. It's coming from Japan so I'm hoping that by the time it gets here I'll be healed up enough not to need it, but this isn't the first time this has happened and I don't expect it'll be the last, so it's probably a good idea to have something like that onhand anyway.

Can you play using a mouse with your left hand?

Short answer is no. Tried it, just don't have the fine motor skills/muscle memory, find it frustrating as hell. It's one more thing to file under "I could probably learn how to do this if I kept doing it long enough, but I'd rather not."

Talked about this a bit back in 2017, the last time I dealt with it.

[Blossom]

Earthbound can be played left hand only, as well as 7th saga. Both games use a simple A/B only rpg setup, and they map accept to L and Cancel to Select as well as A/B.

Don't I need a menu button too?

I was actually thinking now might be a good time to play Earthbound. I did go ahead and order an ASCII Stick Super L5 (one-handed SNES controller) from eBay. It's coming from Japan so I'm hoping that by the time it gets here I'll be healed up enough not to need it, but this isn't the first time this has happened and I don't expect it'll be the last, so it's probably a good idea to have something like that onhand anyway.

For Earthbound, if you press select, it opens a status menu that looks like this.


If you press L while that is open, it opens the full menu.


In menus, Select serves as a cancel, just like B, and L serves as accept, just like A does. If you're just on the regular screen, A opens the menu as well, and L serves as a shortcut talk/check button. It's genuinely fully playable one-handed.

X opens your town map, once you have it, but you can open it from the inventory as well. R rings the bell on your bike, which is nice but not used for anything. Y and Start, I believe, are not used for anything.

[beatbandito]

Here's a playlist of videos from GDQ, all run by HalfCoordinated, who plays with one hand.

[Mothra]

[Thad]

Earthbound can be played left hand only, as well as 7th saga. Both games use a simple A/B only rpg setup, and they map accept to L and Cancel to Select as well as A/B.

Don't I need a menu button too?

I was actually thinking now might be a good time to play Earthbound. I did go ahead and order an ASCII Stick Super L5 (one-handed SNES controller) from eBay. It's coming from Japan so I'm hoping that by the time it gets here I'll be healed up enough not to need it, but this isn't the first time this has happened and I don't expect it'll be the last, so it's probably a good idea to have something like that onhand anyway.

For Earthbound, if you press select, it opens a status menu that looks like this.


If you press L while that is open, it opens the full menu.


In menus, Select serves as a cancel, just like B, and L serves as accept, just like A does. If you're just on the regular screen, A opens the menu as well, and L serves as a shortcut talk/check button. It's genuinely fully playable one-handed.

X opens your town map, once you have it, but you can open it from the inventory as well. R rings the bell on your bike, which is nice but not used for anything. Y and Start, I believe, are not used for anything.

Thanks for the detail. I've started Earthbound a couple times but never really played long enough to settle in and experiment with poking around all the buttons.

I was thinking of the first two Suikoden games (which use L1 and L2 as alternate Accept / Cancel buttons and Select as an alternate Menu button); I wasn't thinking of combining Cancel and Menu but come to think of it that's more or less what the Game Boy Color remakes of the first three Dragon Quest games did.

Changing the subject: It occurred to me that Roguelikes might be a good fit for one-handed play given that they're entirely turn-based, but I've never played a console Roguelike. Are there any that are amenable to one-handed play, or do they all subscribe to the same "use absolutely every button" design strategy as their PC brethren?

[JD]

What about using a fight stick, or pressing the four face buttons of a normal controller with fingers in the manner of a fight stick?

[Thad]

The thought's crossed my mind; I went to Tilt the other day and the arcade games didn't seem to bother me. I'm experiencing some pain in my right index finger too but a round with Metal Slug 4 didn't give me any trouble.

I haven't really had time to experiment any further at home (haven't had much in the way of downtime lately) but I've got an 8bitdo stick that I should be able to make some use of on PC, NES, SNES, and Genesis. Might be worth a shot.

[Silversong]

When I lost use of my right hand to tendonitis for several months in college, I played my friends at Bust a Groove 2, jumping my left hand back and forth between the D pad and the face buttons. This wasn't a good idea so much as sheer determination.

[Thad]

Just my luck the first SNES controller I grab has a fucked-up Select button. Glad I figured out it was that and not something wrong with the Earthbound ROM.

[Thad]

...and I play Earthbound for like half an hour and now my left thumb hurts.

I guess I probably should try the arcade stick next.

[Friday]

Right? Kickass.

Well, don't wanna sound like a dick or nothing, but uh... It says on your chart that you're fucked up. Uh, your hands are broke-ass, and your thumbs are retarded. What I do, is just like, like, you know, heh heheh, like, you know what I mean, like, heh heheh

[Niku]

You can have your solution to everything with just two little clicks.

spoiler because i know thad hates undescriptive links the joke is that it's a steel battalion controller but also you know what there are actually worse solutions to "my hands are too fucked for games right now" than "WELL THEN, HOW ABOUT FEET??". also i actually SHOULD get a usb adapter for mine sometime and see what kind of craziness i can get up to with it.