Why did the GBA lack two buttons?

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Most PSX games didn't support analog sticks in my experience (not the ones I play anyway) so that is no great loss.
What abour collin mcrae 2
Only the people who designed it would be able to answer that question. I can't think of a single reason, other than that the previous Game Boys all had 2 buttons so they were just continuing what was already proven to be a winning formula. Maybe they thought because the GBA is backwards compatible, it should keep the same button layout and if they were to add more buttons, they'd have to rearrange the buttons slightly and some games might be less comfortable to play.
They should have made them turbo buttons
But more likely, they didn't think it needed more buttons, because handheld games were traditionally simpler than home console games.
But they did port so many snes games
I'm sure it came up and the decision ended up being a case of "the Game Boy line is more than capable enough with 2 buttons, look at all these great games that are just fine with 2 buttons - so we don't need to add more"
They made a mistake. 2 buttons is the reason Iridion 2 didnt get barrelrolling
 
What abour collin mcrae 2

They should have made them turbo buttons

But they did port so many snes games

They made a mistake. 2 buttons is the reason Iridion 2 didnt get barrelrolling
Was Collin McRae 2 officaly released on a PSN for PSP?
 
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When the psp came out the gba was sti on the market with new releases. Competing consles.
The PS2 was still on the market while the Xbox 360, Wii, PS3, and WiiU were on the market what kind of absurd logic is this?

Also how did the PSP make it to market with only two shoulder buttons? It was two buttons short of what the PS1 and PS2 had (also the Saturn, Xbox, three buttons short of the N64 but only one button short of the GC). That decision actually DID mess with some of the PS1 games on PSN.

But yeah the GBA absolutely should have had those X and Y buttons, it would have made the SNES ports so much better and helped a lot with stuff like SSF2TR and SFA3.
 
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Also how did the PSP make it to market with only two shoulder buttons? It was two buttons short of what the PS1 and PS2 had (also the Saturn, Xbox, three buttons short of the N64 but only one button short of the GC). That decision actually DID mess with some of the PS1 games on PSN.

But yeah the GBA absolutely should have had those X and Y buttons, it would have made the SNES ports so much better and helped a lot with stuff like SSF2TR and SFA3.
Why are hardware developers so cruel?
 
It doesn't
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It's true I agree it should have had 4, was Nintendo trying to save cost or something, how much could it have possibly saved
Doubt it was a cost saving thing. It's more likely that they were trying to keep the console as simple and accessible as possible, since that's the appeal of handhelds, generally. Remember the original Game Boy also only had two face buttons and was a Tetris machine to most people, and this design choice was most likely to mirror the home console of its time, which was the NES. The GBA having two face buttons was just simple and natural, especially when we consider it's a fully backwards compatible system in the same family as its predecessors. Adding the buttons when the DS came along was a good move, but it didn't hurt them to not have those buttons sooner (except for on the rare occasions that SNES games were adapted to the platform).
 
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