Some NES developers have said there was an unwritten rule about using START and SELECT for in-game actions, while other NES developers have told me they never got any such memo and it was more of an instinctive decision. Underutilized buttons is one of the worst gaming problems of the 90s. I constantly encounter games that have multiple actions mapped to two buttons on the Genesis and SNES, leaving one or more buttons completely unused. Not even START or SELECT. Face buttons! It’s unreal.