Can one-player games be played when only the second controller port works?

Solution 1:

I read this question and instinctively agreed with Agent86's answer. But I decided to dust off my own SNES to do science and confirm his answer. The results were not exactly what I expected.

I took out my North American SNES and my library of 13 games. All 13 (eventually) worked. I plugged in one of my controllers in the Player 2 port and tested them out. Results:

• Out of the 13 games, 5 recognized and worked with a controller plugged only in the P2 port.

• 5 out 5 of those games supported two player mode.

• 4 out 5 of those games allowed you to start a single player game with a single controller plugged in the P2 port. The other game would only let you choose two player mode.

• The other 8 games were all one-player games only.

What I am concluding from this experiment is that you can play some SNES games with only the P2 port functioning, but it seems those games have to support two player gameplay with a second controller. Some of those games have good one player campaigns (Super Mario World, for example), but solely one-player games seem to be a no-no.

Solution 2:

As I recall, most single player SNES games will only recognize a controller if it is plugged into the primary controller port. Without the ability to plug one in here, you won't be able to play most games.

Solution 3:

It's not (just) about the console and/or game
It depends on how the game has been programmed
If the game has been programmed to detect input from the second controller port as well in the game menus, it will work
If the game has been programmed in such a way that the main game menus only accept keypresses from the primary controller (or if the console hardware is designed in such a way that games have to be programmed like this; for example, Famicom 2nd player controller did not have start or select button in them I think), then just plugging in a controller in the second player port won't make it work like a primary controller