WhiskyTangoFoxtrot , 10 months ago

The traditional role of the Select button is actually handled via the D-pad in most games. It was the button you used to change your selection, not to actually select something (that would be done with Start.)

Of course, even in the NES era past the first couple of years menus could generally be navigated with the D-pad, so even then Select was pretty useless, which is probably why the Genesis didn’t bother with it.