[sandov]

Right paddle controls are backwards compared to vim.

[madballster]

A hidden swipe at evil/vim fans by an emacs author?

[saagarjha]

No, it's clearly just more sane. Without any knowledge of keyboard escape sequences, why should down come before up?

[tasty_freeze]

The existing mapping is ridiculous. A,D,J,L are all in a horizontal line, but are mapped to vertical motions.

There are many choices, but for example, using A/Z for left player up/down and J/M for right player up down would not require any mental work. Once you place your fingers, up is up and down is down.