Welcome to the game world: how video game title screens tell their own stories
One of the things I love most about video games is that they have a whole new set of standards and conventions not shared by any other medium. Fail states, collectible bits of story in the form of journals or audio diaries, and randomly generated content are only a few examples of features that can only be found in an interactive medium, but today, I want to hone in on one factor of a game’s overall experience that has a special place in my heart — video game title screens.
A game’s title screen, also known as the start screen, is the first thing you’re going to see — you know, it’s what appears after you boot up the game but before you actually start playing it. It’s usually accompanied by music and some animations. Back in the arcade days, these title screens had to be as flashy and exciting as possible to draw players in, because that was most of the appeal. As the years went on and games evolved a lot, title screens have also changed significantly.
To me, though, one of the coolest things is that title screens don’t really exist in other media in the same way — they’re mostly unique to games. Books have cover art, movies have posters, and games have box art, all of which are a static image that features the work’s title, who made it, and some art to give consumers an idea of what that thing is all about. Game title screens have the same kind of idea, but taken to the next level.
It’s not usually just static art — you’re also getting some animation and music to really set the tone of what you’re about to be in for. I guess the next closest thing is the menus on a DVD (oh my god, remember those?), but while those menus could have a lot of personality baked into them, they were never a core part of experiencing a movie.
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