A walk down an 8/16/32/etc-bit memory lane

Oh nostalgia, how I love thee.

For this assignment, I watched “A Brief History of Video Game Title Design,” which turned out to be a 2 minute, 21 second video of most of my childhood flashing before my eyes. Very much needed.

While watching the compilation of intro and title screens, I thought about such sequences are becoming rarer and rarer in games today (in my opinion). Gamers have such short attention spans that they will usually skip intro or title screens if at all possible, leading game developers to put less and less effort into them.

Of course there are exceptions to that rule (see Metal Gear Solid and The Last of Us for a great example of this).

Metal Gear Solid’s intro switches between a movie style opening (the start of a movement of more movie-like sequences in video games) and gameplay, which was unique at the time. IT blew my mind as a child to see the gameplay and credits blended together so seamlessly, almost to the point of not even noticing them (which could be another problem altogether, but that’s another conversation for another day).

The Last of Us, a game about a world in which a fungal virus has taken over most of the planet and has turned most people into zombie-like creatures called infected, has one of the more powerful video game opening credits. It shows the virus spreading (or at least a representation of it) simply in black and white, as voice overs of news broadcasts narrate how the infection is spreading and taking over. It gave me chills the first time I watched it and chills as I write this paragraph.

Then, there are title screens and introductions that are nearly too ridiculous for words – well, mainly one in particular. Katamari Damacy is a Japanese game in which you roll objects into balls and turn them into stars. A slightly crazy sounding premise, so what did the game designers do? They gave the game an introduction that can be best described as one gigantic, ridiculous and hilarious drug trip. The intro works because it is so random and funny. But the intro also fails for that same reason. It tells you nothing about the game (other than prepare for one of the more…unique games you’ve ever played) and takes away from the gameplay in my opinion.

I could go into detail into 95 percent of the other games shown in the video, but I’ll save that for another time. So, to summarize: Metal Gear Solid and The Last of Us = Good. Katamari Damacy = …Different. Yeah, we’ll go with different. But they are all successful in their own ways.