Rainbow Nightmare: Libra

SCREENS OFF TO YA BRAH
Title screens are interesting to me. Some people love them, them people trivialize them, some people don't even care. Are they important? Yeah, I think it sets the tone for your game, and games in general. It's the first thing you see. A lot of titles actually tell a story, or gives you an idea of how the game is.

You have to take into consideration that a title screen image and logo I suppose you can say is like, the main image that you show people when you work on a game, so that should instantly take priority. There's a lot of ways you can do them, it gives you room to be creative and interesting.

I'm going to take a look at a few of these that I found by just google images. I like a lot of them, so let's see.

Yeah man, this game, Rockin' Roll racing. Even as a kid I didn't like racing games, but I had somehow rented this on accident, or someone had it I can't remember. But just by the title screen I knew it was going to kick ass. The title drops down, there rock music playing, dude, THERE ARE MUTANTS PLAYING GUITAR IN THE BACKGROUND WHILE CARS ARE SHOOTING LASERS AT EACH OTHER!

And you know, that sets the tone, it tells a story it explains to you how the game is going to play out, and it was a kick ass game.


Streets of Rage is similar, you see the main characters cityscape behind them. It doesn't have that much of an impact, but I do like the set up. It does explain just by the image what the game is about.



These are really weird, I just think they're really absurd or really abstract. It does deliver though, it's an effect. The point is, it's a set up.

WHAT I DON'T LIKE. LIZZA UR KELLIN MEH
I'm not sure if RM people really think that much into it. I don't really expect people to, a lot of users just take a cool image and throw it up there and that's that. And that's fine, I really don't expect anything much from that.

But then there are the people who you sort of notice that they take a lot of time and consideration into what that title image is. It's kind of always uninspiring too, like, they're good, but they're all the same. Like, I'm not sure if there's like an anime title generator, but I've seen a lot of those types of titles.

Another problem I see is, sometimes people will use animated backgrounds. It's a really powerful tool, but people are doing the same thing with it. It's like, they'll take a video of clouds, or the background will be clouds panning. I am not sure what the purpose serves, clouds aren't really that cool.

That stuff kind of bothers me, I wouldn't notice these things if I didn't see them a lot. As I posted earlier, try to find images that try to tell a story and give people a set up. It tells the player they're in for something cool.

I'm personally at that stage where I need a very interesting title, because like I said earlier, when you go around the internet to promote a project the first thing you're most likely to post is the title image. I have a few options but it's difficult to decide what fits.


If you're looking for inspiration in terms of title screens I suggest SNES/GEN games. They usually deliver something. Also:

Mateui: "Boing"