What are the best Main Menu screens you've seen in video games?

[Alpan]

Freespace 1/2, with the main menu being the bridge of the capital ship you are serving on.



In the second game, you go on an exchange program of sorts halfway through the game, and the whole menu changes to the new ship. The clip below is from the new ship.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

tie for freespace 2 and "north and south". poking a man's ass has never been more fun.

 

[Tiger]

This has to be up there for me. Just a beautiful intro to the game.

 

[Momock]

The best one for me, no contest (it's impossible to find it in a decent quality):



2nd place:



But I also like the contemplative ones or the slideshows like Tomb Raider IV in this thread, or Ocarina of Time, etc. It's just that I prefer when you can appreciate a great menu without having to wait passively 200 years. Even if I just press start a go conitnue my game quick I still cn appreciate the effort and ambiance from the Metroid Prime menu.

 

[Mexi]

Stronghold Crusader because I really like how it calls your profile name. "Welcome, Lord ___."



Really like that warrior too and the theme music; although, the theme music throughout the game is so much better. Sucks that they just kept recycling music for each Stronghold game. Whoever created that soundtrack did amazing work.

 

[Hace El Oso]

Nuclear Strike(PC) had a great main menu that absolutely oozed 1990s zeitgeist. The background and video feed would change as you progressed through the campaign.

 

[Aemar]

 

[catfood]

Imperialism 2's menu was so good.

Here's another good one from Forsaken. It may not seem like much as a static image, but the menu is a 3D object that moves when you go about selecting different things. They really liked to play with 3D technology back in the day.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

From the newer games, I really love the main menu of Ancestors: Legacy. Both art and the theme song are pretty dope tbh fam.

 

[Nathir]

 

[warpig]

Battletech is a newer one. Gorgeous cinematics with an amazing track; to me it was the highlight of the game it was that good,

Generic, featureless, forgettable "modern movie" music :/

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Some older ones that my brain sees worth remembering:


I also liked demo reels that Doom, Hexen etc. used.

 

[Black Plague]

 

[ferratilis]

 

[Silverfish]

 

[deuxhero]

Worst: Source engine games. The scene from the game, while pretty, takes way too long to load.

 

[curds]

Quality of the game itself is questionable, but the main menu in Call of Duty: Black Ops was pretty cool. You were strapped to a chair and the game options were on a screen in front of you, but you could mash buttons to wriggle out of the straps and walk around the room. If you stayed out of the chair for too long, one of your interrogators would bark orders at you to sit back down through the intercom.

 

[deama]

I like the look of Dungeon Siege 1's menu.

I like how it moves

 

[Allyriadil]

Lineage 2 still got the best menu screens I have ever seen, good old days.

 

[Avonaeon]

Shitty recording, but the main menu in Escape from Butcher Bay was pretty dope:

 

[3 others]

Superhot had a nice pseudo-DOS w4r3z aesthetic


Talos Principle is nothing special without audio but when the title track and those classical renders are combined... damn. Serene.


I liked the playful and hectic menu screen from World of Goo. Unfortunately the recording doesn't show how the black slimeball world functions as a stage selection...


Brütal Legend's LP sleeve menu fit the game aesthetic perfectly. The game was full of nice details like this but never really put it together at any point.


Braid's 'menu' screen was impressive (although I understand if you refuse to even think of it as one). You see the Braid title and hey whaddya know, the game's already started. No need for video as a screenshot will do.

Tried looking for some C64 era menus but apart from some snazzy graphics here and there, they haven't really stood the test of time. The Train - Escape to Normandy was probably the closest with it's difficulty selection embedded into the game.

 

[Ahnx]

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I know that I mentioned M&B Warband mods in my pick for good title/menu screens earlier, but I really loved the aesthetic for some of those mods, like 1429: The Hundred Years War. It was done by a french guy but the poor guy was so hypersensitive and unstable that when someone called him "crazy" once in a post on the TaleWorlds forum, he had a complete meltdown and took his mods down off Moddb. This was years ago. Amazingly, I saw him still posting about this terrible trauma on the TaleWorlds forum a few months ago, but no one dared respond to him this time, probably in fear that he would climb to the top of the Viaduc de Millau in France, spread his arms, and dive. But damn, look at these nice screens.

Spoiler

 

[dbx]

Hired Guns on Amiga. Lean menu and cool music.

 

[Gerrard]