Am I Weird for Missing Loading Screens? | Extra Punctuation 

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What about the early Assassin's Creed games, where you could just aimlessly walk around a grey, featureless infinite corridor? Does that count?

Bayonetta letting you practice the combos was a golden idea

my favorite instances of the loading-disguising hallway/animation are when you get through the whole thing and the stuff on the other side still isn't loaded yet

The loading screen minigames in various Dragonball games are a permanent fixture in the memories of some. Most were just "mash the button" with a small, charming animation to track your progress and it really showed just how little you can get away with.

Bayonetta allowing you to practice combos and stuff during loading was pretty brilliant imo

Fevershingly rotating my control stick in DBZ Budokai 3 to try and spawn as many Saibamen as I could before the next fight is something I'll always remember fondly. I remember being kind of disappointed at how fast that screen passed by in the HD remake because I could never get nearly as many Saibamen as I used to.

I like it when loading screens summarized what you had got up to in the story. Like Fable reminded you of a quest selected. Especially useful if you hadn't played in a while or been playing other games.

A very good example of a transition hiding the loading was the lifts in Mass Effect 1. You'd get fun scenes of banter between your crew while waiting, and the duration of the trip could be adjusted if the loading time went down.

It's obvious why it would have bypassed Yahtzee's notice, but The Sims 3 had a loading screen mini-game. Cashing in on the Venn diagram probability of people that play The Sims and people that play casual Hidden Object games having a substantial overlap, it would put up Scenes, probably from the promotional art for the DLCs, and ask you to find things. Doing so rewarded you with reward points, which would then be added to your Sim in order to purchase powerful in game items.

Bioshock loading screens with 1920's music makes you feel like you are in a elevator, but in a good way. Also the music still maintain the aesthetics and vibes of rapture

The Okami loading screen also gave you demon fangs if you did them. For those that don't know demon fangs were used to buy special equipment and items from certain merchants.

Honestly a little transition to set you in the right mood feels nice. When i load up deep rock galactic and my dwarves greets me with some grumpy sentence like "time to make a living", that can really help the atmosphere

Personally I'm quite fond of loading screens simply featuring item descriptions, character portraits, little bits of lore, or just concept art. I find it really sets the mood by teasing you with little glimpses of parts of the game you haven't seen yet. They're great as long they don't last too long, and as long as there's enough such screens in circulation that you never get tired of staring at the same one over and over again.

One of the Dragonball Budokai games had a small number of little loading screen mini games, though they were all just button mash to increase a number. Another DBZ game had a little thing where you could make a character fly around by spinning the control stick.

I can't believe he didn't mention Symphony of the Night and how it allowed you to play around with the "now loading" sign while the damn thing loaded.

I also kinda miss the installing screens of old pc games were they show you all kinds of screenshots and art of the game you are about to play. This also helps with getting you excited for playing the game.

I actually like loading screens because of their function as a palette cleanser. Theatrical productions have stage hands changing scenes, music fades in and out, and even films have establishing shots. Museums don't just put every painting next to each other; they're spaced out. At the same end, games have loading screens--important transitional periods for both game and player, to ruminate and then shift focus. Without them, you'd have to design such a shift yourself, and I don't trust game designers to be that good.

I distinctly remember Crash Tag Team Racing on the PS2 had a mechanic during the loading screens where you could press square or triangle and it would play a burp or fart sound effect. Needless to say this gave my brother and I endless amusement as children, honestly it was kind of genius.

The sims 3 had a loading screen game that involved you picking out what object matched the name it spat out in exchange for lifetime happiness points for the sims you were loading. It was very clearly geared to sell you things

I've saw an argument from a Naughty Dog developer a while ago, I forget where, where they said that the main reason for long door and corridor sequences in modern games is to funnel the players on the right path and pace the story, which honestly annoys me more if this is true since they're so inorganic and do more to derail the pacing than anything else.

Ratchet and Clank did a thing during the PS2 era where they covered the loading screen with repeated cutscenes of the characters flying through space. *That’s* the kind of stuff I miss when I think of loading screens. It wasn’t much, but it made it properly FEEL like we were traveling across the vast reaches of the galaxy.

the fun fact about Okami's minigame was that you were rewarded with Demon Fangs for doing well. sometimes it would assist in farming the things!! so handy, so clever, genuinely engaging every time

I quite liked the mechanic in L4D2 where on the loading screens you got stats about how you did in the last level. Kinda like a mini competition between you and your mates on who killed the most zombies or who was stupid enough to take a machete to the tank.

One thing I loved about older Monster Hunter games (and Rise) is that your current quest is always visible in the loading screen, complete with the (often funny) quest description. As the loading screens typically only take about 8 seconds, it's usually done by the time you read the quest description, if not before.

Devil May Cry 3 also had a similar loading screen to Okami where you could shoot and slash at the letters while waiting, but loadings in that game were short anyway

Loading screens with a "press button to continue" prompt at the end are nice since you can walk away without worrying about dying once the new area loads. The modern "transition hallway cutscene" still incentivizes the player to remain present, while pausing the game fails to remove the forced cutscene duration.

That last idea- about a minigame where the only gameplay is seeing how many times you can press a button before the game loads, with the game keeping your high score on screen to tantalize you, sounds like a fucking phenomenal idea. I'd be shocked if this doesn't end up becoming one of those things Yahtzee predicts in Simpsons-esque fashion.

I seem to recall newer Rayman games putting you into a micro-level with simplistic geometry for you to run around in while the actual level loads, and if you were playing with friends you could punch each other like savages.

And then there's Bethesda games that just let you rotate and zoom in on models of in-game items and NPCs. While a little blurb of lore sits off in the corner, sometimes you get the really long blurbs you aren't able to finish before the loading time is done.

Splatoon 2 had this thing where, while you were waiting for your online lobby to fill, you could mess with the two sticks to alter the speed and pitch of the background music, and the buttons added little snippets of sound effects that sounded like they were part of the song. Not a mini game, but it was something to do

Greedfall, while ultimately not holding my attention, had a little mini crossroads where you could shop and manage your inventory and companions and such while you waited for the loading to finish. I thought that was a nice touch.

The patent from Namco came during their release of Tekken 1, when you could play Galaga while the main game was loading. Obviously such a good idea, and yet they never really did anything like it after the fact.

I remember enjoying Bayonetta's load screens bc they'd display all the combos on one side and you could pretty much practice the combat while you waited

The Bayonetta games have your character in a featureless void, with a list of combos, so it was a training mode while you waited, that was pretty good! Entertaining and useful at the same time

Bayonettas 1 & 2 (haven’t played 3) let you practice combo attacks during their loading screens. That function was always a standout.

I always liked Bayonetta letting you practice combos during the loading sequences. It was both a fun way to pass the time, but also reminded you to try out some different moves that you might not have been using.

Every time that Yahtzee has brought the issue of loading screen games up in the past few years, I've always thought back to Splatoon on the Wii U; glad to see he's finally acknowledged it.

Not really a mini game during load screens, but I loved the loading screens for Spec Ops: The Line. It starts out with just hints and tips for how to play the game like, _"Use cover to avoid taking damage"_ and stuff like that. As the game progresses and Captain Walker begins to lose his mind, the loading screen messages get more and more unhinged and begin talking directly to the player. Messages like, _"Dubai's harbor was filled with sand when storms first wracked the city. The corpses were your doing."_ and _"The US military does not condone the killing of unarmed combatants. But this isn't real, so why should you care?"_ and my personal favorite, _"Do you feel like a hero yet?"_ . Spec Ops: The Line is a great game and everyone should play it. Devil May Cry 3 is an example of a "mini game" loading screen. While the game is loading the next bit, you can attack the DMC logo by mashing your buttons. It was mindless fun, but kept me engaged with the game until it finished loading.

In fire emblem three houses, on each loading screen a small sprite of the main character stood above the loading bar. You could make them move around with motion controls, and you could press a face button to make them jump, that's the most recent example of a loading screen minigame I can think of.

idk if It counts but I recall hearing that ath the very least Bayonetta, (and possibly other spectacle fighters that I know nothing about), would let you practice combos during the loading screen... I'd definitely rather play a 2D sniping mini game while waiting for my open world game to load my fast travel than just stare at the loading screen.

Delta on the C64 had a fabulous music mixer. Many's the time I just stopped the tape loading and fiddled around with that awesome tune, applying effects and such that transformed it into something completely different sounding.

Reminds me of how in spiderman on the ps5 you have to choose to turn on the little subway fast travel cutscenes because by default it loaded so fast you didn’t need them

Loading screen minigames were much more common with old flash games when I grew-up. Some of these games took a good while to load-up initially, so having that little minigame right there made things a lot more bearable. It's oddly similar to your old cassette loading minigame story

Tony Hawk's American Wasteland connected its various levels together in the story mode with corridors that you had to skate through while the next area loaded (or take the bus). It was pretty obvious that they were there to hide the loading screens, but continuing the flow of the Tony Hawk gameplay through to another level always felt fun. Also, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 had a little thing where you could spin the analogue sticks around on the loading screen to make Saibamen grow from the ground, which I remember tiring myself out on a few times.

Loading screens are like opening/closing credits or something. Its a space where you can gather yourself. Without it, you're just under constant stimulation which while its something the corpos want, it isn't that good for us and diminishes enjoyment.

Sometimes even something as basic as a unique sound can make a loading screen fun. I haven’t played Crash Bash in over two decades, but I still remember the loading screen music and how the 3D LOADING text bobbed to it

That last idea about pressing a single button and your number of times pressed: Yahtzee is just describing the premise of cookie clicker lol.

Which would you rather have? Loading screens that take a bit long. Or all these new fangled ways publishers try and hide them in elevators squeezing past tight spaces? Are you sure it's bad to have a solid loading screen if you are just replacing it with busywork?

In the first No More Heroes, if you mashed the A button in the loading screen, the little spinning star symbol in the bottom right would start to rise up the screen, and as you mashed, it would accelerate until it flew off the top of the screen and came up from the bottom, "looping" the screen. It was fun to see how fast you could get it going and how many loops you could do before the game loaded. And they never tell you about it either, you just had to randomly figure it out by idly pressing buttons while the game was loading.

One of my favourite loading screen activities is in Warframe. It falls more into the fidget toy category than mini game, you just get to control the trajectory of your ship in a narrow cone. But just the feeling of getting to wiggle around your landing craft as it makes its way to the mission still hasn't lost its amusement factor on me.

Another thing I miss is install screens. I remember installing Prototype back in 2009 on pc and being treated to this awesome sketch book style artwork that you can't really see anymore.

The only thing I can think of was in one of the DBZ Budokai games. During load screens, a little Roshi on a turtle shell would spin in the corner, and if you spun the analog stick, you could make him spin faster. I was compelled to oblige because if you spun him fast enough, he would start drifting to the other corner of the screen and it became a fun little game to see if I could get him there before the game loaded in.

Katamari had that thing where you make the king of the universe's head fly around for no reason

Loading Screens are like when you want to watch something on TV, but you've got to get through the last program's credits and the channel ident first. It's a nice buildup to the fun game experience you're about to have. And the music is often great! The Loading Screen Music for The Settlers: Heritage of Kings isn't anywhere else in the game!

On the topic of the Okami loading screen. During the loading of DMC3 on PS2 you could mash shooting or sword buttons to shoot or slash at a little loading screen icon at the bottom of the screen which is neat little distraction.

I really like long loading screens after beating a boss in a chapter/section of a game. It gives me a break and lets me process wtf just happened.

I liked loading screens in RPGs where the loading screen would be an artwork from the game plus some tips or lore at the bottom. Sometime there would even be gameplay mechanics you might otherwise miss.

I’m playing Dawn of War 2 at the moment and it’s loading screens for the campaign missions are great. A pretty screenshot/rendering of dynamically staged characters or units from a faction, info about factions, characters or events that are relevant to the mission you’re about to play. It’s a great supplement- definitely builds anticipation as you said, but in a way that adds to your understanding of the story and world. I’m a long time fan of the setting but for a new player I imagine they’d be very effective in generating mystery, like ‘ooh I wonder what is gonna happen with this character’ or ‘ow wow this faction seems pretty scary, how am I gonna beat them?’ Even after playing it so many times, they still get me excited.

The FIFA games also had minigames (idk which). But I remember you could practice some skill while waiting fot the complete match to load. For me it was the perfect use of this idea

Even I, a zoomer, miss the funny noise, on-screen imperfections and static artifacts of VHS tapes

When binge watching network TV, sometimes I miss the commercial breaks. Not the commercials themselves of course, but the 2 minute interlude added some tension.

even just being able to move the "Now Loading..." text around in symphony of the night is enough to keep me engaged during those loading screens, and it's genuinely fun for me every time

I don't mind loading screens. It's a good reminder to rest your eyes/focus on something else, or answer a text, have a drink/snack - generally a way to remember to look after yourself in between bursts of video game hypnosis.

Symphony of the Night!! Not only did it have those loading corridors which still exist in later metroidvanias to break up different areas, but the proper "Now Loading" screens could be played with with the dpad

X Men Legends had these gorgeous artwork during the loading screens that really added to the atmosphere. But of course the loading screens were ungodly long and it killed my desire to replay the game

I liked that some use to put up some kind or random concept art for the full game or just the art for the level and it was cool to see it.

Sonic Frontiers let you practice combos while you waited on the Cyberspace levels, and I think the last couple of Rayman games let you run around the loading screen or something too

My favorite loading screen minigame was I think in Devil May Cry 3 where you could mash the attack button to slash up the loading screen. Sadly that was removed from the HD collection :(

Recently, Sonic Frontiers does a little thing of running you through combat mechanics while on loading screens where you can practice movement and recently obtained combat moves so that you'll be better acquainted with Sonics moveset. I thought that was pretty neat and wondered my more games didn't do that ever. Learning now about that Namco thing might've been why.

One of the first two No More Heroes games had a rotating star that hopped upward when you hit the A button. It wrapped around the screen if you got it high enough, and turned different colors when it wrapped around.

Tangential, but related are the loading screen practice room and general tips/hints on display. Soulstice could use that as well. It's very much in the devil may cry combo junk and I'm still crap at it. For the general tips window, that's as old as dirt, but I recall the Elder Scrolls and Zelda Breath of the Wild having interaction to the tips. That was also in Atomic Heart from this year, but I could only see them on initial loads and after deaths. The I know Bayonetta isn't the first to do the loading screen dojo or whatever, but I know I tried to get some of the combos right. I played that on the Switch so I want to say losing times weren't long. The game was mostly cohesive in the open world, so there wasn't much break points other than ending the game season. I would like more of the actual mini games, even if it's some random combination of mini games already in the game. Think of that like pulling random or hard difficulty hacking examples in Bioshock or Mass Effect.

I liked the quick race to use the bathroom or to the kitchen to get snacks while the game was loading. It also was just kind of nice to take a mini break.

In Wave Race Blue Storm on the game cube there was a tiny little bubble you could move around the screen which was always water with the upcoming tracks terrain, not really a minigame... but I remember if the weather was poor for the track it would start to rain during the loading screen which was a nice touch of atmosphere building for a racing game.

3:23 The Korg Minilogue *synthesizer* has a secret Breakout clone loadingscreen minigame when you first turn it on and it tunes the oscillators! Easily the coolest and most random synth feature I've seen in ages 😆

i think there's also something to be said for using loading screens for artistic effect, like the stanley parable's reminder across the bottom or games that have evolving load screens, as well as just being good for setting the tone or mood and/or giving the audience some light reading. skyrim's loading screen with the 3d models you can examine with ambient music and lore in the corner is a pretty good example

I hear you. I miss being able to read the helpful hints and lore tidbits. Not so much a loading screen but one of the Gradius games I played recently had a grid pattern for CRT geometry.

The Korg Minilogue synthesizer has a fun feature where whilst it's loading if you turn one of the knobs the tiny display will start a breakout game

Not a game, per se, but the Symphony of the Night loading screen when transitioning between sections of the castle, where you can move the text around in swirly fun ways. Was super fun.

A few I liked was, in the Bayonetta loading screens you can practice your moves and combos.. or in resident evil the umbrella Chronicles on the Wii you can shoot the loading symbol and juggle it in the air.. in crash team racing during the loading screens you can press buttons to make burping and farting sounds and you can use the analog stick to change the pitch and tone..

I can understand the feeling of wanting/missing something old like that. I chalk it up to missing those moments because they were moments you could slow down and just take in more than the fast-paced modern era allows you to do. There is something just more... human about being able to take your time instead of fighting to keep up in time with a machine. Like trying to win a foot race with a car.

It was definitely a part of the feel of old resident evil games, it added to the tension and decision making. Each area was more individual, you could be in a room with a zombie, know you could get away by running through a door they couldn't, but also know the next room could be more dangerous, or definitely is more dangerous because you left it that way by running away previously, it was a gamble. It made running away mean you often had to face the consequences later. In newer games the zombies seem to have doors figured out a lot better.

My old person irrational nostalgia trip is video stores. Objectively having the entire media library of the world ready at the press of a button at home is a better system. But i have fond childhood memories of going down to the store on Saturday with its very distinctive smell of old carpet, strong disinfectant and plastic and getting to pick out three weekly rentals for 5 dollars. There was something about having to physically roam the isle to browse that had an air of mystery. The fact that you could only get three taught you to be selective and how to prioritize. There was just something about the little bit of added difficulty to getting what you wanted that made it more satisfying to get it. But baring that one store that is now basically a historic site all of that is gone, vanished in just a few short years and i can't help but miss it a bit.

The Okami example was in my mind the entire time while watching this. Mostly because I haven't played it since the PS2 and my friend recently got it for their Steam Deck, I always wondered how that transitioned to Solid State drives, and having Googled it, it turns out you can turn on those mini-games in the options menu. Quite fascinating to me mostly because it's a way to passively grind up Demon Fangs.

My first thought is the mech startup animations from Steel Battalion. Those look awesome every time. I think they always came after a loading screen, but nowadays they could be the cover-up for a loading screen.

i remember this jetski racing game on the game cube had not a mini game per say but you could move the control stick and it'd make the water on the screen ripple and that was kinda fun to mess with while the race loaded.

Can't believe someone online remembers the Broken Sword breakout minigame! That was such a specific and distinct childhood memory, but I never hear anyone talking about it...

I often have to chuckle nowadays when games have loading screens with tips, but due to the age of fast drives nowadays, you barely have time to read half the sentence. Won't be long probably till they'll totally be a thing of the past.

Yahtzee's point on in-game loading screens of fixed length -- opening doors or squeezing through tight tunnels -- being woven into the game design is EXACTLY how I feel about them: When you play the games on more modern hardware, the amount of "squeeze through here while we load the next area" moments feel completely pointless and DESTROY the pacing. Despite my love for it, The Last of Us is a prime example. On a separate note, his mention of Okami's minigame loading screen is also pretty spot-on. Dragonball Z: Budokai's loading screens are some of the best in the industry, so much so that they patented "auxiliary games" in between the ACTUAL gameplay (which expired in 2015). It's hard to say what the best solution is -- I've never made a game before, so there are most certainly invisible technical hurdles I'm not privy to -- but yeah: Interesting video.

There was a charm to loading screens. From the helpful hints you see, to quotes from in-game or real life sources. Mini games were the rare treat.

The fidget loading screen I never forget is from No More Heroes. The Star logo in the bottom right will bounce up if you press a button, and if you get it off screen it reappears from the bottle in a different colour. Many happy seconds were spent trying to get through as many colours as possible before the next bit of actual game…

In Wave Race Blue Storm you could move a little circle around the loading screen that would ripple the water. It was...something to do.

The only loading screen game I can think of was being able to fiddle with the "now loading" text in-between areas in Castlevania Symphony of the Night period

The one time I remember playing a loading minigame the most was whenever youtube added that snake minigame when the video needed to buffer.

the collectible toy based video game "U.B. FUNKEYS" had mini games that were preloaded into the installer for you to partake in during updates. that was my main exposure to the concept and i also always wondered why i didnt see it more often because it seemed like a genius idea

Big fan of Total War’s loading screens. Great time to showcase beautiful artwork and give a handy tip or two to the player.

Okami was pretty great since the collected demon fangs were added to your inventory. I also liked the ones in the DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi games. They were simple, yet very fulfilling

I like Symphony of the Night's "CD" rooms for loading the next area's song. Just enough quite to build up mystique about where you were going.

Since you brought up the Okami one, another game with the idea is Fur Fighters: Viggo's Revenge on PS2 where you get to interact with both the screen and the loading music with almost the entire controller, making noises, messing with the music, changing the speed of the loading movement and moving around in it with the analog stick.

I miss the breather between levels and checking out the cool loading screen art.