Time to evolve!

Games have been around for a while now, you don't need me to tell you that. However, we still see some artifacts of yesteryear in current-gen games that often leave me wondering if they're there just because, well, they've always been there. Can't we have a clean sweep and get rid of some of the old gaming staples? And yes, I said "yesteryear", even though I hate that word.

Title Screens
Obviously every game needs a title, but a title screen where I have to "press start" to continue? What is this, a mid 1980s arcade? Sometimes it isn't even start but any button press, but worse still, sometimes it is required to stretch out your hand and reach for that badly placed start button just to get to the menu. Often the title screen is a disguised loading screen, which is fine, but I am then still asked to press "start" to continue when loading is done. When am I ever likely to think "nah, I think I'll just look at the title for a tad longer"? It's double-wrapping nobody needs anymore. Why can't your main menu and the title screen be combined? Sure, it isn't a big issue, but it is a stupid one.

Continue? 9...8...7...6...
Yes, please. Why ask? Why give me a set of lives...and then another few sets of lives? Why not give me all those lives at once? Or better still, allow me to choose how many lives I want to take with me when I start, if that is the kind of game you're making. The idea of a "continue" screen made a lot of sense in the arcades, where the player needed time to rifle through his pockets for another 100 Yen coin, but on a home console? What's the use in that?

Attract Modes
Worse even than the title screen is the game that after a period of inactivity jumps to an "attract mode". In the old arcades this usually happened to be a demo of the game in action so a passerby would be "attracted" and lured to the machine. These days the same could be said for demos in kiosks and stores but in the final home product? Granted, they are quite rare these days but you still occasionally come across them. Usually they end up being some kind of edited collage, quite separate from the actual game's introductory sequence, but just something you might see as a commercial for the game. And it serves no purpose whatsoever. Considering the impatience with which I rap on the ”start” button at the sight of any title screen it is unlikely in the extreme I'll be sitting there staring at it for a few minutes for any attract mode to kick in.

Manuals
Are these really necessary these days? I can hardly remember the last one I actually read. Usually, after a brief battle with the plastic wrapping I insert the disc and while the game boots up I cast a glance over the manual, flipping the pages for a few seconds, before putting it back in the box. In the "old days" when space was at a premium and graphics were blocky, a manual could help you understand the gameplay mechanics and illustrate the enemies and protagonists a little better than 4 by 4 pixels could. Part of my addiction to the early Ultima games came from the excellent manuals and bestiary which really helped make the on-screen blobs seem like real characters and monsters in my mind's eye. These days, with the multi-buttoned controllers, a tutorial stage is pretty much the standard, which leaves the manual for...what, exactly? Manuals only serve to give the game case a pleasingly expensive weight, fooling you into thinking you're getting your money's worth.

Paradoxically, for an industry so dynamic, some things take a long time to change. The issues above are mostly left-overs from a time they were actually needed; they have since been accepted into the general game design lexicon, for no other reason than the fact we're used to them. Occasionally one daring developer will try something different, but it's usually not enough to break the clichés. And to be fair, none of the above is really crippling in any way, but it sometimes just strikes me how much of a game is simply there because we expect it to be there, rather than it being truly necessary anymore.