I watch a lot of anime. one of the thing I like about it is the opening cinematic (if you can call it that) in the beginning of each episode. For me, its a big part of what make a good show- I watched several good anime that had a bad opening- and that decreased their value- and I watch several bad anime with a good opening- which caused me to keep watching them. So my thought is- make a similar opening introduction video for a game. It will contain footage from the game and a (hopfuly) good song. And BTW- some Japanese video games, such as Devil May Cry (4 at least), are already doing this, but their opening cinematic aren't as good as those of most anime. Currently, the mainstream is to have the opening cinematic a part of the game's storyline or some similar feature.

Just FYI, a lot of people who watch anime only watch the opening cinematic the first 2-3 episodes, or once per day if you are watching several episodes of the same anime that day, and skip it the rest of the time. And the same with the closing song/cinematic. Generally I would just consider anime and game opening movies to be animated music videos, not particularly different from what used to be on MTV and the fan-made AMVs you can find on youtube and animemusicvideos.org.

I think an opening music video, of the type that typically starts to play if the game is allowed to sit at the start menu for a while, is not comparable to one which is part of the game's storyline.

I agree that anime ones are usually superior - the main difference IMHO is simply that anime opening and closing songs have lyrics, and the cinematic makes some attempt at illustrating the lyrics in a humorous, dramatic, or choreographed dance way, while game songs tend to be lyricless and their images abstract.

I seem to recall FF8 having a particularly interesting and anime-like opening cinematic.

"I agree that anime ones are usually superior - the main difference IMHO is simply that anime opening and closing songs have lyrics, and the cinematic makes some attempt at illustrating the lyrics in a humorous, dramatic, or choreographed dance way, while game songs tend to be lyricless and their images abstract."

Thats exactly my point- I want game opening with normal lyrics and dramatic cinematic.
Also, if the cinematic only runs when the game starts and you can use ESC to skip it, its not that bad. I for one always watch good openings in Anime.

I do like the Devil May Cry intros, anything that makes your character feel more badass.

Most of the games I played actually has this. Some examples:

Age of Empires - The intro shows the battle memory of a skeleton corpse of a roman solider

Age of Kings - The intro shows a chess game juxtaposed to a battlefield

FFXI-online - The intro shows a night where a castle is under attack and a child escaped.

You are not forced to watch it, you just hit a key and it is skipped.

But it was the norm to have an intro video.

I think practically all arcade games have this (intro and demo mode) where the characters flashes on the screen in MTV style, and where a in-game is demonstrated. I think they don't do local because human brain has problem filtering multiple threads of lyrics running at the same time. It is easier to selectively listen to tunes than to selectively listen to sung words. (I also think that it was historically impossible to do so because a sung song would take too much memory.)

Examples from Super Nintendo:
Super Mario, R-type, Biometal,..

It was the norm to have it and practically all of the games had it. I noticed for some games that were translated from Japanese lost it, although I don't remember specific examples (The Japanese version had intro, but the American version does not, in some situation, there is nothing to do with translation. It seemed that it was cut simply because it was deeem not fashionable to have it at the time.) It was true also for Gameboy games and other cardless handheld games. When you turn it on and you don't push any button, the game goes into demo mode or intro mode.

[Edited by - Wai on January 6, 2009 4:47:20 PM]

The reason a lot of games don't have it any more I would hope is because that scene is quite annoying to watch every few minutes when you get in a difficult spot. It seems a lot of designers don't know how to break up a story so someone doesn't have to sit through cinematics every time you die.

One can do what Blizzard does- after the first run of a newly installed game, the intro cinematic doesn't run automatically anymore, but you can choose to watch it from the main menu.

I think that an anime-type music video, for someone who never played the game, can greatly enhance his experience and immersion in that game.

Rune Factory 2 for the Nintendo DS does this. It actually has two entire song intros for the two chapters of the game.

I was kind of surprised by how long and elaborate they were, especially for a DS game.

http://www.gametrailers.com/game/5669.html?cid=YSSP