2y ago

I don't want to "Press any key to continue" to the main menu

At some point in this millenium, it became ubiquitous in games to ask for a button press before switching to the main menu and it has become a pet peeve off mine.

Why is that there? It's your main menu so ugly that you have to shield players from it? Why can I not double click the game Icon, go to the kitchen to get coffee and return to the PC/console to find myself in the main menu ready to continue my game? Seriously, cui bono? Sometimes, they even show a different screen before that press, which some artist got paid for creating, so the developer is also losing (a tiny amount of) money here.

I honestly just don't get the point of these screens.

Bonus negative points for games that only check DLC after that button press instead of any other point of the losing process. Calling a server could easily be threaded while the game assets are loaded since it takes very little hardware load to do so. But no, I get to wait an additional 10 seconds because the game devs want me to for no apparent reason.

On a related note: just allow players to auto skip intros, please. Just put an checkbox in the settings, so that everyone can see it once.

97 comments

Why is that there?
It's there due to the technical certification requirements of XBox. All games are required to become interactive after a set number of seconds. When you have a complex game with long loading times, that might be difficult. The load start screen works around that, it's simple enough to load quickly and it is interactive, i.e. "Press any key to continue". It's not useful, but it fulfills the certification requirements, all loading time that follows or might happen in the background while that screen is shown, doesn't count.
It the same reason why you see so many games have the same "You'll lose all your unsaved progress if you exit the game" screen, even in games that save so often to be a non-issue. It's a certification requirement too. There is a whole bunch of stuff like this in games (and movies) that is not there because anybody wants it, but because some contract somewhere says it has to be there or you aren't allowed to publish your game (see also the way names in movie posters never line up with the people on that poster).
PS: This has been around since at least the Xbox360s, don't know what Sony requires or how Microsoft might have updated their requirements since then.
- God I wish they wouldn't try to adhere to these awful requirements in PC games.
  
  If you have a particularly slow PC, this screen would be good feedback that it hasn't crashed while booting the game. It also keeps the game consistent across platforms.
  
  The save warning is helpful for kids who don't get how game saves work yet.
- IMO it's a good feature and it's a good thing it's required. I remember the days when I would boot up a game and never be sure if my system crashed or not.
  This requires the game to start giving you feedback before you start wondering if you should do a power cycle.
  
  I mean, better loading feedback would be better than an arbitrary "interactive within 1 second" blanket rule, leading to this whole "press button to continue" workaround.
  That's like a generator needing an earth rod, and the engineer putting an earth rod into a plant pot. Sure, the earth rod is there, and sunk to regulated depth in dirt... but it's a plant pot.
  Just make an accurate loading screen with accurate feedback.
- Well that was educational. Thank you good sir or madam.
- TIL
- Neither of these things can be true, because they've been around since long before Microsoft got into the console game. I'm pretty sure Atari 2600 games had that prompt. I know NES games did.
  
  https://blog.csdn.net/baozi3026/article/details/4272761
  TCR # 003 BAS Initial Interactive State
  Requirement
  Games must enter an interactive state that accepts player input within 20 seconds after the initial start-up sequence. If an animation or cinematic shown during the start-up sequence runs longer than 20 seconds, it must be skippable using the START button.
  What earlier games were doing was very similar, but was done for different reasons. Arcade games had an attract mode that would show gameplay or intro cutscenes in a loop when the device wasn't in active use and had an "Insert Coin" flashing to attract players. The normal game would only started once coin got inserted into the arcade machine. Early console games had that attract mode too, just "insert coin" replaced with a "press start".
  What makes the modern start screen different is that there is often no cutscene to skip, no gameplay to watch, it's just a pointless screen before you go to the main menu.
I honestly just don’t get the point of these screens.
It lets the game see which controller or input method you are using. This screen was (and maybe still is? I'm not sure.) a requirement for certification on consoles going back to the Xbox 360, when wireless controllers became ubiquitous.
Having to press a single button at the start of a game is a pretty minor complaint.
- Why can some games just pick that up in the main menu, but others can't?
  
  What if I have an Xbox controller plugged in and want to use my keyboard? A simple spacebar hit sets the default controller for fit this play session.
- Plenty of games are able to determine what you're using without having such a screen. The "press any key to continue" screen has been a thing my entire life (born in 85), and it has never been necessary for anything other than simulating the "insert coin" screen for arcade games.
  BG3 can use both at the same time, and yet it still has two of these screens. If you're playing with a controller, it will say press any key then you press a button and it changes to "press A to continue" before you actually get to the main menu.
  And it's even dumber because you can see the game detects your controller before the first logo screen ends when the cursor is auto hidden.
Of all the things to complain about. You must have a very stress free life.
- Dude. It's called a pet peeve. They're allowed, and even people who have very stressful lives have them. It's definitely better than shit-talking random people on the internet - just skip the thread if you don't care about it.
  
  My group calls them first world problems.
  
  I'd say that they're more of an issue for people under a lot of stress. It just adds an extra stress point. In fact if OP was not stressed, they probably wouldn't mind it enough to post a rant about it.
- They spent their time sharing a relatable gripe that sparked some jokes and discussion. You spent yours doing this.
I got curious myself and agreed, so I went looking.
A lot of sources specified that it was part of a technical requirements checklist, and...
Yeap. It doesn't explicitly require a "press any key" screen, but it gives a more pleasant screen to look at while you select a user. People online also say it's used to detect which controller is in use.
If you add a feature like this to a game, it becomes harder to maintain if there are discrepancies between builds. So presumably it's usually just left in rather than removed.
- People online also say it’s used to detect which controller is in use.
  I don't get it. Any modern game can detect when you connect or disconnect a controller on the fly, in the actual game.
  
  Some games use it to determine who is player one vs player two. i.e. whoever presses the button first is treated as player 1.
  
  Yet they are not built in features to game engines such as Unity and Unreal
- I remember a lot of games assigning the "press any button" controller has player 1 back in the day.
It annoys me when you close down a game, and it only has the option to send you to the title menu instead of closing out. It's not the worst thing ever, but it's kind of annoying when you need to go, and you have to "quit" the game just to wait for it to go back to the title screen and make you hit "quit" again a second time.
- It's for console ports. They have a power button..so on PC you'll need to go to that button created specifically to quit to desktop
  
  They need to be less lazy on the ports and add the option to quit to desktop on the PC version even if it doesn't exist on the console version.
  Some games do, however I hate when I have to go to the menu before being able to quit to Desktop.
  
  Or, they have a hypervisor, so instead of needing to quit from inside, you just hit the magic button and go back to the console UI. Game is suspended and might resume after power off or switch, or not, depending on the system and user.
  You could just ctrl-alt-del or window switch or whatever to get the same experience on a computer.
- FromSoft games are the worst for that. They log you off the servers and then make you login again to get to the title screen to quit
  
  Just alt-F4 once you quit the game and hit the title screen or you’re sure the game has successfully saved.
So it knows what input device you're using
Bro if this is what bothers you, then I wish I had such an easy life as you
There was (is?) a requirement from Sony and Microsoft about how long a game can take to load as part of the game licensing process. One of the ways it is measured is by counting time from game boot to how quickly the game can react to user's keypress. A "press start to continue" screen is the most simple thing you can load that passes this requirement. After that the game can do heavier operations such as loading save data, checking DLC or pulling latest messages from online server without having to worry too much about how long these operations take.
The best thing a game has ever done with this is ask on first startup if it should go to the main menu or just load your last save on every startup after this one.
Such not a big deal IMO
I'm reminded of something that Binding of Isaac does that I wish more games would do: If you're anywhere in the main menu (even drilled into it), if you just mash the B button/Esc key, it will keep backing out, up to and including exiting the game if you press it on the main menu. I hate games that make me click 3 times and say "are you sure??" when I just want to quit the dang program.
- If quitting the game is more complicated than alt+F4, I often just alt+F4 after saving.
  
  "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE NEVER DO THAT" - FromSoft games
  At least Elden Ring added a "Quit to Desktop" option. Any games before that... no you have to exit back to the title screen and be subjected to several seconds of extremely loud gothic chanting before you're allowed to exit the game. God help you if your network connection is down because it will try to connect to the network for an entire minute before it fails and lets you exit.
Some games, like the Pathfinder games by Owlcat, use that initial input to determine if you are playing with mouse/keyboard or a gamepad. Depending on that, you get presented with a different UI in the main menu.
Another reason for such a screen could also be Xbox support. Nowadays it's no longer necessary, because user-handling has been vastly improved with the GDK, but before the GDK was released a splash screen was the most user-friendly way to do user-handling in a single-player or online-multiplayer game on Xbox.
I get your point. And kind of agree for the most part. But idk, some title screens are nice to look at. Having the option to just view it until I'm ready to go on is nice imo. One button press isn't all that bad. But yeah when loading or dlc checking has to be done after pressing the button it's more annoying. That should happen before imo
Games used to take a looong time to load before flash storage, so people would go get a coffee or something while loading. Before main menus, it would just drop you into the game while you were away, potentiality missing something. So they added the "press any key" pause to wait until you're back.
For some reason they kept this until today.
- It's also a holdover from arcade games, which would have an 'attract mode' when there was nobody playing.
At some point in this millenium, it became ubiquitous in games to ask for a button press before switching to the main menu and it has become a pet peeve off mine.
Fake news. It was common in the previous millenium too
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pI0fJMkYdPU/maxresdefault.jpg
- I knew I wasn't going crazy! That press any key habit is so ingrained because it's been around since I played my first game on a 286 PC, probably longer.
- That's the thing. I think it is a carry over from that. Back then a lot of games didn't have a menu or anything, after you hit the button, you were just playing the game.
  Like Mario 1 and 3 have just a simple 1 or 2 player select then you are in the game. Some single player games didn't have anything, they just would go straight to the game after you hit start.
  Now there isn't really a need since nearly every game has a menu for loading saves, starting a new game and such. So they could go, but are just a vestigial part of gaming history at this point.
Lately, I’ve seen it for controller detection on PC games. Larian games like Baldur’s Gate 3 at least use it to change how they render the “Main” menu. I mean, the “Main” menu also changes if I plug in a controller so maybe it’s just an aesthetic thing held over from older video games.
- Sometimes windows itself will only let games know there's a controller plugged in after a button is pressed, but connecting a controller with the game already open can usually be detected just fine.
It's been bugging me in BG3. Mostly because it takes a while to load and when it's finally loaded, I have to press a button then WAIT AGAIN for a stupid animation before getting to the main menu so I can then load some more.
Gimme a command line to just automatically "Continue" please. The pretty animtions and menu were fun at first. Now I just want to get back to my brain parasites as quickly as possible. I'm sure that has nothing to do with my brain parasites.
- There's a mod on nexusmods to skip the startup intros. That might help in speeding things up a little
  
  Will those work in linux?
Cyberpunk 2077 is terrible for this. Have to push the spacebar three times to get to the menu to start/continue a game.
- There's a mod for that, if your platform supports mods. It's the only one I'm running.
The only thing I don't like about Deep Rock Galactic is having to watch both the publishers, and the studios logo sequences every time I start the game.
- Go to steam, right click the game and browse local files.
  Navigate to something like Deep Rock Galactic\FSD\Content\Movies and delete (or move) them.
  I've played other games with annoying intros. Normally, deleting the files means the don't play on startup.
  Where they are depends on the game. A quick Google found this solution.
  You will probably have to re-delete them after an update, and after running a "verify local files".
  I've done this with EAC games without issues (incase you are worried)
  
  Thank you SO MUCH
- Rock and Stone!
  
  Stone or rock! Oh wait-
Bonus negative points for games that only check DLC after that button press
Don't forget games that have you manually press button to dismiss and unlocked DLC.
It's very fun with games that you buy after few years and have hundred DLC (ex. fighting games) 😅
Usually takes few minutes of just button pressing to dismiss all new dlcs
There are usually ways around this in the config files. That's how I've always fixed it.
I finished Assassin's Creed Valhalla recently and it drove me up the wall all the time. I mean well over 100 h playtime.
And the game would sit there after every start and wait for me to "press any key". And only after a keypress it would start checking for Add-ons which took ages. Why couldn't it have done that already?
Plus the intro videos I had to replace with empty files because no-skip.
Annoying!
I should be able to click the icon from the desktop/Steam/console menu/whatever and just be put into the game (optionally with it paused) ready to play, so I can walk away and get a drink or something while it loads.
- Age of Wonders 4 does that with a caveat. First it opens a launcher (which is fairly quick) and in there you can select to go to the main menu or directly into your last savegame when launching the game.
I have a similar issue with Diablo 4 at the moment. I've been playing on controller on pc. It's two button presses to skip the intro logos, and a third press will exit the game before even getting to the main menu. The number of times I've accidentally closed the game is much too high.
- OMG yes!!! D4 has been driving me crazy with this! Especially if I’m playing on Steam Deck, where load times are longer and I have to sit through it all again.
  
  It has a host of other issues besides basic ui problems, my largest pet peeve at the moment is town layouts being completely different. Picking a random nightmare dungeon to run and then porting to town is immediately followed by me opening the map to see which cardinal direction the blacksmith/shop is in.
Games that don't do this: infamous series. The first time on the first one is incredible. But afterwards as a trend, loading the game goes straight to your most recent save with zero menu.
Killzone: Shadowfall. No intros. Straight to the main menu when you boot. Unique and wild every time!

97 comments