I was about to say it, and I think it was one of the most creative ways to implement UI elements into the overall gameplay feel, atmosphere and storytelling. Like I really love how the Timeless River/Steamboat Willie combat menu box changes and adds the smokestacks as soon as a fight begins. There was so much creative variety for this single element alone.
358/2 Days had a small screen so the simpler command menu was excused, but Birth by Sleep and Dream Drop Distance not having the world-specific designs dissapointed me greatly.
@@RebelliousTreecko I mean, if Days is excused because of the small screen, then BBS and DDD would be too cause they were also on small handhelds. But yeah, it would've been nice if they did. That was definitely one of those elements that felt very nice to see again when KH3 came out.
@@C4DNerd BBS and DDD had menu styles much larger than console KH games, on much larger screens with much higher resolutions, and could have easily embellished, hell they already do somewhat with Command Styles in BBS, Days both gets an aesthetic kicker out of it(its bland, grey, Org themed, and boring like Roxas' day to day life), and is really tiny and cramped in a way that means mixing it up would have to be light
For me its the sounds when navigating a menu that make a huge difference. I love a snappy, satisfying sound effect when you switch through different menu options - there's something about it that's really appealing.
Like when browsing through the games in 51 Clubhouse Games, each game has its own audible tic when you move the selector over them, like a small splash over Fishing, little clicks and clacks for the more traditional board games, the shuffling of cards, etc.
I love how all the little example menus are obviously very "Masuhiro Sakurai". He definitely has his own sense of visual style for UI, be it for Smash Menus, the titlecards for these videos, and even stuff like the PowerPoint he did for Meteos. This is a man who has figured out what his style is.
I'm surprised he didn't touch on UI sound effects, they are THE most memorable part of a game due to how often you hear them, so it's good to make them both distinct but still thematic for the game.
oh yeah the sound design for menus can easily make one iconic. There's a reason the better "based on a game" PS4 home themes use those sound effects when you are browsing your library (give us themes back PS5 please).
Probably it's a bit of another subject even if it's related. But yes those are impressive, very short sounds but can still give the whole vibe of the game.
I'll be honest in saying that I think that Mario games in general have good UI and in-game menus. ...Still, a part of me does miss the imaginative aesthetic in the older sports games. The new ones get the job done, but can be rather _corporate_ for lack of a better term. This is a good topic, Sakurai.
I’m reminded of how Planet Robobot distinguished its UI from Triple Deluxe with more blues and angular buttons as opposed to Triple Deluxe’s sunset-like color scheme and rounded buttons. The two games run on the same engine, but PR does a lot to stand on its own, with the UI being a major part in that.
I liked the feature in older JRPGs where you could change the color or style of the menu boxes. It allowed the player to give the feeling and the vibe they wanted to the game.
Pokémon games immediately comes to mind, the different frames were a cool way to customize your game. I believe they had this up to XY, with the Battle BGs.
I would like to see the lush, creative menus coming back. So tired of so many UI becoming a minimalistic solid color blandness. I know there are some accessibility and readability concerns but that should be a nice challenge, not a blocker.
Honestly, yeah. While they're purely practically speaking effective, and they don't look _bad,_ there's nothing as boring as "white sans serif on dark background for the 15th time"
The menu is often an important binding for the game world. The more time a person is expected to be in a menu, the more the menu should remind you of the game you're playing. That's because even something as simple as a menu is part of the experience. This is true of games, movies, and restaurants.
It's extremely important to mind accessibility as well. It won't matter if your font and menu design are really immersive when your players can't read it. Strongly consider adding a font option with a clear sans-serif font like OpenDyslexic or DejaVu Sans.
You have to admit though that Persona 5's UI is visually distinct and loud without being overbearing, and made the title stand out from all other RPGs.
One little quirk I like about Devil Survivor is that every UI element, be it the status bar at the top, the overworld navigation, the top screen as a whole, the battle UI in general, even the text boxes, ALL feels like your Communication Player (COMP hehe) are integrated directly into the game experience! Just one look at the menu (where you fuse demons and reassign skills and such), and you can immediately tell that this screen is straight-up the COMP interface mirrored to YOUR DS/3DS screen (minus the save option and what-have-you), essentially temporarily turning your system into COMP if you know what I mean! It's one of my favourite instances of story elements being integrated directly into the game experience, what with this game having the UI be an almost mirroring of the in-universe demon summoning device
I agree wholeheartedly. It's definitely one of the things that'd be missed in a re-release... Even if it were Switch-only, the Switch is a bit too big to realistically be used as a COMP 🧍♀️
Because UIs are so impacted by language, I checked out the Japanese version of this video as well to see the differences. Honestly, the inclusion of Ghost of Tsushima makes a lot more sense in Japanese, where the kanji font is a lot more striking. But interestingly, the menu examples were almost exactly the same. "Control" and "Option" were pluralized in English-Japanese doesn't have plurals-and I think the translator fixed an error bc "Music" and "BGM" were presented as separate options, but if I had seen the menu from the Japanese video in a game I would've thought "oh, the devs didn't give it a good translation pass when they translated it to English, I bet the translator didn't know it was an options screen" because there wasn't a single kanji or kana in sight.
Funny this video should appear on the same day I decided to watch a stream VOD of someone playing Gollum. There was a point where he put some plain text on the screen, fiddled around with the size and boldened it and he made text nearly identical to the game's UI! Naturally, he used it to add some "interesting" quest objectives.
I bet a lot of people who regularly watch Sakurai-san videos wish he would be involved in one way or another in the development of their favourite franchise/saga/IP... I do indeed!
Killer 7 is a good example for how defining a UI can be for a game. Without the constant rambling about blood in the upper left corner, the shifting letters of the carrier pigeon messages and the TV-channel based character switching, Killer 7 would lose a LOT of its identity, even if these things are technically just window-dressing.
Persona 5 comes immediately to mind... their incredibly stylish, flashy and invocative menus really help bring a dynamic quality to what is, technically speaking, a rather slow-paced experience. Never underestimate the impact of good packaging!
UI and fonts are something we might not think too much of, but this really shows how much of a difference they can make for a game. I make sure to experiment with fonts other than Arial or Calibri. I personally like the Impact or NES-style fonts so far. Undertale also has the nice charm of giving Sans and Papyrus their respective fonts which they were named after.
It pretty much goes without saying that menus are quite important when it comes to video games, so it's important to get them right. Great wisdom as always!
A cool example of imaginative up is in the indie game everhood, not because of the Ui itself but because of a detail that happens later on; you straight up end the life of the menu cursor and it's replaced by the hand of the main character
I think Breath of the Wild’s UI design is one of the best I’ve seen in any game. The GUI overlays while you play are very minimalistic and not themed, while the menu elements like the map that are supposed to be on the Sheika Slate are themed accordingly, with rich animations, vfx and sounds.
Accessibility is also huge in UI design. You need to consider the platform audience. PC gamers tend to have many things on the screen and sit near the monitor. Console gamers is the opposite - typically sit far and benefit with less UI elements any given moment. The best UI is a customizable one.
Another fantastic video by Sakurai! I can definitely agree that a lot of the aesthetic of a game comes from its fonts and menus. I loved the different menu styles he showed off.
I got stuck in this rabbit hole a while ago! But to me, the realization that the UI of the game takes a bit part of the experience vastly outweighs the modern need for minimal UIs.
I always see people not wanting menus or a HUD in order to have a more cinematic experience or to be more immersed. Sometimes it works well, like in Dead Space, but most of the time, I think the UI is just as important when it comes to immersing you. It truly nails down the identity of a game even if players don't realize it at first.
Ayo, Nova Drift made it onto a Sakurai video? Nova Drift is one of my favourite games on Steam. With Sakurai acknowledging it here, hopefully that game will get the attention it deserves.
Thank you for acknowledging fonts! It's not lost on people like me that Smash Bros tries to use a font that looks as close to the Nintendo logo font as a commercially available font at the time possibly can.
I really love the usage of the font China Cat in the game Super Lesbian Animal RPG. It's used for almost all the text in the game and I feel it does a good job reinforcing the happy, cozy vibe that the game has.
It's very frustrating when a game has fantastic visual design in menus, EXCEPT for the font! Lately, it seems like I see this when a game is a remaster from an older system, or when the game was not originally in a language that used an alphabet like English, so the visual designers who chose the font were not the same as those who did the rest of the UI (probably).
Final Fantasy remasters with modern fonts rub me the wrong way for some reason; I wish they'd use a pixel type of font since doing otherwise causes a jarring change for me, idk
@@weedmantrudeau5783 Honestly, even several of the later FFs have bad fonts. FFXIII(1/2/3) have this wide squared font that it makes it hard to read. FFXIV either has those same unreadable square fonts, or decent fonts but are either too skinny or have inconsistent sizes within the same UI window. FFXV, FFVIIR, and FFXVI have decent fonts, but they feel pretty sterile.
Pokemon LeafGreen/FireRed did something fun with its fonts! Signs and narration were black and in print, but when a boy was speaking, the font would become blue and remain in print... And if a girl was speaking, the font would become red and appear to be handwritten! (I know for a fact the feminine font occurred in Japanese, though I can't remember if it occurred in English.) Plus, Earthbound played with fonts, too. The Mr. Saturns spoke in a font that was similar to the handwriting of a developer's young daughter! A similar style was used in English, of course.
Sometimes, you can go the extra mile and create a UI that appears like someone that belongs to the game world itself. Consider the pause menu in Mario Odyssey; it was made to resemble a travel brochure. Or LA Noire, which features a pocketbook with actual pages which the character flips through and the “pointer” is the tip of his pencil.
Melee's menu is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. You can really see the transition between its style and the later Smash titles' in Kirby Air Ride's menus imo. A lot of submenus look like Melee's but some areas like the mode selection are very reminiscent of Brawl and later Smash titles' designs.
Ooh yes!!! I've dreamt up some videogame ideas and, as part of those, would sometimes imagine what the UI elements could look like if those games were real (in addition to, for some of them, the soundscapes). For one idea I had which would've been based on a real comic series I've been wanting to read, the UI would use the same fonts and visual elements as were used in those comics, with the dialogue font being used as the text font and the chapter heading font being used as the display font. I imagined that the designers would've wanted players to feel as though the books had come alive and that they could not just relive those stories but change them. For a different idea I had which was inspired by an old arcade game *(that was somewhat forgotten according to Larry Bundy Jr whose video i discovered the game through),* the game would've had a claymation style to it, which would extend into the UI as well in a way that could be representative of, say, someone who'd be designing models or animating character models, though I hadn't yet imagined what kinds of fonts could've been used.
It's so weird how true this is and just how much the UI plays into the feel of a game. If you combined the adult UI, the child UI, and the horror UI, you'd just something like a Danganronpa UI. _Tears of The Kingdom_ has an interesting dichotomy across it's UI in that the inventory menus are minimalist, like those of Skyrim, whereas the map, questlog, and other menus pertaining to information emulate the Purah pad, which is an in-universe handheld computer system made to resemble a Switch built with Sheikah tech. It's as though when the UI doesn't have a diagetic framing device to pose as, it tries its best to pretend that it is not a UI. This naturally has an immersive quality.
Awesome Forspoken mention on how great the immersive UI is like a crystal ball, especially with all the lore, if he hated the game im sure he wouldnt have choosen it. Just shows how underrated this game is
He works on games, game devs will usually look at other games and acknowledge what they did right regardless of their overall impression of the game. That's part of the job they need to know what the competition does.
@@Valon129 regardless it doesnt matter cause there are more games "considered better" with also "better" UI according to reviews like for example Hogwarts Legacy and their map UI and he still didnt choose it but choose Forspoken of all games so he doesnt think its trash as everyone says
Everyone goes oh my god about 3D graphics, but nobody even mentions or are impressed with the 2D UI and graphic design skills. But most people only notice when It's really bad. It feels like the bass player in a band sometimes if you're the UI guy in the team.
There are a few things outside of font and design that bother me when navigating menus. Probably the main one is responsiveness, meaning I want to be able to go through the menus as fast as possible. So many times I try to do something, press left and then confirm, but it doesn't read my left input immediately and it makes me do it again because I cancelled instead of confirmed. I always want to be able to go from the top menu option to the bottom one by pressing up, and vice versa. I also get so annoyed when they have the little dot showing you have something new in your inventory, but it's not for a new item but more items of something you already know you have. Little things like this really add up to a better menu experience.
Some games don't require constant menuing, but to those that do, you don't want to pull players out of the experience by having generic UI and fonts. I'd say it's a sound investment to design them, no matter how lightly you go about making them.
With fonts it's very important to balance the desire for style with the need for readability. There are cases where the fonts are barely legible. I don't play games like that, but I've seen them. Or at the very least give players the option to pick a better font.
Not a game, but still very much a Vibes thing: The Xbox 360 iterated through quite a number of UIs over its tenure, and while the modern ones have settled on a Windows adjacent Tiles minimalism, anyone who's seen what the 360 UI looked like at launch knows a completely different vibe, the Blades UI was unique and almost felt like game-ifying the idea of draw of folders
One company who defined a generation with their games' menus (For better and for worse) is Bungie. Ever since Halo 2, their UIs are super well-craft, with fast navigation, good presentation, fitted with the game universe, easy to read and understand. For me, personally, Halo Reach was their peak. The series never got a menu so good as Reach. But their most influential was Destiny. It was innovative for mixing the flexibility of a mouse cursor of a PC Game on a console. The "Destiny-Style Menu" has been overused by the entire gaming landscape, but I don't think everyone understand what makes the Destiny menu so good. Things like "Hold to interact" and the cursor sometimes being kinda slow turned me down about this style of menu.
The UI I'm need to brainstorm for the puzzle game I'm making is going to be a pain to nail down because I know it should have a "digital style" but I'm really not very creative when doing UIs 😭 Guess it's back to check references and see what they inspire me to make, but it's hard to find nice styles that are what you are looking for without them looking like out from a Flash game 🤔
My suggestion is to look into what other games with similar things to what you want to have done to your game. Drawing inspiration from other games and creative works is a great way to find a foundation you are satisfied with. The hard part is taking that inspiration and running with it until you have something that uniquely fits your game.
Its always odd to me when Sakurai uses a game you've played before as a demonstration that thought for sure was too obscure like the use of Nova Drift in this vid.
Everytime I try to make a game of my own, UI is always the part where the project dies. I just can't seem to ever get it right. Everytime I search for guides on designing the UI, all I find is technical guides on how to make them in Unity and stuff, not artistic guides on how to design them. So gonna save that video for future reference, this should help me a lot.
Seen my fair share of good UI but my personal favorites are Sonic Riders Zero Gravity, Mario Party 5, Sonic Mania, Mario Odyssey, and this last pick is pretty obvious, Smash Bros. Special Each one more better than the first.
Been playing the Battle Network Collection and at first, the text was really bugging me. While I've gotten used to it, having smooth text when everything else is pixelated feels a little weird.
A lot of the really good menu concepts I see tend to get prototyped with software like Adobe XD and Figma. Gacha games in particular MUST rely on cohesive UI and UX.
![Voice Recording [Audio]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/C3ANiCI1Em4/mqdefault.jpg)
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
a good example are the action boxes in most kingdom hearts games. they change depending on the style of the world you are in.
I was about to say it, and I think it was one of the most creative ways to implement UI elements into the overall gameplay feel, atmosphere and storytelling. Like I really love how the Timeless River/Steamboat Willie combat menu box changes and adds the smokestacks as soon as a fight begins. There was so much creative variety for this single element alone.
358/2 Days had a small screen so the simpler command menu was excused, but Birth by Sleep and Dream Drop Distance not having the world-specific designs dissapointed me greatly.
Neat.
@@RebelliousTreecko I mean, if Days is excused because of the small screen, then BBS and DDD would be too cause they were also on small handhelds.
But yeah, it would've been nice if they did. That was definitely one of those elements that felt very nice to see again when KH3 came out.
@@C4DNerd BBS and DDD had menu styles much larger than console KH games, on much larger screens with much higher resolutions, and could have easily embellished, hell they already do somewhat with Command Styles in BBS, Days both gets an aesthetic kicker out of it(its bland, grey, Org themed, and boring like Roxas' day to day life), and is really tiny and cramped in a way that means mixing it up would have to be light
For me its the sounds when navigating a menu that make a huge difference. I love a snappy, satisfying sound effect when you switch through different menu options - there's something about it that's really appealing.
Like when browsing through the games in 51 Clubhouse Games, each game has its own audible tic when you move the selector over them, like a small splash over Fishing, little clicks and clacks for the more traditional board games, the shuffling of cards, etc.
I've got Majora's Mask menu sounds on Windows for things :T
I love how all the little example menus are obviously very "Masuhiro Sakurai". He definitely has his own sense of visual style for UI, be it for Smash Menus, the titlecards for these videos, and even stuff like the PowerPoint he did for Meteos. This is a man who has figured out what his style is.
That helps you stand out from the rest
Actually his wife is the one that does the UI design
I'm surprised he didn't touch on UI sound effects, they are THE most memorable part of a game due to how often you hear them, so it's good to make them both distinct but still thematic for the game.
oh yeah the sound design for menus can easily make one iconic. There's a reason the better "based on a game" PS4 home themes use those sound effects when you are browsing your library (give us themes back PS5 please).
Probably it's a bit of another subject even if it's related. But yes those are impressive, very short sounds but can still give the whole vibe of the game.
it makes me think about how killer instinct (2013) plays the notes of the main theme when you are changing menu options on the training
UI is truly the unsung hero of game development, in that it's at its best when players DON'T notice it.
Unless you notice it for all the right reasons like Persona 5 or because you can customize it
I did not expect to see Forspoken. But the approach they had with the menu design was simply brilliant.
I'll be honest in saying that I think that Mario games in general have good UI and in-game menus.
...Still, a part of me does miss the imaginative aesthetic in the older sports games. The new ones get the job done, but can be rather _corporate_ for lack of a better term.
This is a good topic, Sakurai.
Given how corporate sports itself it nowadays, I'd say it fits perfectly... x_x
The UI of ridge racer type 4 is just nuts, it's super stylized and the BGM just makes it even better
A responsive, pleasant menu to move in with great clicks, boops and animations feels SO damn good, truly.
I’m reminded of how Planet Robobot distinguished its UI from Triple Deluxe with more blues and angular buttons as opposed to Triple Deluxe’s sunset-like color scheme and rounded buttons. The two games run on the same engine, but PR does a lot to stand on its own, with the UI being a major part in that.
I liked the feature in older JRPGs where you could change the color or style of the menu boxes. It allowed the player to give the feeling and the vibe they wanted to the game.
Persona 2 allowing you to change text box backgrounds to a Jack Frost pattern is so kino
I literally do this every time I boot up Gen 3 & 4 Pokemon
Pokémon games immediately comes to mind, the different frames were a cool way to customize your game. I believe they had this up to XY, with the Battle BGs.
All older Tales of games in a nutshell 😅.
its one of the few things i HATE about the pixel remasters of FF1-6, you cant change the menu box colors. :(
I would like to see the lush, creative menus coming back. So tired of so many UI becoming a minimalistic solid color blandness. I know there are some accessibility and readability concerns but that should be a nice challenge, not a blocker.
What sorts of menus do you have in mind? The Brutal Legend main menu comes to mind... it's an FMV of Jack Black going through a vinyl album.
I would love some examples of better menus
Yeah, I've seen some screenshots of Cassette Beasts and they have an actual cassette player as the holder for the battle UI options. So cool!
Banjo Kazooie's menu screen was really fun and intuitive, as a classic example.
Honestly, yeah. While they're purely practically speaking effective, and they don't look _bad,_ there's nothing as boring as "white sans serif on dark background for the 15th time"
The menu is often an important binding for the game world. The more time a person is expected to be in a menu, the more the menu should remind you of the game you're playing. That's because even something as simple as a menu is part of the experience. This is true of games, movies, and restaurants.
The Victorian style gives me so much The Great Ace Attorney vibes I always love that look
Sonic Adventure 2's use of Comic Sans is iconic and I wouldn't have it any other way
Holy hell, I never expected to see Nova Drift in these videos. I backed that kickstarter project way back when.
Nova Drift sweep
Neither did I!
Now this is Sakurai speaking on his most recognizable talent, imo.
His wife‘s most recognizable talent
@@cybercop0083 is that so, I'm not familiar
It's extremely important to mind accessibility as well. It won't matter if your font and menu design are really immersive when your players can't read it. Strongly consider adding a font option with a clear sans-serif font like OpenDyslexic or DejaVu Sans.
Achievement unlocked : make a video on this theme without quoting Persona 5 once.
Good presentation !
You have to admit though that Persona 5's UI is visually distinct and loud without being overbearing, and made the title stand out from all other RPGs.
One little quirk I like about Devil Survivor is that every UI element, be it the status bar at the top, the overworld navigation, the top screen as a whole, the battle UI in general, even the text boxes, ALL feels like your Communication Player (COMP hehe) are integrated directly into the game experience! Just one look at the menu (where you fuse demons and reassign skills and such), and you can immediately tell that this screen is straight-up the COMP interface mirrored to YOUR DS/3DS screen (minus the save option and what-have-you), essentially temporarily turning your system into COMP if you know what I mean! It's one of my favourite instances of story elements being integrated directly into the game experience, what with this game having the UI be an almost mirroring of the in-universe demon summoning device
I agree wholeheartedly. It's definitely one of the things that'd be missed in a re-release... Even if it were Switch-only, the Switch is a bit too big to realistically be used as a COMP 🧍♀️
Because UIs are so impacted by language, I checked out the Japanese version of this video as well to see the differences. Honestly, the inclusion of Ghost of Tsushima makes a lot more sense in Japanese, where the kanji font is a lot more striking. But interestingly, the menu examples were almost exactly the same. "Control" and "Option" were pluralized in English-Japanese doesn't have plurals-and I think the translator fixed an error bc "Music" and "BGM" were presented as separate options, but if I had seen the menu from the Japanese video in a game I would've thought "oh, the devs didn't give it a good translation pass when they translated it to English, I bet the translator didn't know it was an options screen" because there wasn't a single kanji or kana in sight.
one thing to keep in mind when using a highly decorated font is to also offer an alternative easy to read font in the menu to keep it accessible.
Funny this video should appear on the same day I decided to watch a stream VOD of someone playing Gollum. There was a point where he put some plain text on the screen, fiddled around with the size and boldened it and he made text nearly identical to the game's UI! Naturally, he used it to add some "interesting" quest objectives.
A fellow Vinesause watcher I see.
I bet a lot of people who regularly watch Sakurai-san videos wish he would be involved in one way or another in the development of their favourite franchise/saga/IP... I do indeed!
Killer 7 is a good example for how defining a UI can be for a game. Without the constant rambling about blood in the upper left corner, the shifting letters of the carrier pigeon messages and the TV-channel based character switching, Killer 7 would lose a LOT of its identity, even if these things are technically just window-dressing.
UI helps your game stick out. You could either keep it functional, like Halo, or spice them up with some visual pizzazz, like Persona.
Persona 5 comes immediately to mind... their incredibly stylish, flashy and invocative menus really help bring a dynamic quality to what is, technically speaking, a rather slow-paced experience. Never underestimate the impact of good packaging!
it's also very important that the UI is intuitive and easy to navigate
UI and fonts are something we might not think too much of, but this really shows how much of a difference they can make for a game. I make sure to experiment with fonts other than Arial or Calibri. I personally like the Impact or NES-style fonts so far. Undertale also has the nice charm of giving Sans and Papyrus their respective fonts which they were named after.
It pretty much goes without saying that menus are quite important when it comes to video games, so it's important to get them right. Great wisdom as always!
I love readability in my menus. It helps to know where everything is and to be able to see it clearly. I like this video.
Please do a video on the musical themes you chose for your videos! They're so good and perfect for each of the sections.
I feel like this is especially fitting after we saw what a game, gollum, looks like without good presentation for its text
Its amazing how UI is so powerful that there's literally a game genre almost entirely based around iteracting with it, turn-based RPGs.
ridge racer type 4 is one of my favorite examples of UI setting the tone of the game
This is where Persona 5 shines. The UI is just so creative!
A cool example of imaginative up is in the indie game everhood, not because of the Ui itself but because of a detail that happens later on; you straight up end the life of the menu cursor and it's replaced by the hand of the main character
I think Breath of the Wild’s UI design is one of the best I’ve seen in any game. The GUI overlays while you play are very minimalistic and not themed, while the menu elements like the map that are supposed to be on the Sheika Slate are themed accordingly, with rich animations, vfx and sounds.
Accessibility is also huge in UI design. You need to consider the platform audience. PC gamers tend to have many things on the screen and sit near the monitor. Console gamers is the opposite - typically sit far and benefit with less UI elements any given moment. The best UI is a customizable one.
Another fantastic video by Sakurai! I can definitely agree that a lot of the aesthetic of a game comes from its fonts and menus. I loved the different menu styles he showed off.
Thinking about the style of the menus in Kirby Air Ride and how those carried over to Super Smash Bros Brawl and Kid Icarus Uprising.
Even bad games can have some good traits, and Sakurai clearly isn't scared to prove it with the Forspoken example.
maybe because he doesnt think its a bad game just the usual IGN that admitted they gave games like forpsoken a bad review cause of bandwagon
I come to the comment section today to show my appreciation to this man for teaching us this stuff for free
I got stuck in this rabbit hole a while ago! But to me, the realization that the UI of the game takes a bit part of the experience vastly outweighs the modern need for minimal UIs.
Never thought about it much, but the sample of the styles shown in the video convinced me 😂. Nice one, Sakurai
The UI of Xenoblade 3 is Designed In-Universe after the Party IRIS System.
I always see people not wanting menus or a HUD in order to have a more cinematic experience or to be more immersed. Sometimes it works well, like in Dead Space, but most of the time, I think the UI is just as important when it comes to immersing you. It truly nails down the identity of a game even if players don't realize it at first.
Ayo, Nova Drift made it onto a Sakurai video?
Nova Drift is one of my favourite games on Steam. With Sakurai acknowledging it here, hopefully that game will get the attention it deserves.
That's awesome, I hadn't even considered that.
Small things are part of the picture!
Oh hey, we finally have a 2023 game referenced in this series through Forspoken. I guess we’re finally in the third batch of videos.
1:14 Jesus christ JESUS CHRIST
I thought i was one of the only people in this planet who knew about Nova Drift...
Nova drift gang, rise up!
I had the same reaction too XD It's a big honor to see it here!
I screamed when I saw it
Imagine how I feel!
@@novadriftgame What an honor, you deserve it for making such a banger though. Could've been in the lesson about VFX too
amazing hints and info, thanks sakurai! great help.
Very important lesson to consider. Thanks again for your content and wisdom!
Huh. Never realized how Victorian that the Tales of Symphonia UI looked
Thank you for acknowledging fonts! It's not lost on people like me that Smash Bros tries to use a font that looks as close to the Nintendo logo font as a commercially available font at the time possibly can.
Having different buttons to do different functions is helpful. Slots and boxes make the menus easy.
I really love the usage of the font China Cat in the game Super Lesbian Animal RPG. It's used for almost all the text in the game and I feel it does a good job reinforcing the happy, cozy vibe that the game has.
It's very frustrating when a game has fantastic visual design in menus, EXCEPT for the font! Lately, it seems like I see this when a game is a remaster from an older system, or when the game was not originally in a language that used an alphabet like English, so the visual designers who chose the font were not the same as those who did the rest of the UI (probably).
Final Fantasy remasters with modern fonts rub me the wrong way for some reason; I wish they'd use a pixel type of font since doing otherwise causes a jarring change for me, idk
@@weedmantrudeau5783 Honestly, even several of the later FFs have bad fonts. FFXIII(1/2/3) have this wide squared font that it makes it hard to read. FFXIV either has those same unreadable square fonts, or decent fonts but are either too skinny or have inconsistent sizes within the same UI window.
FFXV, FFVIIR, and FFXVI have decent fonts, but they feel pretty sterile.
Pokemon LeafGreen/FireRed did something fun with its fonts! Signs and narration were black and in print, but when a boy was speaking, the font would become blue and remain in print... And if a girl was speaking, the font would become red and appear to be handwritten!
(I know for a fact the feminine font occurred in Japanese, though I can't remember if it occurred in English.)
Plus, Earthbound played with fonts, too. The Mr. Saturns spoke in a font that was similar to the handwriting of a developer's young daughter! A similar style was used in English, of course.
I think they used different colors as you described, but used the same font in the Western versions.
Finally, someone says it, thank you Sakurai!
This is required watching to understand most of Tim Roger’s catalogue of videos
Sometimes, you can go the extra mile and create a UI that appears like someone that belongs to the game world itself. Consider the pause menu in Mario Odyssey; it was made to resemble a travel brochure. Or LA Noire, which features a pocketbook with actual pages which the character flips through and the “pointer” is the tip of his pencil.
I really like the menus in smash 64 and melee. It’s too bad they went for a “cleaner” style with the later games.
Melee's menu is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. You can really see the transition between its style and the later Smash titles' in Kirby Air Ride's menus imo. A lot of submenus look like Melee's but some areas like the mode selection are very reminiscent of Brawl and later Smash titles' designs.
Persona Menus are Art
The font is one of the reasons why the GameCube version of Tales of Symphonia is the best one.
Masahiro Sakurai - YOU defined my world.
💝
That sounds like a cheesy pickup line, it's funny.
Ooh yes!!! I've dreamt up some videogame ideas and, as part of those, would sometimes imagine what the UI elements could look like if those games were real (in addition to, for some of them, the soundscapes).
For one idea I had which would've been based on a real comic series I've been wanting to read, the UI would use the same fonts and visual elements as were used in those comics, with the dialogue font being used as the text font and the chapter heading font being used as the display font. I imagined that the designers would've wanted players to feel as though the books had come alive and that they could not just relive those stories but change them.
For a different idea I had which was inspired by an old arcade game *(that was somewhat forgotten according to Larry Bundy Jr whose video i discovered the game through),* the game would've had a claymation style to it, which would extend into the UI as well in a way that could be representative of, say, someone who'd be designing models or animating character models, though I hadn't yet imagined what kinds of fonts could've been used.
Great information about Menus.😄👍
Persona 5 is another great example but thats probably more a style choice then a world building choice
It's so weird how true this is and just how much the UI plays into the feel of a game.
If you combined the adult UI, the child UI, and the horror UI, you'd just something like a Danganronpa UI.
_Tears of The Kingdom_ has an interesting dichotomy across it's UI in that the inventory menus are minimalist, like those of Skyrim, whereas the map, questlog, and other menus pertaining to information emulate the Purah pad, which is an in-universe handheld computer system made to resemble a Switch built with Sheikah tech.
It's as though when the UI doesn't have a diagetic framing device to pose as, it tries its best to pretend that it is not a UI. This naturally has an immersive quality.
I always appreciate the look of the UI in Smash Bros.
Awesome Forspoken mention on how great the immersive UI is like a crystal ball, especially with all the lore, if he hated the game im sure he wouldnt have choosen it. Just shows how underrated this game is
He works on games, game devs will usually look at other games and acknowledge what they did right regardless of their overall impression of the game. That's part of the job they need to know what the competition does.
@@Valon129 regardless it doesnt matter cause there are more games "considered better" with also "better" UI according to reviews like for example Hogwarts Legacy and their map UI and he still didnt choose it but choose Forspoken of all games so he doesnt think its trash as everyone says
A good UI is important in videogames.
Everyone goes oh my god about 3D graphics, but nobody even mentions or are impressed with the 2D UI and graphic design skills. But most people only notice when It's really bad. It feels like the bass player in a band sometimes if you're the UI guy in the team.
There are a few things outside of font and design that bother me when navigating menus. Probably the main one is responsiveness, meaning I want to be able to go through the menus as fast as possible. So many times I try to do something, press left and then confirm, but it doesn't read my left input immediately and it makes me do it again because I cancelled instead of confirmed. I always want to be able to go from the top menu option to the bottom one by pressing up, and vice versa. I also get so annoyed when they have the little dot showing you have something new in your inventory, but it's not for a new item but more items of something you already know you have.
Little things like this really add up to a better menu experience.
Some games don't require constant menuing, but to those that do, you don't want to pull players out of the experience by having generic UI and fonts.
I'd say it's a sound investment to design them, no matter how lightly you go about making them.
With fonts it's very important to balance the desire for style with the need for readability. There are cases where the fonts are barely legible. I don't play games like that, but I've seen them. Or at the very least give players the option to pick a better font.
I wish every menu had the sheer style of Persona 5's
Thank you, Sakurai
A responsive, bug-free, enjoyable and attractive menu really sets the tone for the rest of the game. No HTML-based "mobile game" menus please!
Not a game, but still very much a Vibes thing: The Xbox 360 iterated through quite a number of UIs over its tenure, and while the modern ones have settled on a Windows adjacent Tiles minimalism, anyone who's seen what the 360 UI looked like at launch knows a completely different vibe, the Blades UI was unique and almost felt like game-ifying the idea of draw of folders
I'm shocked, Sakurai. SHOCKED! You actually had the restraint to NOT mention Persona 5!?
His smile is nice
No mention to assassin'a creed ui which makes sence because is inside animus
One company who defined a generation with their games' menus (For better and for worse) is Bungie. Ever since Halo 2, their UIs are super well-craft, with fast navigation, good presentation, fitted with the game universe, easy to read and understand. For me, personally, Halo Reach was their peak. The series never got a menu so good as Reach. But their most influential was Destiny. It was innovative for mixing the flexibility of a mouse cursor of a PC Game on a console. The "Destiny-Style Menu" has been overused by the entire gaming landscape, but I don't think everyone understand what makes the Destiny menu so good. Things like "Hold to interact" and the cursor sometimes being kinda slow turned me down about this style of menu.
The UI I'm need to brainstorm for the puzzle game I'm making is going to be a pain to nail down because I know it should have a "digital style" but I'm really not very creative when doing UIs 😭
Guess it's back to check references and see what they inspire me to make, but it's hard to find nice styles that are what you are looking for without them looking like out from a Flash game 🤔
My suggestion is to look into what other games with similar things to what you want to have done to your game. Drawing inspiration from other games and creative works is a great way to find a foundation you are satisfied with. The hard part is taking that inspiration and running with it until you have something that uniquely fits your game.
The prophet hath spoken.
Its always odd to me when Sakurai uses a game you've played before as a demonstration that thought for sure was too obscure like the use of Nova Drift in this vid.
Everytime I try to make a game of my own, UI is always the part where the project dies. I just can't seem to ever get it right. Everytime I search for guides on designing the UI, all I find is technical guides on how to make them in Unity and stuff, not artistic guides on how to design them.
So gonna save that video for future reference, this should help me a lot.
killer7 has amazing menus
Seen my fair share of good UI but my personal favorites are
Sonic Riders Zero Gravity, Mario Party 5, Sonic Mania, Mario Odyssey, and this last pick is pretty obvious, Smash Bros. Special
Each one more better than the first.
Been playing the Battle Network Collection and at first, the text was really bugging me. While I've gotten used to it, having smooth text when everything else is pixelated feels a little weird.
Don't look at the letter choices for 3.
Nice thanks👍
Nice vid
The difference between Persona 5's UI and Final Fantasy VII Remake's UI is immense. Yet they both appeal to the RPG and anime crowd.
SPLATOON MENTIONED! 🎉🎉🎉
Can confirm: Developing a font from scratch is very difficult and/or tedious.
Not flexing the sick menus from Super Smash Bros. Brawl onwards in this video should be a crime
A lot of the really good menu concepts I see tend to get prototyped with software like Adobe XD and Figma.
Gacha games in particular MUST rely on cohesive UI and UX.
Heck YES🎉
Cool!