How could you talk about Twilight Princess’ opening cinematic WITHOUT discussing the SECOND HALF OF IT?? Like yeah, the Epona/Wolf Link bit is really good, but the cinematic that follows it? MASTERPIECE. No joke, as a kid when it first came out, I managed to find sheet music for that entire sequence online and learned how to play it. I would boot up the game, wait for the second cinematic to start, and then play along. Felt so epic to baby teenager me, lol.
My interpretation of Lifelight has always been that it's about Losing Iwata. "On that day, when the light fell away, our world came to an end". I always felt like that was talking about how the day Iwata died, Smash was forever changed. Since it was him and Sakurai always having some hand in each until Ultimate. Its about loss and finding the light to keep going, keep rising. Especially considering Ultimate was Iwata's last request to Sakurai, I really wouldn't be surprised if that's the truth.
The one thing I’ll never forget about the brawl intro is that my grandma loved the song for it. She mentions how it was one of the few songs she heard from my games that she enjoyed.
Sonic Unleashed's "opening" fits more on the things he listed that are NOT counted. It is a story cutscene, not a unique intro video. The closest thing was when if you wait long enough, the attract mode video plays. It's the one that starts of the CGI scene of Sonic playing with a ring then showcases gameplay with Endless Possibility playing.
The opening cinematics before the title screen are always very cool in my eyes! Even the Pokemon games from Gens 1 to 5 have some cool ones too! Also, I dunno why they died off! They need to come back!
Unfortunately, they died off as a function of games moving from physical stores to digital download. When games were physical media and people walked into stores these openings would often be playing on repeat for a demo's "Attract Mode" as a form of in-store advertisement. With the migration over to digital, they're able to have trailers directly on their store page diminishing the impetus to devote resources for creating flashy, cinematic scenes on the opening of a game as such features would have minimal financial returns for the input.
@@sapphiresage5339 Figured that, but I believe that if done right, then the art of the opening cinematic would be back again! I would be sure to add one if I make a game of my own! LOL
Growing up, my family and I would refer to the opening cinematics in games as the game's "dream" because of how Mario 64 does it with Mario falling asleep and viewing the game through his dream.
My favorite opening cutscene for a video game was Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies. I remember that game and its opening so vividly because I was a young weeb in the making, using my mom's tablet data to watch tons of Dragon Ball Z thinking it was DBZ Kai. I remember Toriyama's art style and constantly comparing DQ to DB. Whenever I'd play that game I made sure to watch the opening cinematic of all the different unnamed characters fighting and partying and adventuring. I remember that the cutscene always fueled my young imagination to see MY in game characters differently and imagine each of them as seperate little unique anime characters. The opening cinematic for that game felt like I was truly witnessing an adventure alongside the anonymous characters despite being a 10yr old in my room.
Sonic Adventure 2 and Melee were some of my favorites growing up. I'd also say that Dissidia Final Fantasy has some of the best opening cutscenes in any game- definitely on par with or better than Melee and Brawl. It's too bad this era is over.
The opening cinematic to pokémon mystery dungeon explorers of sky is fucking 'cinema'. The bombastic orchestra readying you for a new adventure, the little story bits and characters you meet along the way. There's no better feeling.
Speaking of animated opening i really liked how Sola to robo had a second animated opening after you finished the first part of the game. It's like when anime change their opening mid-seasons after the end of the first major story arc.
I agree that while not necessary for a great game, most of my favorite games have an opening cinematic. There’s just something special about an opening that sets the atmosphere perfectly and gets you hyped for the game.
Eastward's opening is probably one of my favorites, it isn't a cinematic but fully animated and it was so well animated it made me hyped for what i was about to play
yall ever played xenogears? when you first watch the opening you'll be like "this is neato but idk what the fuck is happening" and then when you watch it after beating the game it becomes the most glorious work of cinema you've ever witnessed in your life.
As a fun fact, Melee's initial reveal at E3 was the presenter saying he's been getting asked what characters will appear on the then-upcoming GameCube, and then showing us...exactly that intro.
Okay, real talk. Tales of Symphonia is not only my all time most favorite video game, the intro cinema slapped hard. You might call it spoiler to show antagonizing characters with the party, but it just adds to the intrigue when, how and why their motives changed. It gives a sense of anticipation to see how the story unfolds.
Back in my childhood, most games had amazing intros. All genres, fighting games, racing games, even sports games all had incredible intros building the anticipation and giving you chills
Eastward's opening is absolutely fantastic! A two-minute fully animated opening cinematic. Brilliant style, and the accompanying music track (just titled "Eastward") is stellar! This is a wonderful opening cinematic that puts me in the mood this game is trying to set every time.
Sonic Adventure's opening cinematic deserves a shoutout because it's pretty wild. In the context of franchises bringing classic beloved characters to 3d you'd get them mainly being shown off. And here you have Sonic Team with their new fancy console and you put in the Sonic game... and the very first thing you see, probably in the entire console, probably in the entire _generation_ is a pretty realistic city just blowing up, followed by a godzilla fancy cgi monster that'll tease you for the entire game. And *then* it blasts Crush 40 at your face and Sonic. There was, basically nothing like that. It tells you the ambitions they had for not just the game, but the whole system. For videogames from then onwards.
Special mention has to go to the anime style intros that get in entire studios to do them. It's like how Bamco keeps roping ufotable into doing intros for them, which is always absolutely based and at the same time it also resulted in Code Vein's intro, to this day the edgiest thing I've seen in my life and I desire *m o r e*
Before even watcing the video I just wanna say, YES, bring cinematic intros back! If anything they serve to hype u up for the experience or give u a taste of what to expect. If anime and cartoons can still do it, I don't see why not video games.
SHAKING SOBBING POUNDING THE FLOOR.... I forgot to mention my favorite video game in the twitter post....... its called devil survivor 2 record breaker and it makes me so hype. No idea what that intro song is about but its so FLY. I love how it got a whole new like art style thing... idk it fills me with vibes. Fantasy Life is another dear game to me -- you have to wait a minute for the opening scene to play but its only in the opener and oooooooh. animation... CINEMA
I think 15:55 gave me the heaviest tonal whiplash, I had to rewind to make sure I understood where the sudden death-over-soccer started. Funnier still, I knew of Strikers Charged ahead of time, but it still gets me how he describes it.
I always cry when i boot up Mario and Sonic at the Olympic winter games (vancouver specifically). It’s this amazing sensation of two video game titans competing in winter sports. But it’s the end part that gets me every time. Seeing all the characters celebrate over their victories in each respective event (that was shown throughout the opening) was always such a rush to me. Especially bowser jr. Being so happy to win something with his dad. God its such a good opening. Then there’s twilight princess. I don’t wanna say too much cause if you watch it, you’ll just know. I love how much it sets the mood as opposed to other zelda games. This one is dark, somber, and sad. The choir slowly rising up untill the end sends chills down my spine. Im glad you pointed out how amazing starfox assault was, cause I really wish the series would return to that. Maybe a remake or something. Bakugan battle brawlers the wii game had a hype opening that I NEVER skipped. Kirby’s return to dreamland was nice and short and cute, so I didn’t skip that either As much as xy and sun and moon are my favorite Pokemon games, I gotta give the best pokemon opening to black and white. That captures the wonder, adventure, and magic of the pokemon series. As for my favorite Sonic opening, I gotta give it to Sonic Colors. Say what you will about the game, that cinematic was peak.
I always loved Soul Calibur 3's opening cinematic. I remember my brother and I getting it from Blockbuster and popping it in for the weekend and were blown away by the visuals and music. Still holds a place in my heart.
the KH songs do indeed have nothing to do with the games, Utada and the developers picked songs that were already in Utada's backpocket - only exception being the KH3 opening Face my Fears, which was meant to just be a remix of the credit song but the collab spiraled out of control. the English versions *are* written for the games, but also Utada admitted they don't know the story of the games in detail and just works of a summary
There are two ideals. Smash Melee, and Dark Souls. One tells you how hype and what's going to happen. One gives you the few drops of direly needed context that the rest of the game connects to
One of my favorites is the Mega Man 8 intro. Not so great now, but as a kid I thought it was awesome. It was my first time seeing Mega Man fully animated, it's action packed, and even showed the blue bomber fighting past robot masters, which was cool. Even though it hasn't held up very well it still holds a special place in my heart.
Not sure if this counts, but the I Expect You To Die series' opening credits are all BANGERS!! They feel like a James Bond opening, but the villain sings to you and utilises the VR perspective very well in all 3 (currently) games!!
One of my favorites is the Banjo-Kazooie opening. I almost never skipped it as a kid. It may be simple but it’s goofy and the theme song is so catchy you just want to watch these characters play it to hype you up for adventure. But the Smash Melee one is peak, I always have to watch it.
Bayonetta 2 opening start with a cinematic fight between her and rival of the game, boi was that a fire opening, it even take a scene from the actual game Cinema
Shin Megami Tensei openings are awesome, the openings of the Digital Devil Saga and Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha duologies are so cool, and their accompanying songs are just as good! Cinema, I guess
Upon the release of Risk of Rain Returns (a remake of Risk of Rain), they added a new, really well animated intro cutscene that quickly explains the inciting incident of the game. They used it for the trailers first, of course, but it flows so nicely into the game and I watch it almost every time because of it's brevity. Astral Ascent was also recently released and it has a really cool intro animation as well. Seems like indie games are going to be the ones to pick up the slack on this waning art form. Also, uh, cinema these nuts or something, I dunno
I love the chrono cross opening a lot. from yasunori mitsuda's amazing score, the collage of scenes and that shot with kid on the beach and the camera goes trough her eye it's very epic.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake's train shot and opening sequence is absolutely timeless. Gigantic chills my first run through, and subsequently large chills every time I rewatch it. It captured the mystery and intrigue of the original that so many kids had an image of in their head. Fucking magical.
A series worthy of mention is Metroid. Both the 2D games and the Prime series do a great job at setting a tone with the music and graphics. It’s usually done in a way that makes it distinct from cinema, despite the series’s origins as being inspired by Alien. Super also has the fun bonus of the gameplay segments doing secret techniques like the crystal flash.
The opening movie to Onimusha 3 is absurdly hype, never been so pumped to play a tank control game as I was after watching that one for the first (or hundred) time, it's really on a league of its own for me.
Cinema! XD 4:09 Late to this, but for anyone interested: From memory, the way Sakurai explained it was that the whole point of the cutscenes was that they were cathartic rewards for the effort it took you, the player, to go through the Subspatial Emissary with the characters you're unlocking the cutscenes _for._ At the time, just going to RUclips to watch a compilation of them instead and then proceed to never buy the game just... wasn't a thing, and it was especially novel in Japan - If you've ever met people who don't understand how you could watch a whole playthrough of a game without ever playing it yourself, this is that, except the creator of Smash here felt an extra layer of "What's the point of anything, at this stage" even harder, given the time he took to make the cutscenes unlockable the normal way. I think from his perspective, it felt like people were just downloading illegal torrent of his unlockable content for free. He seems pretty content with the format he's got nowadays, so I'm assuming he's over it; but after reading translated versions of his thoughts on this issue, I can much more easily see where he's coming from. Oh, and Lifelight's lyrics are indeed just talk about the battle against Galeem in the adventure mode, but like from the perspective of the in-universe characters. It's poetic because A: Japan, B: stylistic choices pretty much, C: _they're_ going through the biggest cosmic tragedy of their existence and don't fully understand it themselves until the ending, so, yeah. Personally I think it doesn't hit as hard as it could because the mode itself doesn't live up to it (I don't hate it tho). Hope that makes sense, to anyone who didn't know! Oh, and make sure to correct/add anything I missed, for anyone who knows better.
Yeah, opening cinematics are the perfect cherry on top of some of my favorite video games. My favorite opening cinematic of all time is Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance. The way all the visuals go with the beautiful orchestral rendition of Simple and Clean is absolutely wonderful, especially seeing Mickey on the bottom screen conducting and reacting to it all.
I think it is worth noting the evolution of cinematics on PC games. When distribution switched from floppy disks to CDs, suddenly developers had a mountain of space with nothing to fill it. This led to some rather extravagant movies made simply because they could. My favorite was Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance. Cheesy lines delivered with absolute sincerity that always sucked me into the drama of estranged nobility returning to free his planet from the usurpers who killed his family.
My favorite opening cinematics are the ones for FF7 and the Persona games (3-onwards). The camera panning out from an alley as it zooms out from Aerith walking to Midgar, there’s a reason they used the intro to show off the PS3 in 2005.
The Kingdom Hearts openings are cinema!! Right now I'm playing dungeon crawler Silent Hope and this game is pretty bare bones on the story, so the pre-game anime cinematic is really necessary to set the tone and explain what the heck you're even doing. It doesn't play automatically every time you open the game, but it does have a button on the title screen so you can watch it again which I think is good. FFXIV on the other hand does still have a classic opening cinematic and if you don't press the START button right away after launching the game it starts playing automatically. Except. If you buy all the expansions at once, like most people usually do, you will get the cutscene for the most recent expansion, even if you only just started playing. Not ideal when there are some obvious spoilers in those openings and this is a pretty story-heavy game. You'd think this is a pretty simple fix but they've never gotten around to it.
Thank you RUclips for recommending me a cool new channel. RUclips has been getting surprisingly good at this recently. Anyway. Alundra's opening is my fav, because the game is my fav. Jamming rock tune and 80s-90s anime style video clips about the story(partly at least) with some game sequences. Fits the "TV Show" category of your video. Super underrated game, but that is what you hear from every Alundra fan.
One game not mentioned in this video is Metal Gear Solid 3 whichhas opening credits like a movie and the best Bond styled theme music since the 90s which clears the modern day iterations of actual James Bond cinema
Cinema :D Awesome video! I tend to watch the opening cinematics every time I turn the game on if they're great. When booting up a new game I don't press any button at the start screen for 1 minute to see if it has an opening cinematic.
HEY. Mario Sunshine has 2 of them, the first one that plays also plays when starting a new save file and is obviously not interesting to rewatch when you, yknow, have already STARTED the game, but the SECOND one, after you wait on the title screen, has a completely unique song used nowhere else in the game and is super fun and gets me pumped to play every time 😎 but it is basically just a gameplay sizzle reel, i always enjoy watching the Nintendo devs play their own games though
Y'know, it is a shame that video game opening cinematics are becoming less and less frequent in new games, because there's just so many good ones. We can only hope that they make a resurgence someday, as unlikely as that is. Nicely done!
Pretty sad that the last cinematic opening Pokemon made that wasn't a remake version of a previous one was Black 2 and White 2 a game made 11 years ago... They even remove the cool box legendary scene used for the game intro since Sword and Shield.
Awww you missed all of the Disgaea series' openings! Those were fucking fantastic! To this day Disgaea 2 and Disgaea 5 are my all time fav game openings.
Parasite Eve, Oni, and Kingdom Hearts are some of my favorite openings, pure cinema. Love Nier Automatas opening also! great trailer and just setting up mood 😢
I like persona 5 royal intro because my friend had to WARN ME that it spoiled characters. It’s pretty but also a threat? Also the Risk of Rain returns intro goes so hard. Peak *cinema.*
I get not wanting to get spoiled, but aren't the characters technically spoiled the moment you get the game since they are literally on the box art, or the store icon if you bought it digitally?
I absolutely will complain if there's no title cutscenes. I was so disappointed when Breath of the Wild just had a couple mostly static screens. I know Skyward Sword also didn't really have a cinematic, but it at least took place in the game environment and gave provided some atmosphere. Actually, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom seem to have become way more generic and "gamified" in a lot of little ways like that, despite their innovation in other areas.
![Cody Johnson - I'm Gonna Love You (with Carrie Underwood) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/yy9PuYMU29g/mqdefault.jpg)
we need a resurgence of 110% badass game intro cinematics, thank you for giving your piece once again captain.
fe engage did it but nobody appreciates the game. so everyone should buy it and nintendo will get the signal
@@RealNikTrustMe Did you not watch the video? The music is doodoo. I skip it every time.
May I talk to you about our lord and savior, Guilty Gear Strive?
Sad but not surprised that Advance Wars wasn’t included. The opening cinematics for those games are *chef’s kiss* 👌
@@RealNikTrustMeEngage is shit game made for weaaboos
How could you talk about Twilight Princess’ opening cinematic WITHOUT discussing the SECOND HALF OF IT?? Like yeah, the Epona/Wolf Link bit is really good, but the cinematic that follows it? MASTERPIECE. No joke, as a kid when it first came out, I managed to find sheet music for that entire sequence online and learned how to play it. I would boot up the game, wait for the second cinematic to start, and then play along. Felt so epic to baby teenager me, lol.
They sadly left that one out of the HD remaster. Such a crime
@@flameheadsherothey WHAT?! bro right year old me would watch that shit over and over I loved it so much
*Pokemon Black and Whites Opening was Peak in the Pokémon franchise. Can’t believe we haven’t gotten a similar one since.*
ds openings were simply built different fr. HG/SS slap so fucking much
My interpretation of Lifelight has always been that it's about Losing Iwata.
"On that day, when the light fell away, our world came to an end".
I always felt like that was talking about how the day Iwata died, Smash was forever changed. Since it was him and Sakurai always having some hand in each until Ultimate.
Its about loss and finding the light to keep going, keep rising. Especially considering Ultimate was Iwata's last request to Sakurai, I really wouldn't be surprised if that's the truth.
That's beautiful.
This is a soul crushing interpretation, but it still feels like the most fitting interpretation.
Fire Emblem Fates' opening is the embodiment of 'They had us in the first half' with the somber, semirealistic artstyle transitioning into anime
The one thing I’ll never forget about the brawl intro is that my grandma loved the song for it. She mentions how it was one of the few songs she heard from my games that she enjoyed.
Just want to say that I love you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They spent like half the budget of Melee on the opening and they still were able to make it the greatest game of all time.
Sonic Unleashed opening is another one. It’s a masterpiece.
I don't think that's what he means.
That's just the opening cutscene and not what he meant.
Sonic Unleashed's "opening" fits more on the things he listed that are NOT counted. It is a story cutscene, not a unique intro video. The closest thing was when if you wait long enough, the attract mode video plays. It's the one that starts of the CGI scene of Sonic playing with a ring then showcases gameplay with Endless Possibility playing.
Meh, I don't really care if it fits the mold perfectly or not. It was good, so I'll break the rules.
@@spongebobfan78 Nice Poppi pfp bro
Sonic Adventure 1 has the most bad ass intro ever it made even Eggman look badass.
The opening cinematics before the title screen are always very cool in my eyes! Even the Pokemon games from Gens 1 to 5 have some cool ones too! Also, I dunno why they died off! They need to come back!
Unfortunately, they died off as a function of games moving from physical stores to digital download. When games were physical media and people walked into stores these openings would often be playing on repeat for a demo's "Attract Mode" as a form of in-store advertisement. With the migration over to digital, they're able to have trailers directly on their store page diminishing the impetus to devote resources for creating flashy, cinematic scenes on the opening of a game as such features would have minimal financial returns for the input.
@@sapphiresage5339 Figured that, but I believe that if done right, then the art of the opening cinematic would be back again! I would be sure to add one if I make a game of my own! LOL
Astro manages to shine a light on something I completely forgot about in every upload
Growing up, my family and I would refer to the opening cinematics in games as the game's "dream" because of how Mario 64 does it with Mario falling asleep and viewing the game through his dream.
My favorite opening cutscene for a video game was Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies. I remember that game and its opening so vividly because I was a young weeb in the making, using my mom's tablet data to watch tons of Dragon Ball Z thinking it was DBZ Kai. I remember Toriyama's art style and constantly comparing DQ to DB. Whenever I'd play that game I made sure to watch the opening cinematic of all the different unnamed characters fighting and partying and adventuring. I remember that the cutscene always fueled my young imagination to see MY in game characters differently and imagine each of them as seperate little unique anime characters.
The opening cinematic for that game felt like I was truly witnessing an adventure alongside the anonymous characters despite being a 10yr old in my room.
Sonic Adventure 2 and Melee were some of my favorites growing up. I'd also say that Dissidia Final Fantasy has some of the best opening cutscenes in any game- definitely on par with or better than Melee and Brawl. It's too bad this era is over.
The opening cinematic to pokémon mystery dungeon explorers of sky is fucking 'cinema'.
The bombastic orchestra readying you for a new adventure, the little story bits and characters you meet along the way. There's no better feeling.
Speaking of animated opening i really liked how Sola to robo had a second animated opening after you finished the first part of the game. It's like when anime change their opening mid-seasons after the end of the first major story arc.
Melee's intro is still my favorite. It's cinema.
Also, on the topic of Monster Hunter, Freedom Unite's pretty much explains the gameplay loop.
I agree that while not necessary for a great game, most of my favorite games have an opening cinematic. There’s just something special about an opening that sets the atmosphere perfectly and gets you hyped for the game.
Eastward's opening is probably one of my favorites, it isn't a cinematic but fully animated and it was so well animated it made me hyped for what i was about to play
I slapped the like button with immeasurable speed the moment you said "WE DO NOT SKIP PEAK" 😂😂
I always appreciate the jumpscare that is the opening anime title of FE Engage
yall ever played xenogears? when you first watch the opening you'll be like "this is neato but idk what the fuck is happening" and then when you watch it after beating the game it becomes the most glorious work of cinema you've ever witnessed in your life.
As a fun fact, Melee's initial reveal at E3 was the presenter saying he's been getting asked what characters will appear on the then-upcoming GameCube, and then showing us...exactly that intro.
Okay, real talk. Tales of Symphonia is not only my all time most favorite video game, the intro cinema slapped hard. You might call it spoiler to show antagonizing characters with the party, but it just adds to the intrigue when, how and why their motives changed. It gives a sense of anticipation to see how the story unfolds.
Back in my childhood, most games had amazing intros. All genres, fighting games, racing games, even sports games all had incredible intros building the anticipation and giving you chills
The best Sonic opening cinematic is the one from Sonic Riders, hands down.
Third fav after Sonic Adventure 1 and Sonic CD.
Eastward's opening is absolutely fantastic! A two-minute fully animated opening cinematic. Brilliant style, and the accompanying music track (just titled "Eastward") is stellar! This is a wonderful opening cinematic that puts me in the mood this game is trying to set every time.
Sonic Adventure's opening cinematic deserves a shoutout because it's pretty wild. In the context of franchises bringing classic beloved characters to 3d you'd get them mainly being shown off. And here you have Sonic Team with their new fancy console and you put in the Sonic game... and the very first thing you see, probably in the entire console, probably in the entire _generation_ is a pretty realistic city just blowing up, followed by a godzilla fancy cgi monster that'll tease you for the entire game.
And *then* it blasts Crush 40 at your face and Sonic.
There was, basically nothing like that. It tells you the ambitions they had for not just the game, but the whole system. For videogames from then onwards.
Special mention has to go to the anime style intros that get in entire studios to do them. It's like how Bamco keeps roping ufotable into doing intros for them, which is always absolutely based and at the same time it also resulted in Code Vein's intro, to this day the edgiest thing I've seen in my life and I desire *m o r e*
Before even watcing the video I just wanna say, YES, bring cinematic intros back! If anything they serve to hype u up for the experience or give u a taste of what to expect. If anime and cartoons can still do it, I don't see why not video games.
SHAKING SOBBING POUNDING THE FLOOR.... I forgot to mention my favorite video game in the twitter post....... its called devil survivor 2 record breaker and it makes me so hype. No idea what that intro song is about but its so FLY. I love how it got a whole new like art style thing... idk it fills me with vibes. Fantasy Life is another dear game to me -- you have to wait a minute for the opening scene to play but its only in the opener and oooooooh. animation... CINEMA
I think 15:55 gave me the heaviest tonal whiplash, I had to rewind to make sure I understood where the sudden death-over-soccer started.
Funnier still, I knew of Strikers Charged ahead of time, but it still gets me how he describes it.
I always cry when i boot up Mario and Sonic at the Olympic winter games (vancouver specifically). It’s this amazing sensation of two video game titans competing in winter sports. But it’s the end part that gets me every time. Seeing all the characters celebrate over their victories in each respective event (that was shown throughout the opening) was always such a rush to me. Especially bowser jr. Being so happy to win something with his dad. God its such a good opening.
Then there’s twilight princess. I don’t wanna say too much cause if you watch it, you’ll just know. I love how much it sets the mood as opposed to other zelda games. This one is dark, somber, and sad. The choir slowly rising up untill the end sends chills down my spine.
Im glad you pointed out how amazing starfox assault was, cause I really wish the series would return to that. Maybe a remake or something.
Bakugan battle brawlers the wii game had a hype opening that I NEVER skipped.
Kirby’s return to dreamland was nice and short and cute, so I didn’t skip that either
As much as xy and sun and moon are my favorite Pokemon games, I gotta give the best pokemon opening to black and white. That captures the wonder, adventure, and magic of the pokemon series.
As for my favorite Sonic opening, I gotta give it to Sonic Colors. Say what you will about the game, that cinematic was peak.
What about Chrono Cross? It has a absolutely stunning opening cinematic.
True.
The song adds to it.
@@SlyHikari03 the song is indeed great
I always loved Soul Calibur 3's opening cinematic. I remember my brother and I getting it from Blockbuster and popping it in for the weekend and were blown away by the visuals and music. Still holds a place in my heart.
the KH songs do indeed have nothing to do with the games, Utada and the developers picked songs that were already in Utada's backpocket - only exception being the KH3 opening Face my Fears, which was meant to just be a remix of the credit song but the collab spiraled out of control. the English versions *are* written for the games, but also Utada admitted they don't know the story of the games in detail and just works of a summary
There are two ideals.
Smash Melee, and Dark Souls.
One tells you how hype and what's going to happen.
One gives you the few drops of direly needed context that the rest of the game connects to
Melee's Opening is PEAK
Brawl.
@@voltron77 Brawl's just uses the Subspace cutscenes. Melee has original scenes created just for the opening and matches with the music.
Of course Melee had original cutscenes. That’s all they worked on.
GOD I LOVE THE TALES SERIES' INTRO CINEMATICS
One of my favorites is the Mega Man 8 intro. Not so great now, but as a kid I thought it was awesome. It was my first time seeing Mega Man fully animated, it's action packed, and even showed the blue bomber fighting past robot masters, which was cool. Even though it hasn't held up very well it still holds a special place in my heart.
I feel like my favorite game intro is Burnout 3 Takedown, since it just look like a an enjoyable car movie that can be seen at a cinema
Lazy Generation. Great song and intro. Awesome game.
Not sure if this counts, but the I Expect You To Die series' opening credits are all BANGERS!! They feel like a James Bond opening, but the villain sings to you and utilises the VR perspective very well in all 3 (currently) games!!
One of my favorites is the Banjo-Kazooie opening. I almost never skipped it as a kid. It may be simple but it’s goofy and the theme song is so catchy you just want to watch these characters play it to hype you up for adventure.
But the Smash Melee one is peak, I always have to watch it.
Bayonetta 2 opening start with a cinematic fight between her and rival of the game, boi was that a fire opening, it even take a scene from the actual game
Cinema
The opening for Mario strikers charged was unnecessarily badass and violent and I miss it soo much
Persona will ALWAYS win with its opening cinematics, players will never be skipping it.🙏
Shin Megami Tensei openings are awesome, the openings of the Digital Devil Saga and Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha duologies are so cool, and their accompanying songs are just as good!
Cinema, I guess
Upon the release of Risk of Rain Returns (a remake of Risk of Rain), they added a new, really well animated intro cutscene that quickly explains the inciting incident of the game. They used it for the trailers first, of course, but it flows so nicely into the game and I watch it almost every time because of it's brevity. Astral Ascent was also recently released and it has a really cool intro animation as well. Seems like indie games are going to be the ones to pick up the slack on this waning art form.
Also, uh, cinema these nuts or something, I dunno
Yeah, I love Risk of Rain and the animated opening is the perfect way to start off the love letter to the series that is Risk of Rain Returns.
I love the chrono cross opening a lot. from yasunori mitsuda's amazing score, the collage of scenes and that shot with kid on the beach and the camera goes trough her eye it's very epic.
The Digital Devil Saga opening is pure cinema… REND… SLAUGHTER… DEVOUR YOUR ENEMIES
Final Fantasy 7 Remake's train shot and opening sequence is absolutely timeless. Gigantic chills my first run through, and subsequently large chills every time I rewatch it. It captured the mystery and intrigue of the original that so many kids had an image of in their head. Fucking magical.
Makes me wonder what they’ll do for Rebirth’s intro cutscene.
Melee was peak intro video and nothing I've played has ever reached that level of quality and hype
Cinema : I have to Raise Tekken 5 and Final Fantasy Dissidia's openings as strong contenders for me
A series worthy of mention is Metroid. Both the 2D games and the Prime series do a great job at setting a tone with the music and graphics. It’s usually done in a way that makes it distinct from cinema, despite the series’s origins as being inspired by Alien. Super also has the fun bonus of the gameplay segments doing secret techniques like the crystal flash.
Yakuza not mentioned 💔
Also nice fit in the video, love the gloves.
Babe wake up, new Captain Astro dropped
The opening movie to Onimusha 3 is absurdly hype, never been so pumped to play a tank control game as I was after watching that one for the first (or hundred) time, it's really on a league of its own for me.
Yes. Incredible intro even to this day.
My favourite is 100% CoD4.
50,000 people used to live here, now it's a ghost town.
Chills to this day
Cinema! XD
4:09 Late to this, but for anyone interested: From memory, the way Sakurai explained it was that the whole point of the cutscenes was that they were cathartic rewards for the effort it took you, the player, to go through the Subspatial Emissary with the characters you're unlocking the cutscenes _for._ At the time, just going to RUclips to watch a compilation of them instead and then proceed to never buy the game just... wasn't a thing, and it was especially novel in Japan - If you've ever met people who don't understand how you could watch a whole playthrough of a game without ever playing it yourself, this is that, except the creator of Smash here felt an extra layer of "What's the point of anything, at this stage" even harder, given the time he took to make the cutscenes unlockable the normal way. I think from his perspective, it felt like people were just downloading illegal torrent of his unlockable content for free.
He seems pretty content with the format he's got nowadays, so I'm assuming he's over it; but after reading translated versions of his thoughts on this issue, I can much more easily see where he's coming from.
Oh, and Lifelight's lyrics are indeed just talk about the battle against Galeem in the adventure mode, but like from the perspective of the in-universe characters. It's poetic because A: Japan, B: stylistic choices pretty much, C: _they're_ going through the biggest cosmic tragedy of their existence and don't fully understand it themselves until the ending, so, yeah. Personally I think it doesn't hit as hard as it could because the mode itself doesn't live up to it (I don't hate it tho).
Hope that makes sense, to anyone who didn't know!
Oh, and make sure to correct/add anything I missed, for anyone who knows better.
Yeah, opening cinematics are the perfect cherry on top of some of my favorite video games.
My favorite opening cinematic of all time is Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance. The way all the visuals go with the beautiful orchestral rendition of Simple and Clean is absolutely wonderful, especially seeing Mickey on the bottom screen conducting and reacting to it all.
I think it is worth noting the evolution of cinematics on PC games. When distribution switched from floppy disks to CDs, suddenly developers had a mountain of space with nothing to fill it. This led to some rather extravagant movies made simply because they could. My favorite was Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance. Cheesy lines delivered with absolute sincerity that always sucked me into the drama of estranged nobility returning to free his planet from the usurpers who killed his family.
6:05 Don't Jumpscare me with that part of Xenoblade 3, god
I saw Soulcalibur 2 footage in this video that intro was great I still get chills with the crow flying up to Nightmare.
I always loved the intro for Team Ninja games back in the mid 2000's 🔥
My favorite opening cinematics are the ones for FF7 and the Persona games (3-onwards). The camera panning out from an alley as it zooms out from Aerith walking to Midgar, there’s a reason they used the intro to show off the PS3 in 2005.
The opening cinematic of Ace Combat Zero is stitched into my mind. So damn badass, epic and cool.
The Kingdom Hearts openings are cinema!! Right now I'm playing dungeon crawler Silent Hope and this game is pretty bare bones on the story, so the pre-game anime cinematic is really necessary to set the tone and explain what the heck you're even doing. It doesn't play automatically every time you open the game, but it does have a button on the title screen so you can watch it again which I think is good.
FFXIV on the other hand does still have a classic opening cinematic and if you don't press the START button right away after launching the game it starts playing automatically. Except. If you buy all the expansions at once, like most people usually do, you will get the cutscene for the most recent expansion, even if you only just started playing. Not ideal when there are some obvious spoilers in those openings and this is a pretty story-heavy game. You'd think this is a pretty simple fix but they've never gotten around to it.
As someone who grew up in a family filled with cousins and younger siblings who always skipped the damn cutscenes, I feel seen.
also paaaaain
Thank you RUclips for recommending me a cool new channel. RUclips has been getting surprisingly good at this recently.
Anyway.
Alundra's opening is my fav, because the game is my fav. Jamming rock tune and 80s-90s anime style video clips about the story(partly at least) with some game sequences. Fits the "TV Show" category of your video. Super underrated game, but that is what you hear from every Alundra fan.
I always loved the intro to Tekken 3
Great piece of cinema
Did not expect you to be playing the Digimon theme on the bass!
One game not mentioned in this video is Metal Gear Solid 3 whichhas opening credits like a movie and the best Bond styled theme music since the 90s which clears the modern day iterations of actual James Bond cinema
To be fair smash melee's cinematic is just from the trailer.
Every video topic this guy does is a banger.
Gotta love the cruelty squad opening.
“Did I wake you up from your depression nap?”
Dark Cloud 1’s title opening lives rent free in my head.
Monster hunter freedom unite opening was such a vibe I never skipped it
Cinema :D Awesome video! I tend to watch the opening cinematics every time I turn the game on if they're great. When booting up a new game I don't press any button at the start screen for 1 minute to see if it has an opening cinematic.
HEY. Mario Sunshine has 2 of them, the first one that plays also plays when starting a new save file and is obviously not interesting to rewatch when you, yknow, have already STARTED the game,
but the SECOND one, after you wait on the title screen, has a completely unique song used nowhere else in the game and is super fun and gets me pumped to play every time 😎 but it is basically just a gameplay sizzle reel, i always enjoy watching the Nintendo devs play their own games though
one of my favorites is wargroove
that intro is so sick
I love these opening cinematics. Every time I play Tales of Symphonia I watch that sick opening. So many of them are great!
Shoutout to the chess game cinematic before Age of Empires 2
Y'know, it is a shame that video game opening cinematics are becoming less and less frequent in new games, because there's just so many good ones. We can only hope that they make a resurgence someday, as unlikely as that is. Nicely done!
Another true work of cinema from captain astronaut
“Cinema” I like a lot of opening cinematics for games, I think the ones you listed weee generally some of the real highlights.
Really miss those monster hunter cgi intros
Pretty sad that the last cinematic opening Pokemon made that wasn't a remake version of a previous one was Black 2 and White 2 a game made 11 years ago... They even remove the cool box legendary scene used for the game intro since Sword and Shield.
I personally really love the Dragon Quest 11 opening. It's real cinema.
Sorry. Thats actually *Dragon Quest 11-Echoes of an elusive age S- definitive edition
captain astro always provides peak cinema
Thank you for bringing up Star Fox Assault cause they should've moved in that direction for sequels
The loss of the Yakuza Openings was depressing. The hype that they would build up made me so invested to play the game
Yakuza 0 was always my favourite, although I love 5 and Ishin's too. I miss them so much lol
I will always love the solatorobo openings. Madhouse did such an amazing job 🔥🔥🔥
I will never forget when I got a copy of pokemon sword and I was like "oh nice here it comes the game's intro
Wait, that was all?"
Awww you missed all of the Disgaea series' openings! Those were fucking fantastic! To this day Disgaea 2 and Disgaea 5 are my all time fav game openings.
Not sure if it meets the guidelines, but Final Fantasy VI's opening is absolute peak.
Parasite Eve, Oni, and Kingdom Hearts are some of my favorite openings, pure cinema. Love Nier Automatas opening also! great trailer and just setting up mood 😢
The Dark Souls Opening has got to be one of the best out there
I like persona 5 royal intro because my friend had to WARN ME that it spoiled characters. It’s pretty but also a threat? Also the Risk of Rain returns intro goes so hard. Peak *cinema.*
I get not wanting to get spoiled, but aren't the characters technically spoiled the moment you get the game since they are literally on the box art, or the store icon if you bought it digitally?
@@cyanalternation4237 Switch digital has no characters on icon.
@@cyanalternation4237Yeah, all the characters are right there on the box.
Speaking of "Cinema", been listening to the SoundTrack StarFox Assault...
I absolutely will complain if there's no title cutscenes. I was so disappointed when Breath of the Wild just had a couple mostly static screens. I know Skyward Sword also didn't really have a cinematic, but it at least took place in the game environment and gave provided some atmosphere. Actually, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom seem to have become way more generic and "gamified" in a lot of little ways like that, despite their innovation in other areas.