It may seem a trivial thing, but a game's boot-up sequence can be more important than you realise! First impressions count, after all, and the first impression you get of a game is the sequence as it starts up.
This is nearly always - always - in the form of a procession of logos. Developer logos, franchise logos, publisher logos, middleware logos, classification information, every game on the market will have at least one of these, if not all of them.
Consoles have these too, and over time, they come to symbolise the machine itself. We'll deal with those, however, another time...
Some suck. Most are...OK, but do little other than show you who's made the game you're about to play. Some, though, go the extra mile, and contribute to your interest in (and love for) a particular studio.
These "Boot Camp" posts - of which we'll try and run a few of over the next few weeks - are all about these harmless animation sequences. And to get the ball rolling, we're showcasing the best of the best: the Lucasarts guy.
Ever since George Lucas spun his video gaming business off from his movie business, the manner in which the Lucasarts logo is shown during a game's boot-up sequence has been a constant source of amusement for fans. Even today, when Lucasarts' release schedule and fanbase has dried up since the golden years of the 1990s, the little cartoon logo still manages a smile with his custom introduction sequences, which are unique to almost every single game the company has released.
The collage up top was made for Lucasfilm Games/Lucasarts' 20th anniversary in 2002, but for some reason is missing the absolute best of them all: the logo from the closing credits of Day of the Tentacle. If anybody has that lying around, let us know!
In lieu of that, then, here's another good one not captured in the top clip: that for Force Unleashed, which shows that even when the company changed logos, it was smart enough to keep the trend running.