we need a resurgence of 110% badass game intro cinematics, thank you for giving your piece once again captain.

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.

Sonic Unleashed opening is another one. It’s a masterpiece.

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.

*Pokemon Black and Whites Opening was Peak in the Pokémon franchise. Can’t believe we haven’t gotten a similar one since.*

Fire Emblem Fates' opening is the embodiment of 'They had us in the first half' with the somber, semirealistic artstyle transitioning into anime

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.

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.

I think that moving away from elaborate openings can also be explained by how most companies advertise games now. Like, as a kid I would get very excited for games when popping into a shop and watching the openings on the demo kiosks. Now that the big publishers, and particularly the console manufacturers, have moved to a lot more direct video advertising and online ads, there's less of an incentive for creating that sizzle reel that plays on loop for 8 hours a day.

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!

Astro manages to shine a light on something I completely forgot about in every upload

Left 4 Dead 2's opening is always a pleasure to watch. It's not only hype as hell but is actually a good summary of the games teamwork element with all the survivors helping each other out.

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.

What about Chrono Cross? It has a absolutely stunning opening cinematic.

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.

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.

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*

Sonic Adventure 1 has the most bad ass intro ever it made even Eggman look badass.

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.

Mario and Sonic at the olympics. I remember getting mad every time someone skipped the openings. They just couldn't appreciate this insane crossover with great CGI

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.

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.

Great video! The old school MH games used to have great intros. Wish they would go back to that.

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

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.

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.

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.

Persona will ALWAYS win with its opening cinematics, players will never be skipping it.🙏

The best one has to be Tekken 5. Not only do you get this amazing action sequence featuring martial arts, robots, explosions and ninjas, but you also get an anime opening immediately after that also features more martial arts, robots, explosions and ninjas with a song that goes from anime opening to metal and it's pure cinema. Seeing that at the tender age of like 6 or 7 did a number on my brain

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

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.

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

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 really like the opening cinematic of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile on the PS1, even if it's not presented in an awesome cinematic way. It's a shame none of the FMVs (this one specifically isn't in it at all since it's not a story cutscene) from this game made it to the remakes.

11:57 He is completely right. I remember seeing the ad with simple and clean playing and I fell in love like instantly. I was still very young and never actually remembered the name of the game or the name of the song. I remembered the melody of the song forever tho and this was like back when youtube was smaller so I couldn't look it up. Until one day I heard the song out of no where and all the memories of me watching that ad on a crt flooded in. Something about that ad and that song was powerful

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.

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.

Thank you KZfaq for recommending me a cool new channel. KZfaq 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.

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

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.

GOD I LOVE THE TALES SERIES' INTRO CINEMATICS

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.

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 appreciate the jumpscare that is the opening anime title of FE Engage

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.

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.

The Digital Devil Saga opening is pure cinema… REND… SLAUGHTER… DEVOUR YOUR ENEMIES

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.

The best Sonic opening cinematic is the one from Sonic Riders, hands down.

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!!

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 KZfaq 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.

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

I found that a lot of my favorite cinematics come from the TV Show category: unsurprising bc I am a weeb. My faves are still rune factory mini Cinema openings, but reminding us of the cool old smash cinematics was really fun, i miss em. Thanks for the vid !

Every video topic this guy does is a banger.

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.

My favourite is 100% CoD4. 50,000 people used to live here, now it's a ghost town. Chills to this day

I love these opening cinematics. Every time I play Tales of Symphonia I watch that sick opening. So many of them are great!

I'm glad you gave a nod to the Final Fantasy VIII opening cutscene as it is a very, very, very strong opener, but it is disqualified by your own rules: it plays when you start a new file, not when you boot up the game. At least not in PAL regions.

6:05 Don't Jumpscare me with that part of Xenoblade 3, god

One of the reasons why I love the Tales series is because every time I turn on the game, I get to see the anime opening, and I adore them. My favorites are Vesperia and Abyss.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Me and my friend group recently had a discussion about the openings for cartoons back in the 90's and how nearly all the great ones we remember fondly had a kick ass opening theme song. They sold the show to you. Video game opening cinematics are exactly the same. It tells you that you have something to look forward to even before you begin playing. I think the abandonment of these is a big mistake by developers.

Another true work of cinema from captain astronaut

Melee was peak intro video and nothing I've played has ever reached that level of quality and hype

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

The opening cinematic of Ace Combat Zero is stitched into my mind. So damn badass, epic and cool.

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.

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.

Babe wake up, new Captain Astro dropped

captain astro always provides peak cinema

Chrono Cross was my favorite intro, the music was awesome.

I slapped the like button with immeasurable speed the moment you said "WE DO NOT SKIP PEAK" 😂😂

cap always pullin up with bangers

Did not expect you to be playing the Digimon theme on the bass!

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

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

I peeped u covering your ears when u opened ssbb 😂😂 neat lil detail

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

Yakuza not mentioned 💔 Also nice fit in the video, love the gloves.

Great video!! I miss opening cinematics too. Honestly wish you talked a little more about the TP opening because that orchestra SLAPS.

12:08 That one is actually Disney’s fault, which is honestly worse. Makes sense considering that they come from cinema.

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.

I love these video game intros!

I always loved the intro to Tekken 3 Great piece of cinema

I saw Soulcalibur 2 footage in this video that intro was great I still get chills with the crow flying up to Nightmare.

Love your personality so much. Never change, Cap

Nintendo is doing good tho. Smash bros trailer's crowd reaction video is somehow one of the most wholesome videos on youtube.

cinema :D cool video captain !!!!

Awesome video!

Really miss those monster hunter cgi intros

SHADOWS OF VALENTIA REFERENCE 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 that game was peak cinema

I will always love the solatorobo openings. Madhouse did such an amazing job 🔥🔥🔥

“Cinema” I like a lot of opening cinematics for games, I think the ones you listed weee generally some of the real highlights.