Video game openings used to say more with less

The art of the wordless video game intro

When I think of my favorite opening scenes in video games, plenty of blockbuster moments come to mind: Uncharted 2’s unforgettable train sequence, Resident Evil 4’s tense village shootout, and, of course, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s tear-jerking gommage. But some of my favorite video game openings aren’t so loud. In fact, my all-time favorite — a game from 1994 — is eerily quiet.

In Super Metroid, Samus Aran barges into a series of blue-tinted corridors and opens the door to a distinctive room. There are human bodies on the floor piled up around a broken machine at the center of the room. It looks familiar. Wait, yes — that’s the glass tube from Super Metroid’s opening title screen, the same one that contained the last living Metroid! Samus Aran runs through another corridor and finds the baby sitting unattended in a cavernous room. They aren’t alone. The villainous Ridley attacks and jets off with the Metroid, just as an emergency self-destruct sequence kicks off. Samus escapes in the nick of time as the screen queasily rattles. What a thrill.

Though there’s a little bit of exposition text to set the stage beforehand, Super Metroid’s staying power comes from wordless storytelling moments like this. It’s part of the reason that it’s still so timeless, ranking high on “Best Games of All-Time” lists alongside modern, cinematic giants. And it’s not the only game from its era with an effective opening either. There’s a power to the atmospheric introduction, something that’s becoming a lost art in the age of games that are more eager to emulate Hollywood.

In the early days of the medium, video games were defined by their limitations. Developers had to find clever ways to use available technology to push the boundaries of storytelling with pixels and rudimentary sound. Though it may sound creatively stifling from the perspective of today’s wide-open development world, game-makers at the time rose to the challenge with an experimental spirit that gave us some of the medium’s most unforgettable opening sequences.

1984’s Karateka, the breakout Apple 2 hit from Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner, famously begins with one of gaming’s earliest cinematics. A minimally animated sequence shows a princess being led through a pitch-black corridor. The way she walks, slowly shuffling with her head drooped down low, tells us that she’s not there by choice. She’s led into an empty room with only a bench inside of it, lit by streaks of light coming in from the doorway. The door slams behind her, and it’s immediately clear that she’s in a prison cell. With just a few frames of animation, she turns to the locked door and throws herself to the ground in despair. It’s a fantastic sequence that sets the stakes for the story and the mood of the world with so little.

The eerie opening of 1992’s Ecco the Dolphin also sticks in my mind. The Sega Genesis classic begins in cheerful fashion. You’re a dolphin in a vibrant sea with friends playfully swimming around you. One asks how far you can fly in the sky, prompting you to learn the game’s water-breaching jump mechanic. To pull it off, you need to dive a bit — just far enough to see other fish merrily swimming along in a thriving ecosystem — and then launch back up into the air. It’s a joyful slice of marine life that’s suddenly interrupted when the sky flashes and all the fish are suddenly sucked up into the air into a chaotic whirlwind. Ecco lands back in the now eerily empty ocean and takes a lonely swim as droning music rumbles in the background. You don’t need much more to feel emotionally connected to Ecco’s journey.

Crack open any 2D game from gaming’s early days and you’re sure to find a similarly effective opening. Even something like Contra immediately tells a story with no cinematic setup at all. You’re dropped into the jungle and are left to wonder why turrets and cybernetic bridges have been grafted onto the natural landscape as you fend off an army. It all pays off when you reach the end of the stage and gun your way into a massive military outpost. Oh, that’s what’s going on here!

Naturally, technology has advanced since then. Developers can now stage movie-like cutscenes with deliberate cinematography and professional voice acting. You can create an introductory sequence as heart-wrenching as Clair Obscur’s with swelling music and detailed character animation that shows the pain on a character’s face. It has given creators more tools to tell bigger stories that don’t require players to read between the lines, just as the advent of sound in cinema once did.

But we should never take the power of the classics for granted. Something like Super Metroid remains a feat of craft for its ability to create a sequence as thrilling as anything in a Ridley Scott movie or a Dead Space game. In an age where we value maximalism, both in the spectacle and emotions of our art, it’s more rewarding than ever to look back at great works that delivered the same highs amid significant restraint. Before a 2026 filled with big-budget blockbusters kicks into high gear, pick up a retro game today and let its atmospheric opening absorb you into its world.