Lurker > Jesse_Custer

Hamill

Good vs. Evil
Snoopy vs. The Red Baron

Great write-up for the Gorillaz video. I like the way you highlighted how each of their individual fears/inner demons are depicted.

Scream

Just the first horror movie I thought of, even though it is not legitimately scary.

Hamilton vs. Burr

Seinfeld

Snoopy vs. The Red Baron

Marvel vs. DC

Brown vs. The Board of Education

Goku vs. Vegeta
GLaDOS vs. Wheatley

Tifa

No

This is impressive. I usually start to get burned out by the time Ive ranked about 100 items.

Welkin Gunther

BetrayedTangy posted...

I think the issue with most anime esque intros is they gain more meaning as you play the game. Persona 3 dropping early kind of confused me at first, but I can definitely see how a first time viewing can be confusing. I imagine that's also the case with a lot of these more recent elims.

This is it exactly. For many of these, I know next to nothing about the game, or at times even the series. I couldnt even identify any of the characters in some of these without looking them up. So while the intros probably are conveying a sense of story and meaning to those who are far more familiar, they have little meaning to me.

Thats not to say Im only going to give high rankings to stuff Im familiar with. In fact, six of the intros to make the top 10 I had never even seen before this topic. But they have to make sense to someone whos never played the game before.

pjbasis posted...

I feel that I strongly disagree that a good intro needs to sell you the story at all.

I think the point of a good intro, particularly pre-title screen anyway, is to sell you the tone and aesthetic. That said...none of mine have dropped yet so maybe we still agree on the ones I posted anyway!

My feeling is without any sense of the story, what reason is there to care about the characters or whats going on? This doesnt have to mean a full description of the plot, but at least some idea what motivates a character or what their world is like.

This is less of an issue if theres a unique and interesting tone, but for some of the recent intros, theres nothing about the tone to set them apart from many others.

94. The Legend of Heroes: Ao no Kiseki - ninkendo
https://youtu.be/eCFars0Xyxg

I was actually kind of digging this one during the opening 20 to 30 seconds with the moody piano and distorted vocals, but starting at about 0:30, it lost me by turning into a generic theme song with lazily presented (mostly still) images of characters without any memorable designs. Given the dramatically different tone at the start, it felt like they were trying to grab the viewers interest with something intriguing initially, as if the creators knew they had to compensate for the rest of the intro being so conventional.

Also, maybe its because Ive spent too much time on this board, but that character pose at around 1:20 felt like it was ripped out of a Phoenix Wright game. And the only reason I even mention that is because I have so little to say about this intro otherwise and needed to fill space in the write-up. Okay, next.

93. Suikoden 3 - DomaDragoon
https://youtu.be/fA_gDnwcdZ8

This intro had a promising start with dreamy vocals accompanying someone riding a horse through the clouds and an aesthetic landscape. But it went nowhere, with around three minutes of random clips. Rather than using the visuals to tell a story, the intro relies on text interludes with vague messages like the story never ends and love never dies, which could apply to countless other games just as easily.

The tribal theme song was easily the strongest aspect of the intro, but it didnt seem particularly well connected to the settings or characters depicted in the visuals. And the animation was nothing special and thoroughly average.

Not much more to say about this one really.

Animal Crossing
ARMS
Banjo-Kazooie
Bayonetta
Earthbound
Ice Climber
Metal Gear
Minecraft
Persona
Pikmin
ROB
Splatoon

Havent been feeling that good lately, so I let this go awhile (Im usually much better about posting regular write-ups). But Im going to try to keep this going.

95. God of War Ascension - Johnbobb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbMZc_clZU4

Generally, Im not a fan of using narration to tell a story, although there are some exceptions later on this list that do it very well. In my view, this intro is not one of them. The narrator speaks with little emotion, detached from the events she is discussing, as if she is bored by the script. Actually she oddly reminds me of Judy Denchs narration for the Spaceship Earth ride at EPCOT. That probably doesnt mean anything to most readers, but both narrations are delivered in a similar school teacher manner, which feels far more well suited to a ride at Disney World than a God of War game. But hey, this is all subjective, and thats just how the narration struck me.

Voice acting aside, I wasnt too enthralled by the script either, which often tries too hard to go for a literary tone. We get lines like neither titan nor god, mortal nor shade, the furies were bound to no one for they were the guardians of honor. Good writing can take a complex subject matter and make it seem simple, even with some literary embellishments here and there. But this script seems unwilling to just get to the point, determined to present a sense of serious legitimacy.

The backing music was actually pretty good when I paid closer attention to it on a second viewing. But it gets so lost under the droning narration that its easy to miss.

-
Plana
North
Martinet

Link vs. Cloud
Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader

Tag

This has been a great topic, Anagram. Really enjoyed the write-ups.

Darmok (episode)

Keenser

Shy Guy's Toybox

ZenOfThunder posted...

Kira being pregnant with O'Brien's baby by accident and then getting horny for him

Lol, I completely forgot this was a thing.

Risa

Ipkiss vs. Broly
Snoopy vs. The Red Baron

Still trying to decide whether I want to subject myself to this.

Nog

No

Seems like one of those characters who is intended to be unlikable.

Wily Stage 1
Quick Man
Metal Man

Brighting
Hamill

97. Tales of Vesperia - pyresword
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiQh0DrCSF0

A recurring theme Im going to mention over and over in this tier is intros like this that look good, but dont stand out as unique or have any discernible story to someone who isnt familiar with the game, let alone the series.

This one has some high quality animation and the song is decent, but I was ready for it to be over by about the one minute mark. None of the characters jumped out to me as memorable, nothing particularly interesting ever happens, and Im not sure why this sequence was even needed. It kind of felt to me like a series of clips from a TV show thrown together by someone on YouTube, who dubbed in a song that doesnt mesh well with the visuals. The song was actually pretty good, but it just felt like it didnt belong.

And I dont have much more to say beyond that. Im sure this works much better if you go in knowing the characters.

96. Tales of the Abyss - Raka_Putra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxs9nIvh1p0

And we have another Tales intro that did nothing for me. I wasnt consciously trying to tie these together (or the two Sonic intros before it), but I felt virtually the same about this one as the preceding intro.

The theme song was forgettable, the character designs were generic and forgettable, and the story was virtually nonexistent. The animation was pretty good overall, but nothing out of the ordinary, and certainly not enough to hold my interest on its own.

The one thing that jumped out to me as kind of unique is the way this intro at times goes for a cutesy appearance, but then turns surprisingly violent out of nowhere (such as the guy slicing the snake creature with a sword or the arrow poking through a bunch of monsters). So it seemed to me like the intro wasnt entirely sure what tone it was going for.

The decontamination chamber scenes in Enterprise

Old Site
The Summit
Mirror Temple

Tekken, closely followed by Street Fighter

Phantasms

Brown vs. Board of Education
Batman vs. Superman

-
McKenzie
-
McGonagle

Now we come to what will be the most boring part of the rankings, Farming Simulator Tier. These are intros I neither disliked nor liked, they were just there, and Ive probably already forgotten them since doing the write-ups, which will be on the shorter side. So to speed through this section, I might post a couple at a time.

99. Sonic CD - hombad46
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYW7-hNXZlM

As those who have read my TV intros ranking topic know, I am not a Sonic fan. So I confess, its tough (but probably not impossible) to win me over with anything involving the franchise. And this intro isnt doing anything to change my mind.

If theres one thing everyone already knows about Sonic, its that he runs really really fast. Thats his thing. So devoting an entire intro solely to showing him running fast and periodically spinning quickly as a ball isnt remotely interesting. Of course, youve got to show him running because thats what he does, but theres got to be something more than that to give me a reason to care.

The only other thing I can say about this intro is I wasnt crazy about the cheesy theme song and repetitive lyrics, which probably contributed to my feeling like this intro was five times longer than it actually was. But Ill give it this, its a lot more tolerable than the theme song to Sonic X.

98. Sonic Adventure 2 Battle - -hotdogturtle--
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCw20tDNXhw

I actually preferred the visual style of the Sonic CD intro to the graphics for this intro, but at least this one isnt just a minute and a half of Sonic running around. Thats not to say I found this interesting either. We get a quick glimpse of a few other characters, without any insight into their personalities. And theres only a slight hint of a story involving the confrontation of Sonic and Shadow.

Also, the music is, to be tactful, not good. Im not even going to waste my time discussing it beyond that.