Chris Crawford on Game Design

Cut Scenes

The lurid graphics of the game box first migrated onto the computer in the form of splash screens, single screens presented at the outset of the game with its title and provenance. These screens were progressively gussied up with ever-better graphics, until they were quite swishy affairs. The next logical step was to integrate some of those flashy splash screens into the game. Cinematronics was one of the early perpetrators of this behavior, mixing great-looking stills with less-than-great-looking game screens. As the practice spread, it acquired the name cut scene to differentiate it from the splash screen.

Although there were many interesting variations on the idea, the scheme that best exemplifies it was the big hit of the early ...