8 Retro Mechanics We Need In Modern Video Games
6. Loading Screen Mini-Games
Decades ago, it wasn't uncommon for games to include mini-games during loading screens - simple games to help players pass the time while they waited for the main game to do its thing.
But because we can't have nice things, Namco - who helped popularise the loading screen mini-game in 1995's Ridge Racer - filed a patent that very same year, effectively preventing other developers from using loading screen mini-games.
The patent finally expired in 2015, and yet, we didn't see a sudden influx of the mini-games, perhaps in part because loading times are generally considerably shorter than they were decades ago, aided by the increasing use of SSDs in consoles.
Yet while loading times are generally far less of an imposition these days, they certainly haven't gone away entirely, and so it'd still be neat for developers to adorn them with something to take our mind off the tedium.