> To meet the vendor's requirement, most games first load and display a title screen, then ask users to click a button to start the game. What users don't reali

> To meet the vendor's requirement, most games first load and display a title screen, then ask users to click a button to start the game. What users don't realize is that while they are sitting in awe of the amazing title screen, the game is finishing its preparations. I did exactly this in my first video game. It was an N64 game so the load time requirements from Nintendo were very short and we were 1-2 seconds over the limit. Before the level loaded we already had a UI screen that showed you the map of the level you were about to enter and blinked "OK? (A)" waiting for you to be done checking the map. So, I rendered the map with and without the prompt to the front and back display buffers. Then installed a VBlank signal handler that just flipped the display buffers without actually re-rendering anything. Then the loading started immediately without waiting for the user's OK. (We had no threading back then) The only think that changed when you hit (A) was that the VBlank handler would flip to the No-Prompt screen for the rest of the load time.