Top 6 Pause Menus In Video Games

Shovel Knight: Battletoads Encounter

For most of the game, Shovel Knight’s pause menu is a normal, static screen with the usual controls for a stop menu. But in the Xbox and PC versions of Shovel Knight, Rash, Pimple, and Zitz from The Battletoads can be a boss while the game is being played.

Players have to beat the titular toads in different stages that look a lot like famous Battletoads stages. This includes the famous jet ski stage and the pit. It ends with a boss room where the player has to fight all the toads. If a player presses the stop button during these stages, an 8-bit version of the Battletoads theme will play. It will keep playing as long as the player is in the pause menu.

By adding the Battletoads theme to the pause menu during this battle, old gamers can relive their favorite moments from playing these games, and new players can start getting to know these crazy characters.

GoldenEye 007

Many people think that GoldenEye 007 is one of the best first-person shooters ever made. It’s also a famous Nintendo 64 game. The first-person shooter genre owes a lot to this licensed game, which has both a great single-player mode and an even better online mode.

It also has one of the best pause menus in games, which should be known. Along with the usual settings and options menu, the pause menu is like James Bond’s watch. It shows players quickly what weapons and ammo they have, as well as how the current task is going.

Background music that plays when you go to the pause menu adds to the feeling of being a secret agent. The famous James Bond theme song plays while the player checks on the task or changes the settings. A big part of why people remember GoldenEye 007’s pause screen is because of how it sounds.

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions – Fight Against Deadpool

The Merc with the Mouth, also known as Deadpool, is one of the bad guys that Spider-Man has to beat in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. Deadpool has his own reality TV show called “Pain Factor” in this level. To get the piece, players have to go into Deadpool’s show. To do this, you have to beat Deadpool and complete his tasks.

Should a player stop the game during a fight with Deadpool, the character will start talking to the player after a certain amount of time. Thoughts and jokes about the word “pause” will finally make him angry, and he will start yelling at the player for holding up the game.

Persona 5 / Persona 5 Royal

Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal are thought to be one of the best modern JRPGs ever, thanks in large part to their beautiful graphics and sound design, as well as their over-the-top but gripping story and likeable characters. The music in the Persona games is famous for being great. The music for this version of Atlus’ Persona game was a mix of jazzy and funk songs that went well with the Phantom Thieves mood.

Even in the game’s pause menu, you can hear this jazzy impact. All of the screens are perfectly animated and look like they’re pulling out of the monitors or TVs: Joker goes through each menu, which has a cool look that looks like comic books or other pop art. At first, players may feel confused because the options are spread out, but over time, the pause menu screens get easier to use, especially with the great music playing in the background.

FromSoftware Games

FromSoftware is known for making games that are hard to beat. If you play any of these games—Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Doodle Cricket, Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Elden Ring, or the Armoured Core games—you know that the journey will be harsh and interesting.

As soon as players get into a game, they feel like everything is against them, even the pause screen. Other games’ stop buttons let players take a break from all the action, but FromSoftware games don’t do that. When a player presses the pause button, they see a menu screen that typically shows their character’s stats, weapons, and armor. It doesn’t stop the game, though. It is still possible for enemies to attack the player’s character, which can mean losing the souls or runes that the player needs to level up their character.

FromSoftware’s games don’t hold players’ hands and give them breaks, so this “pause” screen makes them feel more like real life. It is important for players to know where it is safe to look at their character screens and calm down.

The Legend Of Zelda Breath Of The Wild / Tears Of The Kingdom

When you press the stop button in most games, you’ll see a static menu, which breaks the flow of the game. Games have always had their pause menus like this, but The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom made theirs easier to use.

The last screen they looked at is the one where the pause menu is shown in both games. If a person was looking at their armor menu, for example, the next time they pressed pause, they would see the armor menu screen. When they open a treasure chest, the pause menu takes them to the right screen for weapons or materials, based on what they find inside. When you open the pause menu near a cooking pot that is already lit, the items screen appears right away.

The Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom pause menus are very well made because they pay attention to what players are doing in-game. It lets players carry on with what they were doing or do what they were doing in the pause screen without any problems.