Know what I tend to remember consoles by? Not their games, or controllers, or even hardware casings. I usually remember them for their boot-up jingles.
As silly as that sounds, those first few seconds of animation and music really set the tone for what the platform holder hopes is to come, and more than any advertising slogan become the unofficial “jingle” of a machine.
Let’s take a look back, then, at some of my favourites. And by some, I mean a ton.
This is the NTSC version of Sega’s Dreamcast. The PAL version, like mine, actually had a blue logo.
The Nintendo GameCube playfully had three boot-up sequences.
Ah, the Xbox. So dark, so masculine, so futuristic. Or at least, that’s what Microsoft wanted you to believe.
The PS2 kept things simple.
At the time PS1 was first released, that little ditty sounded like it came from 20 years in the future.
Fucking badass.
The Sega Saturn’s looked more like a bad Windows 95 program than cutting-edge home console.
The original 3DO. TOO LONG.
The Famicom Disk System… I could watch this all day.
Nintendo’s ill-fated Nintendo 64 Disk Drive system at least had a fancy boot sequence (at least while it waited for you to insert a game)
There have been two Xbox 360 boot-ups. While the old one was OK, I really like the clean, crisp new one.
The Game Boy Advance.
My favourite, though, is the PS3’s. It’s short, it’s elegant and bleeds gently right into a menu screen. Everything you want in a console boot-up!
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