Idiosyncratic Menu Labels

The highlighted option is quit, by the way.

This trope is for cases when certain video games retitle basic menu (usually Start Screen) functions like "New Game", "Continue" or "Quit/Exit". It can be done to improve their atmosphere by making them fit the game's setting or just make them more hilarious. However, it's possible to make them confusing for new players if the names are weird enough.

Related to Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels and Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp". Compare Dialogue Tree.

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Examples:

Action Games

• BUTCHER doesn't reinvent the menu labels, but it does spice up the prompt that pops up when you want to (re)start (over) the game in a profile that already has a save file in progress (or deleting the save profile), the choices being titled as:
  • No, I Want To Continue/No, Don't Delete It (cancellation)
  • Yes, Fuck This Shit (confirmation)

Adventure Games

• In The 11th Hour the quit function is titled "Exit This Reality"
• Anonymous Agony has "New User", "Log In", and "Log Out" as menu options.
• Being a highly cinematic game, Fahrenheit titles the "new game" function as "New Movie" and the level select option as "Chapters".
• Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail! uses "Lemme Outta Here! (Exit)" as its exit button.
• Limbo of the Lost keeps the Start Screen labels normal (Credits, Start, Load and Quit) and instead applies this trope to its pause screen with "Back To Hell" (resume game), "Resurrection" (load game), "Save Your Soul" (save game) and "End is Nigh" (quit).
  • When the pause menu is accessed during the times saving the game is disabled, the "Save Your Soul" instead becomes "Repent Sinner, Your Soul Cannot Be Saved".
• Police Quest: SWAT uses "New Career" and "Previous Career" in place of "New Game" and "Resume Game".
• Road Trip USA has "START ROAD TRIP" as the start game button.
• The disc menu for The Simpsons game Virtual Springfield has pictures of Homer Simpson with a doughnut next to the menu options, with Homer preparing to eat a doughnut as the picture for "Install", and Homer spitting a doughnut out for "Uninstall". It also has Homer playing bowling ball for "Play" and looking at the clock for "Quit".

Action-Adventure Games

• Blasphemous titles its Game Start/File Select option as "Pilgrimage". It also titles its Boss Rush option "Sacred Sorrows", and the New Game Plus feature within the File Select menu is called "Ascend".
• With the exception of the PC-exclusive graphical settings section and the text of the difficulty selection, The Quiet Man almost completely eschews any text whatsoever and depicts its menus solely with symbols.
• The main menu for Turgor is all single letters and symbols. They are all subtitled with a mouse tooltip, however.
• Vindictive Drive has the usual "Start", but also "Fix" for loading and "RQ" for quitting in its Start Screen.

First Person Shooters

• Half-Life Game Mods
  • The Half-Quake series goes to town with the sadistic theming of their menus. For starters, the usual "New Game" is retitled Die in this series. It even applies custom labels for stuff like graphics and control options sections, which are titled "eyes" and "fingers" respectively.
  • Half-Life: Echoes applies this to its own menus, in accordance with its Framing Device of the game being one of the G-Man's candidate evaluations. The typical Half-Life menu options are relabelled as "Resume Observation" (Resume Game), "Begin Observation" (New Game), "Retrieve Data" (Load Game), "Archive Data" (Save Game), "Alter Parameters" (Options), and "Terminate Session" (Quit). This extends to the difficulty selection screen, which states "Select criteria for evaluation" and presents the options of "Relaxed" (Easy), "Conventional" (Normal) and "Stringent" (Hard).
• Kingpin: Life of Crime titles its multiplayer option "Gang Bang".
• The New Game option in Painkiller is titled "Sign The Pact".
• The Revenant Bus Game Mod for Doom II by MarphitimusBlackimus titles its Save menu option "Saving Is Cheating!".

Horror Games

• Cardiophobia has "New Chapter" for Start, "Diary" for Load and "Run Away" for Quit.
• Conscript, the upcoming World War I Survival Horror game with a demo available on Steam, has "Enlist" in place of the "New Game"
• Each of the FAITH: The Unholy Trinity instalments have menu items written in Latin that get translated into English whenever they're highlighted. The first game has "Initus" (Begin), "Catechismus" (Instruction), "Additicia" (Extras) and "Abitus" (Exit).
• Korsakovia has "begin" (no caps) for New Game, "remember" for loading game, "keep" for saving, "adjust" for options and "forget" for quitting.
• Hello? Hell...o? has "I know..." for starting the game and "See you..." for quitting.
• Manhunt titles the level select feature as "Select scene", to go by its movie-making theming.
• The title screen of Ms. Director has "New Reel" for New Game, "Keep Filming" for Load Game, and "Cut" for Quit. The game menu itself has "Wrap it up" for returning to the title screen.
• Narcosis has "Commence" for New Game, "Event Log" for Chapter Select and "Power Down" for quitting the game.
• Re:Kinder titles its Start/Load/Quit options as "Play?" (question mark included), "Memory" and "ByeBye".
• Yume Nikki has "Dream Diary" in place for "Load Game".

Platform Games

• Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards:
  • The pause screen normally has options for "Continue" (continue playing) and "Try Again" (exit level). In Boss Endurance mode, "Try Again" is changed to "Accept Defeat".
  • During the final battle with 02, the "Try Again" option is disabled and instead reads "Tough It Out!"
• The main menu buttons in Time Fcuk all have footnotes that are tangentially related to the theme of the game, but become more and more nonsensical the further you read. The buttons are START^* taking action by finding flaws in yourself. then finding excuses not to fix them and laying down because you worked so hard, and hey, lets face it, life has no point., CREATE^* a state of being you no longer have any control over / an ego driven divide between your past and current existence, EXPLORE^* the feeling of abandonment when you no longer acknowledge yourself when you run into yourself on the street., and ENTER^* at your own risk THE^* definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results... UNKNOWN^* quantities of carrot juice may lead to the ability to see the alien that lives behind your bedroom door.

Puzzle Games

• The Impossible Quiz 2 has "GO GO GO!" as the button for starting the game.
• There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension has its "Start" button as "No Game Here", the "Options" button as "Useless Options", and the "Quit" button as "This Way!", with flashing red arrows pointing to it, as the apparent non-game does not want the player to play it. Naturally, taking the bait nets the player an achievement.
• Timekeepers, a top-down Lemmings-inspired puzzle game for the Amiga, has verbose main menu option labels, with "Play The Introduction Animation", "Play Timekeepers From The Start" and "Load In A Previous Saved Position".

Racing Games

• In the original Carmageddon, whenever an opponent dares the player to switch starting spots in the grid, an option to refuse the challenge is called "Chicken".

Role-Playing Games

• Arkandian Legends games use "Begin your journey" and "Continue your adventure" for starting or loading a game.
• Crashocalypse titles the quit function "Go Away".
• Some Dragon Quest games label the option for starting a new game as "Venture Forth".
• Eternal Senia keeps the opening screen's options normal but adds subtitles to them, through Start (New Adventure), Load (Keep on Finding) and Exit (End of Memory).
• Iron Gaia: "Create Anomaly" for New Game, "Restore Anomaly" for Load Game, "System Shutdown" for Quit
• Off — mostly owing to its unorthodox translation — uses a few unusual terms in place of some battle menu options, namely "Competence" in place of "Skill" and "Abscond" in place of "Flee". Applies to some of the fangames related to it too.
• Planescape: Torment has New Game, Load Game and Quit functions be retitled "New Life", "Resume Life" and "The Abyss", respectively.
• Reconstruction Zero: I Miss The Sunrise has "Awaken New Pilot" for New Game and "Load Saved Pilot" for Load Game.
• The Reconstruction:
  • The game itself has New Story and Continue Story in place of New/Load Game.
  • The sequel, The Drop, has New Adventurer, Load Adventurer and Turn Back.
• Ruina: Fairy Tale of the Forgotten Ruins has "New Story", "Resume Story" (Load), "End" (Exit).
• Seraphic Blue: "Birth of Blue" for New Game, "Return to Blue" for Load, "Away from Blue" for Quit
• Space Funeral titles ALL of the basic New/Load/Quit functions in its Start Screen as "Blood".
• Starting from the third mainline instalment, plenty of Ultima games use "Journey Onward" to label either the new game or continue game options. This goes to the spinoffs like the Ultima Underworld games as well.

Simulation Games

• Mechwarrior 2: 31st Century Combat titles its quit option "Flee to Windows".
• The Story of Seasons series uses "write in journal" instead of "save".

Strategy Games

• Plenty of Paradox Interactive's strategy games label the "quit" option in their pause screens as "Surrender".
• The rather raunchy (and not exactly the most well made) Polish turn-based strategy game Rezerwowe Psy (the game itself being a deliberate homage to Reservoir Dogs and being filled to brim with Tarantino references as well as various Polish references) features proverbial menu labels, like "Azyl" (Asylum) for New Game, "Do Nogi" (Haul Ass/On Your Knees) for Load Game, "Do Budy" ((Doggie) Go Home) for Save Game, "Opcyje" (deliberately russianized "Opcje") for Options and "Won!" (Get Out!) for Exiting the game. Weirdly enough, the game's international Dolled Up Rerelease The Troma Project (yes, really) went for straightforward menu labels instead.

Third Person Shooters

• Max Payne uses a variant on the "Are you sure you want to quit?" prompt. If the player quits the game, the game will display a quote from Max reflecting on his current situation (e.g. "The Valkyr case was anything but closed."), below which the player selects either "But I was too tired to go on" or "I couldn't stop. I had to push on."

Other games

• In Dream Daddy, the graphics quality options are called "Daddy", "Daddier", and "Daddiest".
• Plenty of RPG Maker-powered games, such as The God of Crawling Eyes, Born Under the Rain and Standstill Girl commonly use "Shutdown" to title their Quit function.
• Quintessence: The Blighted Venom has "Destiny Anew" (New Game), "Memories Past" (Load Game) and "Fate Foregone" (Quit).

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