A widespread convention or trope in games is the use of black bars at the top and bottom of the screen during a cutscene or cinematic. I assume this is a stylistic choice, and/or a UX choice to indicate non-interactivity.

The analogy seems obvious—people are used to seeing movies in a wider aspect ratio than their television, so letterboxing is common as a visual shorthand for “cinema”.

But I’ve wondered how specifically this made its way to the gaming world and became ubiquitous as an indicator of gameplay interruptions. Is there a clear candidate for the originator of the letterbox=cutscene thing?

Ideally, I'm looking for the first game to do so intentionally. A few generations ago, when pre-rendered cutscenes were common, I imagine you’d get letterboxes just from playing at a nonstandard resolution. However, modern games rarely use pre-rendered scenes, and they letterbox cutscenes far wider than a standard monitor, making it clearly a stylistic choice to add bars. I’m curious when that became a style rather than a technical limitation.

A widespread convention or trope in games is the use of black bars at the top and bottom of the screen during a cutscene or cinematic. I assume this is a stylistic choice, and/or a UX choice to indicate non-interactivity.

The analogy seems obvious—people are used to seeing movies in a wider aspect ratio than their television, so letterboxing is common as a visual shorthand for “cinema”.

But I’ve wondered how specifically this made its way to the gaming world and became ubiquitous as an indicator of gameplay interruptions. Is there a clear candidate for the originator of the letterbox=cutscene thing?

Ideally, I'm looking for the first game to do so intentionally. A few generations ago, when pre-rendered cutscenes were common, I imagine you’d get letterboxes just from playing at a nonstandard resolution. However, modern games rarely use pre-rendered scenes, and letterbox cutscenes are far wider than a standard monitor, making it clearly a stylistic choice to add bars. I’m curious when that became a style rather than a technical limitation.

A widespread convention or trope in games is the use of black bars at the top and bottom of the screen during a cutscene or cinematic. I assume this is a stylistic choice, and/or a UX choice to indicate non-interactivity.

The analogy seems obvious - people are used to seeing movies in a wider aspect ratio than their television, so letterboxing is common as a visual shorthand for “cinema”.

But I’ve wondered how specifically this made its way to the gaming world and became ubiquitous as an indicator of gameplay interruptions. Is there a clear candidate for the originator of the letterbox=cutscene thing?

A widespread convention or trope in games is the use of black bars at the top and bottom of the screen during a cutscene or cinematic. I assume this is a stylistic choice, and/or a UX choice to indicate non-interactivity.

The analogy seems obvious—people are used to seeing movies in a wider aspect ratio than their television, so letterboxing is common as a visual shorthand for “cinema”.

But I’ve wondered how specifically this made its way to the gaming world and became ubiquitous as an indicator of gameplay interruptions. Is there a clear candidate for the originator of the letterbox=cutscene thing?

Ideally, I'm looking for the first game to do so intentionally. A few generations ago, when pre-rendered cutscenes were common, I imagine you’d get letterboxes just from playing at a nonstandard resolution. However, modern games rarely use pre-rendered scenes, and they letterbox cutscenes far wider than a standard monitor, making it clearly a stylistic choice to add bars. I’m curious when that became a style rather than a technical limitation.