I'm a little torn on this "one line vs. two lines" thing.
- The nostalgia factor would be greater for me with all the menu signs in one line - I used to play Lemmings predominantly on Mac in my childhood, until i discovered the Atari version, which included an additional menu sign (2 player mode), but they were still all in one line.
- I also had some contact with the DOS version back then; I liked that some of my favourite tracks came earlier in the game with the DOS music rotation. Also, everything was larger, filling up more of the screen. I somehow remember most of the tileset graphics as darker than they are now in NeoLemmix, though. But anyways, thanks to the DOS version, of course I also remember the two-line menu screen.
- My father was (and is) an avid Mac user, so he used to trash-talk the DOS version of Lemmings a lot. It did come with quite a few downsides, admittedly, such as no fast forward and no option of selecting skills in pause mode. Also, the sounds used for music and in-game sounds were much more muffled than on Mac. The Atari instrumentation I remembered as on-par with Mac; I was quite shocked to hear how terrible some of those Atari tunes sounded when I listened to them again recently.
In NeoLemmix, I'm very much used to the two-lines screen now, so changing it up would feel weird. Also, NeoLemmix graphics are taken from the DOS version (even though, as I said above, I remember many of the DOS tiles as darker). The Mac version also always had the green background, not the red-brown one which is currently the default.
In short: If everything else in NeoLemmix looks like in the DOS version (at least by default), I think the default menu should also continue to look like the DOS version, i.e. two lines.
Of course, for some cases, having them all in one line would be nice - not just for emulating Lemmings on Mac or Atari, but e.g. also for emulating Lemmings 3D (as I'm going to do with "Lemmings, Drugs, and Rock 'n Roll"), where the signs are also all in one line.
I guess you can already see it coming, but... any way to make the menu design optional? Like something you can switch in the settings menu, e.g. between "Mac view" and "DOS view"?We've already had features for switching between Mac-style and other music rotations - and music rotation even became completely customisable in the end. Of course, that's easier to do with something that can be arranged in a list, like music tracks and levels.