Here's some more variations of the button text.

Example 1: Chicle
Example 2: Non-Italic Cooper
Example 3: Showcard Gothic

All three examples have had their shading tweaked from the last menu draft. Let me know which everyone prefers, and I'll finish the rest of the rank texts and post a public download

I'm having a look at the RC build this evening. The new menu looks amazing. Just a few things I'd suggest to improve the gfx:

Logo - I've made the Lemmings' hair bigger. This version I've made is intended as a mockup/template - zanzindorf, if you agree that the hair is a better shape now, maybe you can work your magic with the colour shading.

Card Text - The size and proportion of these is now much better, but I really don't like the font on the cards; I'd suggest Showcard Gothic instead (or, go back to the "spray painted letters" effect). I've attached a very rough mockup of the LEVEL SELECT card using the Showcard Gothic font for reference (note that I had to remove the text so the shading has gone, the image is purely to showcase the font itself in relation to the card graphic).

EDIT: As a general suggestion, it might be good if the cards and text are separate graphics, so that players can easily customise the text to their own liking, if they so wish.

I agree with the feedback on the Logo. The lemmings holding the buttons underwent several iterations, but the lemmings in the logo were never updated with the same look. I need to fix that. Their hair could definitely use an update. Same with their eyes.

I'm not sure I'm sold on Showcard Gothic though. It's a nice font, and I did consider it while exploring different fonts, but I went with Cooper ultimately because it matched the Logo font (which is supposed to be similar to the original logo), and Cooper also goes well with the blue sprite font in my opinion. The logo and the sprite font have a rounded, organic feel, and Showcard is very sharp and angular. For me, the contrast between Showcard and the other fonts is kinda jarring. I searched for something that had a hand painted or spray painted look like the original, but unfortunately, Cooper was the closest I could find. I could try painting the text up by hand from scratch to try to match the look of the original text better, but that's kinda a time consuming option, and I'm not much of a font-smith, so I'm not even sure I could pull that off.

I'll work on it over the weekend, and I'll try a draft with Showcard just so we can see how it looks.

Regarding separate graphics for text and buttons, I do have the separated menu graphics available for download in a previous post (See attachment in this post: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=5158.msg86352#msg86352 in "Menu Redesign 20201017.zip"), so if users wanted empty panels without text, that's definitely a thing one could do. Adding to your suggestion, after V12.10.0 is released, it might be neat to have a "Custom Menu Art" board added to the NeoLemmix forum board, as a place where users could post custom menu designs. (Something like this might already exists? Or perhaps it could be a child board in "NeoLemmix Graphic Sets"?)

A minor bug I found: The cursor seems to change sizes depending on if you have "High Resolution" active. If you turn on "High Resolution" then navigate to the level preview menu, then navigate back to the main menu, your cursor will be super chonky (See 1st attachment).

Regarding the background: If we're looking for alternatives, I could try to throw something together. Here's a quick draft I did: (see 2nd and 3rd attachments).

^ Ah yep - I definitely like those, though the rank one cannot be directly used as-is - to properly work with the clickable UI (and in particular the highlight around the elements), the rank sign needs to be split into three graphics (as in the example ones attached to Reply #5) - the panel, and the seperate Up and Down buttons.

Attached is the rank sign split into three graphics. I think that should work, but let me know if it doesn't.

The smaller buttons aren't cropped because I wasn't entirely sure how to crop them to get them to align properly with the new code. The buttons for your new menu design are 21x16, and mine are 21x12. If that's a problem, let me know and I can rework my buttons to use your size.

Also note that the base rank panel is unchanged from my last upload. I left it this way because it shows where the smaller buttons should be and also retains the drop shadows between the smaller buttons and the rank panel. I figured it would be a problem if the drop shadow was included with the smaller buttons themselves because I assume your outline effect requires a crisp, pixel outline on the source graphic to render properly. Again, let me know if it needs more work.

On a side note: The mouse support features to the new menu look fantastic in the video! The only feedback I have is (more of a question really): does the rank panel itself do anything when clicked? I know the smaller buttons change the difficulty, but does clicking on the panel outside the smaller buttons do anything? If not, having it highlight when the mouse hovers over it may be confusing. Players might try to click the rank panel itself rather than the smaller buttons expecting it to work like the other panels.

Changes:
* Changed eyes, hopefully less soul piercing
* Fine tuned anti-aliasing in a few places.
* Swapped the gold talisman to the front.
* Adjusted text, made it a little more bold, hopefully easier to read.

Attached are the following:
* Menu images which can work in the current version (tested in V12.9.4)
* The first five rank text images in gfx/menu are padded with empty pixels to force it to work in the current version (as Namida suggested ), but also included are the unpadded versions in the "Unpadded Steps 1-5" folder.
* Alternate rank images for "Rank 1-5" (as suggested by Simon), "Oh No: Crazy - Wild", "Original: Fun - Mayhem", and "Redux: Gentle - Lunatic". All of these haven't been tested thoroughly, so if you notice anything off, let me know. All of these alternates are in the gfx/menu folder.
* Separated layers of each graphic, including the logo. This is good for testing out your own font or text on the existing buttons.

Also, just noting, by submitting these, I'm not saying this is the finished product, or that more alternate ideas shouldn't be posted, I'm just posting these source files in case anyone wants to mess around with them, or try and fine tune things on their own. I'm still happy to continue making changes if needed. Having all the layers separated out makes collaboration easier and faster, so I thought It'd be good to throw it out there. I'm still thinking of alternate logo ideas like WillLem suggested, I just haven't come up with anything.

One idea I had was "NeoLemmix" text in the style of the Psygnosis logo:



I really like it's 80s rock band ascetic, and it's retro computing vibe, though such a design might require a completely different set of menu buttons as well, which is interesting to think about.

Another thought I had was something that incorporates the blue "home" sprite that's currently used for the NeoLemmix Editor executable, the one that's themed after the marble style home sprite. I'm not entirely sure how to incorporate that though.

Here's another mockup. This one is to test a different size for the buttons. I went with Namida's estimate instead of the full 200%, and I think that's the right choice. Now the graphics are 87 pixels tall I think. I added back a more subtle texture on the buttons. The rank graphic is still the same size, just on a larger panel.  I also redrew the lemmings for the new aspect ratio, though, they may need more work. Any feedback is appreciated!

Showcard Gothic

That's a good shout, I'll look into that font and others. Regarding alternate logo concepts, I've been thinking about other designs, but I can't seem to come up with anything, other than a redesign of the original DOS one. I'm open to suggestions, and would also totally love to see designs from others.

Regarding backwards compatibility:

Taller buttons look good, I'm in favor of it, and I don't think it will really interfere with the shorter buttons from older level packs. The mock up seen above is displaying in V12.9.4 without any modifications, other than the rank graphic placement. The placement of the rank is the only thing that will need adjusting after switching to this new size, if we decide to go this route. Currently, the rank displays over the new, taller button like this in game:



To fix this placement and also account for the older buttons without breaking them, maybe it's position could be calculated based on the height of the graphic, so it's always roughly centered?

The only other modification that might be needed, is maybe all the buttons need to be shifted up closer to the logo and further away from the bottom text (If we keep the two rows, if we do one row, this wouldn't matter.)

Here's another mockup, this time only focusing on the logo and the play button:



Example 0: I reworked the anti-aliasing so it looks less jagged.

Example 1: Gave an example of my Cooper text on WillLem's button, per Dullstar's suggestion. I had to make it just a tad bigger.

Example 2: Reworked WillLem's button concept, kept the same theme, but made it more detailed and wider. Got rid of the texture from my last mockup. Also reworked the eyes (hopefully less creepy now lol). I gave the button a subtle gradient because I thought the one on WillLem's button was a bit too harsh, but I may have made it too subtle. There might be a happy middle ground, but I kinda like how it is. Makes it look more "shiny" if that makes any sense. This design also has more of a "button" look to it, which is important if we're implementing mouse compatibility.

Example 3: Mockup 2 (Based on the DOS menu but more detail)

Example 4: Mockup 1 (Based on the DOS menu)

RE the 200% stretch:

It's also worth noting the lemmings will likely look weird no matter what if the DOS version is used as a base: at least based on the Amiga version, it appears those graphics were originally intended to be drawn with a 200% vertical stretch, so they look a little squished.

That's super helpful, I did not realize. I'll remember this moving forward, but for now, I kept the same squashed look as the DOS menu simply because of the resolution limit.

For the current default resolution for a button sprite, one could fix the 200% stretch problem one of two ways: you could make the button smaller like WillLem's button, or you can halve the width of just the lemming. A smaller button in my opinion just kinda makes the menu feel more empty. On the other hand, halving the width of the lemming allows you to keep big buttons, but it also makes the lemming seem lanky and weird (it would need super long arms to hold the wide button).

Keeping the aspect ratio as it is I think would be fine, it doesn't look super weird to me, but maybe that's just because I've been looking at it for so long. I always just assumed they were short lemmings lol, or maybe they were sitting down behind the signs and resting it on their feets. Maybe I'll do some theoretical designs of the buttons if the graphics were a bit taller by default.

Thanks for all the feedback! It's super helpful. I think I'm going to work on designing an entire menu around "Example 2" and see how it looks. I'll also explore more options for fixing the squashed look.