One part of my game that folks don't seem to like too much or find confusing is the select screen.  I'll just go through the history of the Oh Shoot select screen.

On almost all of the original 2600 games in the select screen all you get is a number and you have to look this number up in the instruction manual's "game select matrix" to figure out what game settings correspond to the game select number.  This kinda sucks!  But it took very little rom space to implement.

This is exactly how the select screen started off in Oh Shoot.  I also used the player 2 score slot to display the max score required to win.

Later on when I had more space thanks to bank switching I wanted to put all the info on the screen so the player knows what they'll be playing.  I even bank switch out of the select/AI bank after I display the text and then go to bank0 to display some ships moving in a way to indicate the speed and flight mode to the player.  You can not directly change settings like "flight type" and "speed".  You can only change the game select number and then the corresponding settings are displayed on the screen.  I think this may initially be confusing for some players?  By the way the number of controllers on the screen indicates the number of human players in the game selection.

Later still I came up with subsettings based on the number of players.  Subsettings determine how difficult a computer opponent is, whether a human player has some sort of dodge assistance, or if the game is in an exhibition mode.  Initially I saw these as "Easter eggs" and to engage them you had to press the controllers in certain directions at the time you press start.  Fortunately I realized this was a terrible idea and I found some way to change these subsettings in the select screen and display them.  You can see the current state of the select screen with subsettings displayed on the bottom row.

Here are the instructions on the subsettings.

The subsettings are based on the number of players.  Press left on either controller to cycle 
through the left player's subsettings likewise press right for the right player.  The exhibition 
modes do not pertain to a player and can be cycled by pressing left or right on either controller.
Here is what the subsettings mean:
A: Assistance - helps the corresponding player avoid obstacles
A+: Assistance+ - helps the corresponding player avoid obstacles and missiles
E: Easy computer opponent
N: Normal computer opponent
H: Hard computer opponent
FX: Full screen scrolling and warp effects enabled.  Only available in 2 player mode
EX: Exhibition mode - computers play forever - sound effects disabled
EX+: Exhibition mode+ - computers play forever - sound effects enabled

This works and all the information is displayed on the screen but it is pretty cryptic.  I wanted this game to be accessible so anyone could pick this up and pretty much know what to do without a manual.  I don't think this will be possible however - out of space.  I only had room for this text/graphics in the select screen:

On the plus side a beginner could just change the game select number and accept the default subsettings.

Ideally I could do something like the menus that were added to classic games like Combat, Outlaw, Asteroids etc.  With these menus you don't fuss with some game select number... you directly set all the variables for the game upfront and based on that you see what the game select number is.  Here is Combat with a nice menu:

Here's a link to those enhanced games:

But check this out!  Combat is 2KB.  Combat with this fancy menu is 8KB!  I even did one of my "x-rays" on the Combat with menu rom:

Most of those 8KB are used!  I could do something like this but then I think I would have to switch to a 64KB ROM or cut out a bunch of my screens... big pain in the butt!  I don't think it is practical to attempt to improve the select screen beyond what it is right now.