   screencap for config menu?
  originally for my configuration screen, i would just switch to a different state and have just the options rendered.  however, its now a requirement that the config screen appears on top and not completely obscuring the play screen, main screen etc.  i'm thinking the best way to do this is to just capture whats on the screen when they press the button, switch states rendering that as a background beneath the options.  does this make sense?  the alternative i guess would be to make config a sub state of each game state but that strikes me as a bad bad idea.  any input would be helpful, i'm still pretty new to this so not familiar with many "best practices".  thanks.   
  seems like a simple:1) pause the game code so it renders exactly the same thing every frame until you unpause it2) render the menus on top of that   ;  llloyd - your method sounds pretty good, this is actually done in many commercial games that have a visible play screen when you pause.  you could use StretchRect() to copy from the backbuffer to a render target texture, then draw a quad with that texture behind the options screen.  :)   