Still not as convenient, and that's in very few of the games I play. That's always been more of a Western thing than something that Japanese developers would include.
Still not as convenient, and that's in very few of the games I play. That's always been more of a Western thing than something that Japanese developers would include.
Just a side thought on topic but was anyone else who bought LoZ: Oracina of Time 3DS pissed at the piss poor manual Nintendo included with the game?
Nintendo is the one company that I would expect a high quality manual from but this was just disappointing. Its not only short but folded together like a damn road map and I really don't get why they would do this unless they were trying to save money on staples..or something.
I rarely read manuals anyway. The only time I read them is when I get stuck in a game like Catherine where I need to find out about very easy mode.
You don't have to be smart, you don't have to have all the facts, you just have to be confident.
Reminds me of the map that came with Final Fantasy on the NES. Those charts on the back were very helpful but it was annoying to open it up every time. I still use it as I play the game because without it the game itself doesn't tell you whether an item is stronger or weaker than what you already have, and spells have no explanations either.Originally Posted by substantial_snake
At least Zelda isn't complicated enough for it to become a problem. It's something you look at a couple times and leave in the box.
[quote name='Shidou Mariya' date='Nov 17 2010, 10:05 PM' post='4889940']
I'm a collector, but only to a certain extent.
Not as extreme as Rickstilwell though.[/quote]
Oh please tell me I'm not the only one that fills all of those pages up with drawings of veiny penises??? Anyone?
I'll miss manuals for alot of the same reasons as others have mentioned.. but I realize that they are no longer necessary. I just feel like the reason for removing them is probably to fill that space with a bunch of even more useless crap and advertisements.
Maybe Gamestop complained that manuals "compete" with their strategy guide sales.
Oddly enough, EA and Sega used to have great manuals for their football games. For awhile there, the Madden and Montana/NFL 2K manuals used to have full breakdowns of various offensive and defensive formations, to inform people of what a "Shotgun" formation was or a "Nickel" defense was.
Additionally, they used to have write-ups on all of the teams in the league and often included player ratings in the manual for people on the team rosters. They'd have a full paragraph or two on the Minnesota Vikings, etc. and post the ratings for their key players.
The manuals in the RBI Baseball series also used to be very good, too, in that some of them had full player ratings for every player in the game including bench warmers.
I'm pretty sure you could just whip out the manual from the previous games, since anything after 2008 was probably just roster updates.
I doubt you could use the manual for MLB2K7 with MLB2K9 on the 360, since the pitcher interface changed. The same with NBA2K8 and NBA2K10.
For use? Anachronistic. Digital over physical. Romsets out front should have told ya.
Only worthwhile for collecting... If you are collecting current stuff, you know the drill. Bend over and open your wallet. They'll leave you what's fair. No whining. Real gamers don't have opinions not covered by the press releases.
Last edited by Icarus Moonsight; 09-05-2011 at 12:38 AM.
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I've been flip flopping on manuals for years. On one hand, I they tend to be decent reading if you've got a few quite moments (I still love the Link to the Past and Mario RPG manuals). On the other hand, why kill an extra tree if the game has the instructions built in. The first time I noted that was with Mario Kart 64. The game came with a manual, a one page insert with all of the instructions in tl;dr format and then the game itself explained everything from from the start.
Now, notes sections, those I love. Particularly when I'm buying used games. Particularly retro used games. I got a copy of Mega Man X2 once with a strange chart written in the notes section of the manual. I found out from my sister that it was a menstruation calendar. The previous owner was keeping track of someones periods in the back of an SNES manual.
It is a bit sad for me to see them go, but I find this not too surprising nor unexpected for the same reasons that have been stated already. Even the dumbest gamer knows how to press a button and navigate a text menu these days in order to find their way to the tutorial level / settings.
Some of my fondest gaming memories are of opening a new game in the car, and reading the manual on the car ride home from Sears, Toys R' Us, or other random electronics store, often by the light from the car behind us on the road, as I usually went to the mall with my mother and because any store that sold new games was 45+ minutes away, we often arrived at home well after dark.
Every single cartridge game I got new back then has its manual lost to time or destroyed in the past 14+ years, and while I also miss the boxes, I miss my little paper friends much, much more.
Even for someone who never lost those things and always kept them when I had them, I appreciated the boxed games with manuals much much more than the cart only games that were picked up at yard sales or given to me for free from friends who no longer wanted them. I mainly liked manuals for the detailed character, level and item descriptions.
[quote name='Shidou Mariya' date='Nov 17 2010, 10:05 PM' post='4889940']
I'm a collector, but only to a certain extent.
Not as extreme as Rickstilwell though.[/quote]
I guess I'm in the minority on this, but I am sick to death of tutorials in games. I hate having to listen to some voice actor explain things to you and go through an in-game trial. Dispense with the deliberations and get to the actual game. It's a lot faster to read a few sentences than to sit through an in-game explanatory cutscene or whatever. Plus if I stop playing a game for an extended period of time and come back to it later, it's much easier to refer back to the manual.
You're not. I'm fairly sick of this sort of thing too.
In Heaven, everything is fine.
Maybe they could put skippable tutorial levels, the same way we skip reading manuals.
See my latest arcade repair at the Holodeck 2 Arcade Repair Blog: http://holodeck2arcade.blogspot.com
I always liked the way that the Madden games do things. Usually most of them just throw a still photo of the full control scheme up on a "Loading" page for someone to look at for 10-15 seconds while the first quarter is loading.
That could easily be done on a "Loading" page before the opening levels of other games.
I though that the original Half-Life and its spinoffs way of doing tutorials were awesome. They were all in character and walked you through the basics of the game in their own "training courses" which were completely optional to the player. I get how modern games feel like an integrated tutorial is the best tutorial but for those of us who have played X game in X genera I preferred the half-life method to tutorials.
That would be fine, but only if they're still including a manual (and the manual does a decent job). Otherwise my only choices are to slog through the tutorial or just wing it through the game without learning the basics first.
I agree with you, but others will just tell us to check online.
What sucks as collectors is that now when we go shopping at a used game store or ebay we'll have to carry a list of what games don't have manuals.
We seriously need to start a list topic for it. Is Xbox 360 the only system that started to do this regularly so far?
This list could technically be edited to include classics that don't have manuals as well. i.e. Muncher for Bally Astrocade never had one.
Last edited by Rickstilwell1; 09-11-2011 at 12:52 PM.
[quote name='Shidou Mariya' date='Nov 17 2010, 10:05 PM' post='4889940']
I'm a collector, but only to a certain extent.
Not as extreme as Rickstilwell though.[/quote]
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