Wii Warm Up: Manual? We don't need no stinkin' manual!

I never read a manual before starting a game - it's a good thing, too, since Wii games seem to have so little in the way of manuals, anyway. I usually flip through them at some point while I'm playing the game, but I hate been spoiled by knowing what weapons or enemies could be coming up.

On the higher budget games, the manuals can really be works of art - but I don't covet them like I too did as a child.

Yes, back in the way back, there was nothing more exciting than sitting in the back seat of the car and reading the manual from my new Atari cartridge on the way home.

These days, I go straight to the game.

Then crawl back to the manual.

Yes, very much so! The manual was part of the experience! Reading it in the car as you drove home, and after you'd played a few hours (okay, 7 hours) of the game you whip out the manual and read up on it all.

Nintendo 64 manuals were the best, see Ocarinas, Banjos and DK64 manuals. Pure reading bliss. It doesn't matter that you already know how to play the game hands tied behind your back, just reading that manual is enough.

I always read the manual as my mother drove home from the store. After I started doing the driving, I cut that habit for the safety of others. I will still occasionally bust out the manual, but not before playing the game. With Twilight Princess I had a tough time learning to fish, so I checked out the manual for some instructions.

If I every pony up for a collectors edition, I will definitely read those manuals through in the early days of ownership.

I always read the manual but a little less seriously then way back when. It was essential in trying to figure out Metroid and all the interesting names. My dad probably got that Samus was a guy from the instruction manual. Good times. I still read the manuals for the little snippets and controls. I even read the operation manuals for VC games.

When I was young, I usually looked at the manual during the car ride home as mentioned above. Sometimes I would look at it in a very cursory manner before playing or if there was anything with the controls/gameplay getting me stuck. Otherwise, I remember taking the manual to bed at night to read more carefully.

Nowadays, the manual is reading material when in, shall we say, a certain room concentrating on a.... let's just say a certain "task."

For a fifty dollar game, I'm reading every letter on that paper like it was fuckin Shakespeare!

It's not about enjoyment, it's about learning and getting you money's worth!

You're not gonna see someone who's like: "Yeah, the game's great, but, did you read the manual?"

Knowledge is Power.

When I was a kid, I read 'em all the time.

But these days, I very, very, very rarely read the manual anymore. If I do, it's usually just for the control scheme.
Maybe manuals are just boring nowadays?

AND WHEN THE HELL DID THEY START PRINTING INSTRUCTION BOOKLETS IN BLACK & WHITE?!
For Christs sake – if we're paying $50+ bucks for a game, the least they could do is not skimp on the 4 color dealio.

In college, there was a rap song with this line my friends and I would quote all the time, "I got game like I read the manual." We thought it was hysterical how a rap song would reference how useless game manuals are!

Nowadays, I never, ever read the manual. The manuals spoil too much about the game's story.

The one game where my buddy and I broke down and had to read the manual was Madden on Wii. We thought 15+ years of playing Madded on every console ever would be enough to prepare us. We were dreadfully wrong, and a night of potential fun turned into, "You're passing??? How did you pass???? You're cheating!!!" "I don't know! I just want to run the ball for once!!!!"

Wasn't it that in days of old the games didn't start with a introduction level which was basically a tutorial to help you understand the controls and mechanics of the game?

I'd read the manual because then I usually stood a decent chance of making it out of the first level/world in my first few hours of playing.

Are you kidding...I read EVERY SINGLE WORD...even the copyright info, repetitive stress and epilectic warnings...in EVERY manual. (just kidding)

Back in the Atari days (ahhh...good times) I would pour over the manuals picking out every minute detail.

These days...I ususally look through them, but not with the furvor I used to. I look now if I am having a difficult time with controls. But I ALWAYS look a them at some point.

I also read them in the car ride, however I still read the manual, at least the controls and powerups parts. Otherwise I end up getting stuck in games not knowing there is a super jump, or that weapon abc can only be used once per day, or some BS like that.

Especially more complicated games such as Guild Wars, not reading the manual means you end up as one of the annoying people in town screaming HOW DO I CHANGE MY HAIR COLOR? WHERE IS THE NEAREST DYE VENDOR? DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT I CAN MAKE WITH SHELL FRAGMENTS???

I seldom read it now.

It was different back then when I was younger, it was the holistic approach to a new game, manual first and game later. Not anymore now.

As a kid, it was the first thing in my hand when I opened a game. I would read and re-read the manual and then play the game. But during gamecube years, I've ommitted them completly, I don't even read the back cover, so I was pretty dumbfounded when playing Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes. I had to look for that code online because I had misplaced the game's case.

I typically just skim over the control setup.

As a child, though, all about the manual.

^ at #3 Exactly couldn't have put it better myself. And N64 manuals were the best! I remember reading the Banjo Kazooie one over and over when I was little. These days there shorter and in black white. :(

Game manuals are archaic. Why can't they just include the game manual in the game media similar to the way PSX on PSP games do? This would eliminate the need to spend extra money on printing which might even lower the cost of production.

I would devour my ColecoVision manuals, but now I just breeze through today's manuals to see if there's any interesting artwork. And does anyone really scribble things down on the last couple of "notebook" pages in these things?

I think the reason behind all this is that most current games tend to have a walkthrough of some sort. Remember how the attract mode of most arcade games of yesteryear would give you the fundamentals if you just watched for a minute before dropping your quarter?

Ah, the glory days. A time when video games couldn't be "beaten" or "finished". Enemies would just increase speed, drop down, and reverse direction!

I think that I agree with the fact that in the old days games just throw you into the game and expect you to either already know how to play by reading the manual or by hitting the bottons and figuring out what they do.
Now there are these things called tutorial lvls and such.

There also wasn't as much Character development in games, and if you wanted to know more about the main characters there would generally be some juicy tidbits to be found in the manuals.

For myself, I no longer read the manuals. I /might/ check it for some artwork or something but even that is rare now.

"Ah, the glory days. A time when video games couldn't be "beaten" or "finished". Enemies would just increase speed, drop down, and reverse direction!"

Brendon - Nice Futurama reference...that episode is CLASSIC!

I still look at the manuals and still enjoy the Nintendo ones. But the games by EA always have a really cheap crappy 4 page instruction manual and these ar the games I keep looking in the manual for a question I might have and 99% of the time it is not in the book.

Generally I never even take the manual out of the case, but was quite happy that I flipped through the RE4: Wii edtion manual and realized that I could run... But yeah manuals are basically a combination of the back of the box and the tutorial section of the game, why read it when I can play it?

Having to read through the manual to figure out a game is one of the most obvious signs of poor game design.

Like so many other posters, I used to treasure riding home and reading the manual of my new acquisition in the back seat -- mmmm, new manual smell.... Back then, they were usually worth checking out because the in-game introduction to gameplay mechanics was a lot less heavy-handed than it is today.

Now, I still read the manual, but usually for the glimpse it gives of things to come: I like to know that I'll get to learn Special Move X, or meet character Y. I wish I could find the link, but a few years back, I remember seeing an interview with somebody involved in making I think one of the Metroid games, talking about the way they let you see something you know you'll be able to get/do later, but you can't do it yet. I think there was even a single Japanese word for the concept, meaning something like "longing, but in a positive way", and I think it's why I'm such a sucker for games like Zelda, Metroid, and the recent-vintage Castlevania games. The feeling of accomplishment when you get to cross that chasm you couldn't reach before or finally blow up that boulder blocking your path pushes exactly the right buttons for me.

As an aside, I think it's part of the short-attention-span culture today (real or imagined -- I won't get into that argument) that drives game makers to include a tutorial in the beginning of almost every game they put out today. Maybe it's also the virtually unlimited resources of modern consoles -- you probably had less room for hand-holding with the few hundred KB of data older NES carts could hold -- but I also think game developers are reaching out to people who aren't willing to put in the time to "study" their games. I guess that's OK if it means selling more copies, which translates into making more sequels...

haha, Kenny, I know what ya mean. But for me its the opposite - Madden on Wii was a dream (hike the ball like you take a hike, pass to pass, stiff arm to stiff arm), whereas I tried to explain the controls for 360 Madden to a friend once and I caught myself saying things like "you need to tap this button twice, then that one once, then spin the controller stick, then ...."!

The only time I ever read a manual anymore is if I'm absolutely stuck on trying to figure out how to access a certain game mode or to find which combination of buttons will perform the action I want but can't seem to get on my own.

SG

I always read the manual no matter what...i try to wait untill i get home but i just cant help it and always end up reading it while driving home...

I always read the manual no matter what...i try to wait untill i get home but i just cant help it and always end up reading it while driving home...

I used to read the manuals on the ride home while my father kept yelling at me because the glare from the light was interfering with his driving. Now that I am the one driving home with a game, my fiancee put the kibosh on flipping through the manual while speeding down the highway. So, unless there is an extra stop on the ride home, I tear into the game without touching the manual.

Since I usually walk to and from the store to buy games, I usually read the manual on my way home because 25 minutes of walking can get awfully boring otherwise. Unfortunately, I tend to finish the manual before I get home, because they've stopped putting in all the good stuff that old manuals used to have, such as backstories, maps, or first-level walkthroughs.

I usually don't read the manual, but that's usually because I've either played the same type of game before, seen a video of it, read a review of it, or there's a tutorial in the beginning of the game anyway. Maybe even a combination of those.

Sometimes, I go back and read the manual just to relax and read the character profiles, any random stuff that did not make it into a review or tutorial, the intro story... I don't think I've used a manual to actually learn how to play a game in recent years... Maybe to figure out what that icon in the corner of the screen meant...

I remember the old times... I used to open the box in the car going home, took out the manual and read it in the car... A bad habit considering the fact that I get motion sickness easily, and when I got home, I was too sick to even start the game... Hah, the good ol' days.

Well it largely depends, these days. When I was younger, my mom or dad would drive me to the store, I'd buy the game, and I'd open it and start reading in the car on the way home.

Now, I can drive. If I'm driving, I obviously can't (or shouldn't, at least) read on the way home. If I don't go straight to playing, I'll read first. For example, if I'm watching TV, or eating dinner, I'll probably browse the manual at the same time. It's not really about learning controls mostly (unless there's something unique about the game, as there might be with some Wii games) but instead about preparing myself for the game. It's like anticipation building up the excitement for the experience.

Generally I wind up going straight to the game, but again, if I have time before I play, I'll look at the manual...

they should have electronic manuals built into the game like vc games and the internet channel...

If its a franchise i'm unfamiliar with, or a different take on an old franchise (like the original Super Mario Strikers), i will read the manual to pick up the basics

Now, with games like Super Mario Galaxy, Brawl, or Metroid Prime 3, even NiGHTS 2, no manual is necessary

I remember pouring over NES and Genesis manuals being younger. They inspired me to start designing actually, so I still check out the manuals purely to see the art and layout. I want that job so badly >.

I stare at the back cover of the game on the way home and until I have time to play it. Manuel? Only if the cover gets boring. I still don't read the manuel if i get stuck. I usually will get my brother to help or if he can't help, computer.