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Instruction Manuals - Scott The Woz

Jun 03, 2021
Hello everyone, Scott here! I have nothing, and when I'm completely dry when it comes to ideas that's when we pull out the idea wheel. Let's see what we have to talk about today. ..Oh, motherfucker Okay, well, I guess I'm talking about the L button today. Shit, I have no idea how I got 23 minutes out of that topic. Oh, Jesus Christ. Ah, the physical video game. Look at all this plastic, it's cool, right? The box has always been something I've considered one of these simple pleasures of gaming. Something that doesn't matter in the slightest when it comes to legitimately enjoying a video game, but something that just stays with you.
instruction manuals   scott the woz
I always loved just looking at the box, reading the back, seeing the whole garden. Physical video games are something I've always appreciated, and in the past that was partly due to the inclusion of this bit of paper. I think the video game manual is something we really started talking about until it started to disappear. In this digital age, it's easy to remember all the little things about games that we always took for granted but really miss now that they're basically gone. Things like game magazines, demo discs, cheat codes, they're not dead, but they're dead. Tons of my favorite gaming-related things have been replaced by much more inventive and simple solutions, all thanks to this homewrecker.
instruction manuals   scott the woz

More Interesting Facts About,

instruction manuals scott the woz...

It's the Internet, home to things like... Now, is the Internet really a stupid-looking garbage dump for killing off what were once these little joys of video games? I mean, no, are you kidding? They have a chat roulette about this. Yes, the magazines were great, but I can get all this information immediately online. Oh my god, as much as you save, I miss magazines. If you could choose between receiving gaming news immediately over the Internet or once a month through a magazine. I don't even need to finish that sentence, you already know what you're going to choose.
instruction manuals   scott the woz
But I understand it. It's the pleasure of having something tangible physical to flip through, read all this information, see images and ads for other games. You only get this once a month, you better savor it. Since the Internet literally gives you everything you could want, it's harder to appreciate the smaller things, like interesting formatting on a "Nintendo Power" page or finally discovering that humans bought "Faceball 2000." "Damn, Scott," you may be saying, "I thought you were going to talk about paper, not paper." We're getting a little off topic here, but what I'm trying to say is that things are a lot easier now that a lot of physical things are moving to digital.
instruction manuals   scott the woz
Technology has advanced so much that many of the physical things we had in the past are no longer necessary. But it's a little harder to appreciate them this way. Gaming magazines are fundamentally dead, but the content they offered is not; This type of material can be found online and is much more convenient. However, I still miss the feeling of magazines. They just felt so much more special. This sentiment applies to many other elements of games, with video game

manuals

being the most obvious. Buying a new video game was always an exhilarating experience before 2011. A lot of that was because this was only half the story.
With most games, you always got

instruction

manuals

, and reading them was my favorite method of realizing I'm a fucking moron. The

instruction

manual was a necessity in the early days of gaming, giving you details on the controls, the story, the characters, basically everything you needed to know to get started. In-game tutorials were a rarity. Most NES games. You just log in and immediately start playing. Instruction manuals took over when it came to teaching them how to play or tell the story. This is definitely why so many NES games don't really tell you what to do or how to play.
Because you were expected to read the manual. My God, were these things made for reading? Plus, they all had a notes and notes section in the back where we could jot down little reminders. I don't think anyone has done this so I'm going to start the trend and wear them more often. Look at the manual for The Legend of Zelda. This is the culmination of everything that made these things so fun to flip through. All this colorful art, tips and tricks, story details, enemy names, and even a map. This is the titan of the retro video game manual.
It's great when they come in full color and almost act as mini strategy guides. When you really love a game, you want to dig deeper and see the characters and story better. And great manuals like this one let you do it at no extra cost. NES adventure and role-playing games got the best brochures; "StarTropics", "Final Fantasy", "Zelda 2", "Dragon Warrior". All of these things received full color information trays with additional art drawn just for them, apps and works. It's cool to see unique artwork on these things. The story of "Bubble Bobble" was explained through a comic and "Mario 3" is a lot of fun to read.
But not all manuals were created equally. Keep in mind that this was the era of bad English translations, made-up plots, misspellings, or just completely incorrect statements. All the usual stuff when it comes to NES manuals. "Castlevania 2 - Simon's Quest" Congratulations! You now own Konami's authentic home version of Simon's Quest, one of Konami's many original arcade hits. Did Konami lie to me? I love the screenshots of the game. Sometimes they would literally just tap a Kodak and take a photo of the screen. Other times I suppose they did the same thing but added a negative effect to everything, so that it was easier to see it in black and white.
The manuals would continue to get better and better over time. Even as they became increasingly unnecessary. Around the SNES and Genesis era, games started to become more self-aware, to offer tutorials, to become less cryptic, but that didn't stop the manuals from really hitting it out of the park. The best ones seemed like an extension of the game world. Man, I feel like I'm with Marcus Fenix ​​right now. Now, where did all this blood come from? Or simply when the manual preserves the style of the game, as is the case with "Red Dead Redemption." Rockstar knows how to do it manually.
You know, with them you get a nice thick brochure and a huge map or poster, it's great. However, even in the golden age of manuals, not everything was surprising. You know a game probably wasn't a publisher's top priority when the manual was in black and white. It was almost a warning sign that the game you bought was stupid garbage. It's not always the case, but you knew a publisher really cared when they offered you full colors, in multiple languages, like, wow, they care. Nintendo, your old dogs: almost every first-party Nintendo game released since the SNES gave us these manuals, you need SparkNotes.
In full color and with Wii: several languages. Plus, these fun little booklets give you Donkey Kong upskirts and some new game suggestions. Hello Skyward Sword fans, you'll love that we render motion. Hey look, I mean we play on the move. Even when they did things like re-releasing GameCube games on Wii through the new game controller series, they completely redid all the manuals. They could have just changed the control layout page and ba-da boom, they're done. No, they practically made new ones from scratch. But they didn't keep this page from the original Pikmin manual, come on. Things were going pretty well in the world of folded and stapled pieces of paper until the second half of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 era.
When manuals became a dying art form. I spent less and less time on them. Most of the time, you saw black and white, and they constantly became thinner and thinner. Sometimes he simply provided a small control layout on a single folded sheet of paper. These could be lovely, Nintendo did a lot of this with the 3DS and it worked pretty well, I'm fine with this. Although I would prefer more details. But hey, it could be worse. It could be a complete waste of my visual resources because there were some games that didn't even want to do the bare minimum.
I mean, at this point you might as well give up. If you are going to include an instruction manual, include an instruction manual, even if it is just a control layout. At least some people will take advantage of this. It can be a legitimately useful little brochure, even if it's all in black and white on a single folded sheet of paper. When you just spew some garbage terms and conditions here, you're actually wasting paper. Sure, a real manual uses more paper and more ink, but some people will really take advantage of it. If you're going to use paper, use it for something useful.
Go and find out the terms and conditions on the inside of the artwork or on the back of the box. Now, this old death of the manual could easily be associated with the last few years in gaming. But let it be known that SNES' "Home Improvement" was one of the most influential games of all time since the manual-free revolution began. Real men don't need instructions. The writers of the manual have really hit it on us there. Death really makes me sad with the release of "Smash Brothers Ultimate." Here's a series that always prides itself on including manuals of the thick-honking variety.
When you own a copy of "Smash Brothers Brawl," you know it. Look at all this. Even Smash Brothers for 3ds and WiiU. These were published when manuals were: this. They showed you all the characters and their movements. It wasn't as detailed as previous manuals, but it was still solid. But when we opened "Smash Brothers Ultimate", nothing. And now, instruction manuals are more reserved as premium bonuses and special releases, and not much else. Now, the space usually reserved for manuals is used for DLC codes, terms and conditions, or advertisements. I can't wait to open "Sonic Mania Plus".
I mean, let's be honest. When they were actively produced for each game, it was pretty rare for you to actually decipher a manual. It was something to flip through right after purchasing the game in the passenger seat on the way home. Now, why do I say this? Well, take a look at the electronic manual. Who the hell uses this thing? I'm sure most people didn't even know that many games have electronic manuals, but they are here. The thing is, almost no one, even people who know the electronic manual exists, has ever said, "I don't know what to do.
To the electronic manual." Most of the time people simply search for questions they have online. I mean, it's probably faster to do that than to press the home button on the Wii U, click on the electronic manual, and wait for it to load. It's a little sad to me that the e-manual was overlooked because some of them are really fun and contain a lot of love. These legitimately feel like the old manuals, but now in a way that allows for cool things like animation. And now some games have basically built-in manuals. The only example I can think of is "Mario Odyssey" and I mean that's something.
Which people didn't really use. So I think that goes to show that tutorials and in-game narration have replaced the instruction booklet, and the only reason we liked them was because they were tangible items. If you convert a manual into a PDF, almost everyone loses interest. But even now that they're gone, every time I open a new game. It's just disappointing. It seems like something should be here and it almost never is. Now a big new trend with many physical games like those found in the inner sleeve. Since most game cases are transparent, some companies have been printing art on the inside, which is always a pleasure to see.
It's a good way to get some of the instruction manual back without wasting paper. Sure, I'd rather get a nice thick paper brochure and watch the earth get polluted, but I'll gladly accept this. It gives you something to gawk at when you open a case, and it's much better than the terms and conditions listed there. You can find manuals and things like special releases of indie titles, but that's about it. "Red Dead 2" came with a map, but no booklet, and Nintendo basically drops paper inserts entirely with the Switch games. Things aren't looking great for these guys, and it's pretty crazy that they're treated like premium bonuses these days.
I loved flipping through the manuals for the games I loved. In fact, I remember taking some manuals to daycare to look through. But like magazines and demo discs, they're obsolete and if you get them back, that's great, but not many people are going to use them. Even though they are almost gone and not used much to begin with, they will always have a place in my heart and the hearts of many others. Well, as a tribute to the instruction manual, I will fully commit to one and do what it tells me. Ah OK.

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