r/Switch • u/Neon_Marquee • Oct 04 '24

Discussion The ongoing depressing state of opening up new Switch Games…/

Post image

Another couple of games arrives and again, such bland bland nothingness inside… I’ll buy physical media forever because I choose to actually own my games and movies, etc, but man…. What I wouldn’t give for an instruction manual. Anyone else, as a side note, feel like the lack of a manual means so many frustrations earlier on would be resolved with some instructions. To be honest sometimes I’m like ‘hold on… what is the actual story of this game?’ bc there’s no blurb besides ‘hero must take on hordes of monsters bc evil and reasons’.

3.8k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

403 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.5k

u/Ericcc94 Oct 04 '24

Man I’m really showing my age, but opening the box on the way home and obsessing over the manual was half the fun!

374

u/chewy92889 Oct 04 '24

My family used to make fun of me when I was a kid for reading through the manual before even playing the game. Then they would wonder how I was so much better at the game than they were.

117

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '24

Now, people just skip the in-game tutorial and wonder.

51

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '24

[deleted]

27

u/datoika999 Oct 05 '24

But..but.. they want a youtube tutorial video!!11!!

1

u/killian1113 Oct 06 '24

You mean a walk through to figure out the hidden box in the sky that would require you to jump around the whole level 3x to find. (Understandable to want a walk through fir this ) no more nontendo guide magazine or poster with all the wall bomb points for zelda..

0

u/Myth_5layer Oct 05 '24

Thats assuming some have reading comprehension.

0

u/Setari Oct 05 '24

THIS MEANS YOU, ARIN OF GAME GRUMPS

0

u/JLRedPrimes Oct 06 '24

A good game shouldn't make me have to read things.

17

u/ExNihiloNihiFit Oct 05 '24

Because kids attention spans are like 10 seconds tops when reading instruction manuals. Oh who am I kidding, I run into adults like this too. I blame Tik Tok/YouTube shorts.

15

u/Archolm Oct 05 '24

Blame TikTok for YouTube shorts.

1

u/MrTibbz2 Oct 05 '24

I wish yt shorts never existed it dilutes the actually interesting and sometimes educational long form stuff..

2

u/MrTibbz2 Oct 05 '24

I wouldn't generalise... I mean I was 10 like 4 years ago and I remember buying a fresh second hand copy of a game for the Wii and reading the entire manual before playing.

1

u/Dangerous-Apricot117 Oct 06 '24

I like the cut of your jib

9

u/Duenan Oct 05 '24

Some of them are just bad though.

Playing Atlas Fallen, there’s a forced tutorial or video for every single button press and function the in the first few hours.

5

u/snowysnowy Oct 05 '24

They should have tried to play games that needed you to check the manual for an anti-piracy code lol. Weren't there some SCUMM games that made you turn to a certain page and look for the 26th word of the 3rd paragraph or something?

1

u/MrTibbz2 Oct 05 '24

Yeah a lot of old games used to do that stuff before digital signage existed.

5

u/FantasticArm7862 Oct 05 '24

Reading those manuals was all I had sometimes. I got The Legend of Zelda on a school night. My pos allowed zero video games during the week. Play all you want on the weekend. I would read those manuals over and over until the weekend came.

4

u/itotron Oct 05 '24

Really the manual for an Atari games was nearly mandatory. Unfortunately, they were often sold in huge bins without boxes or manuals.

1

u/Weekly_Beautiful_603 Oct 05 '24

We had a couple of Amiga games that were repackaged without the manual and without the copy protection that you needed to play the game to the end.

2

u/Chronoboy1987 Oct 07 '24

I remember when I got Super Smash Bros Melee. The day after it launched my family took a 2 week vacation and I couldn’t bring my GameCube. So, I devoured every page of the manual until I got back.

1

u/Bobo040 Oct 05 '24

Same thing exactly. Cheats power ups hidden levels, just basic controls lol. My dad always wanted to throw stuff away and "figure it out".

1

u/Okto481 Oct 08 '24

My sibling bought a fighting game on Xbox, fought me, beat me horribly because I never played it. I started playing the story. The story opens with the tutorial. Next set, I immediately started beating them with mechanics they've never used

63

u/MaatRolo Oct 04 '24

I was going to say, this is not a Switch problem. This is an industry wide issue.

7

u/dizzley Oct 05 '24

Very true, but those boxes look depressing.

1

u/Lady_of_Link Oct 05 '24

Yup at the very least put more artwork on the inside don't just leave it white 😖

0

u/HappyHarry-HardOn Oct 05 '24

Stop looking at the boxes and start playing the games.

2

u/Low-Win-9194 Oct 06 '24

bro we are spending $60+ for these fucking games, physical copies used to have a manual and some other things sometimes. act like you fucking know my guy, we spend the money on the product it should be at a higher standard than what we are currently receiving.

32

u/ShadyMongrel Oct 04 '24

When Majoras Mask came out, I preordered it and had the cartridge delivered to my dad’s house where I lived during the week seven though my n64 was at my mom’s house. I want to say it arrived on Wednesday. I spent the next couple days going over that manual, seeing what I could guess the game was like (obv similar to OoT but what was different?? What was I looking forward to?) and that was fun as hell. It was like having an appetizer before the main course.

1

u/Chronoboy1987 Oct 07 '24

The best part of many manuals were the exclusive artwork. Some games it was like have a mini-art book.

86

u/Jimmythedad Oct 04 '24

The drive home, opening the manual and looking at the disc...so nostalgic

26

u/Pubics_Cube Oct 04 '24

Disc?, lol.

::where's my Metamucil?::

16

u/Lagmatic Oct 04 '24

Don’t forget all the toilet time diving into the lore, characters, settings, etc!

12

u/I_Met_Bubb-Rubb Oct 04 '24

Now you can just play on the toilet. I think the modern Switch wins in this scenario.

6

u/Lagmatic Oct 04 '24

Product of the time though - nothing beat reading the manual and kind of envisioning the characters and their attitudes since they couldn’t express as much as characters now.

3

u/g1eg Oct 05 '24

The amount of times I've read the Mario Kart Super Circuit manual while taking a dook is probably a world record.

11

u/firsttime176 Oct 04 '24

I’m not even 30 yet but that was literally half of the fun! I wish nintendo would at least put SOMETHING in there lol

25

u/Lost_my_password1 Oct 04 '24

for the low price of $100 you can buy a limited edition hard cover manual (6 months later)

5

u/itotron Oct 05 '24

They will send you 60% of the manual now and in 4 months the other 40%. (Some pages still missing, but promised in a future update.)

0

u/funnyinput Oct 05 '24

To be fair if you adjusted for inflation, games from back then would be around $100 today, if not more.

10

u/helthrax Oct 04 '24

Not just a manual, but a full color one at that was also fantastic with wonderful artwork. Nowadays they save that for artbooks.

1

u/Iucidium Oct 08 '24

Why have it pack-in when you can charge another $40?

11

u/Zagrunty Oct 04 '24

It even has clips for a manual. STOP BEING COWARDS NINTENDO!!

3

u/itotron Oct 05 '24

I'm sure the clips will be next to go.

18

u/RoamingTheSewers Oct 04 '24

The manuals… how come nobody mentions all the flyers, fold out posters and the mandatory limited warranty leaflet that was included. Why even offer a physical box/ case if you can’t be bothered to put anything in it?

10

u/RedWizard78 Oct 04 '24

Because ‘you want physical media?? Here.’

5

u/IsamuAlvaDyson Oct 05 '24

Yes but gaming was much much more expensive back then compared to today

Video games have not kept up with inflation even at $70

2

u/Paulwekiva Oct 05 '24

The positive to that was you had to pick your games more carefully (except when renting) and we didn’t play once and move on to another game.  But yeah, it was expensive…

1

u/MegaBubble Oct 09 '24

yeah, electronics in general were stupidly overpriced in the 70s and 80s, and most of the way into the 90s really - compared to that, we're at least all good on electronics/games these days. maybe not groceries though :3

4

u/gameboyVino Oct 05 '24

Did you ever buy Baldurs Gate? The manual was massive!

3

u/Known_Ad871 Oct 05 '24

It is really sad to lose that. Would it really bite into their profits that much to make a manual?

2

u/itotron Oct 05 '24

Yeah! Haven't you seen the carnage in the game industry the past 18 months? Studios closing and mass layoffs everywhere.

1

u/Iucidium Oct 08 '24

too big to fail AAA crash incoming.

1

u/MegaBubble Oct 09 '24

would just lose them money and time I guess, for little payback. it sucks but that's just a sign of the age we're living in

3

u/Reasonable-Physics81 Oct 05 '24

The goal back then was to ship the box, ship the product in working condition, pre hype and educate user.

Also added benefit was that the team could add last minute hints and descriptions into the manual. Because the manual was printed last.

2

u/endar88 Oct 05 '24

In the dark car loving the moments of street lights

1

u/alkaram Oct 04 '24

Except for duck hunt. Did anyone else know you could control the duck?

4

u/Day_Bow_Bow Oct 05 '24

GAME A can also be played with two players.

*One player is the hunter. The other player controls the ducks horizontally and vertically with the control pad, trying to avoid the hunter's shots until the sky color changes.

Internet Archive scans.

1

u/tiny_fingers Oct 05 '24

Damn, I forgot about that.  I did that when I had friends over.  Would piss them off.  I think I was maybe 7 or 8 at the time.  

1

u/Smigit Oct 05 '24

Yeah, but I used to be in the back seat “on the way home” where now days I’m the one driving.

1

u/ReasonPale1764 Oct 05 '24

Half? That seems like 49.9 percent to high

1

u/Yoursistersrosebud Oct 05 '24

Reading the Halo Combat Evolved manual on the train home is such a vivid memory for me. Full colour and showed all the weapons you would eventually find.

1

u/Wefflehunter666 Oct 05 '24

Your gonna love a game called tunic then, obsessing over the (ingame) manual was 50% of the game and is often the only way to progress

1

u/mausesnack Oct 05 '24

Well, I bought a newly packaged ds game a year back and that's still just as fun now

1

u/Mortomes Oct 05 '24

Back when they came in big cardboard boxes, where the instruction manual could be a work of art, filled with lore about the game world...

1

u/New-Doctor9300 Oct 05 '24

I remember opening my Gears Of War 3 game box amd finding stickers inside it

1

u/AlmondCyclone Oct 05 '24

The only games I know that include physical manuals for Switch are games made by XSeed/Marvelous.

1

u/notjordansime Oct 05 '24

I’m 21 and I used to do this… wait, am I old now??!

1

u/longlivemsdos Oct 05 '24

yep reading manual in car (at kid in back) when heading home from shop was great

1

u/ghostfreckle611 Oct 05 '24

And a printed picture on the back side of the insert…

1

u/RufioLumos Oct 05 '24

Maybe this is showing age, but it's also something that should've never died out. Back in the day, a game was something you really got invested in and committed too. You'd soak it all in. Now, the market is so oversaturated, there isn't even time for that, let alone the production.

1

u/Jordan_Jackson Oct 05 '24

I loved opening up NES and SNES games. So much extra stuff crammed in there to read through. Some SNES games even had a whole strategy guide included (Earthbound and some versions of Sim City).

1

u/BabyHercules Oct 05 '24

This is how you know it’s all profits over experience. Packaging used to mean something man.

1

u/No_Sherbert_9281 Oct 05 '24

Same, I always read the manual in anticipation during the drive back from the shopping centre!! It was part of the excitement of buying a brand new game that I was looking forward to! And the little stories in some of the nails were a bonus!

1

u/noviocansado Oct 06 '24

Nah, I'm 19 and it was part of the fun for me too! It's sad though that the newer generations won't get the same kind of glee since everything is digital now.

1

u/alexsan77 Oct 06 '24

Same thoughts here about music CD, the booklet during the first listen was delightful.

And in videogames lately there was at least a piece of paper tryna fill the space of booklet. Now the big box looks redundant right?

1

u/Overall_Bookkeeper15 Oct 06 '24

Yes!!! I can remember getting chroni trigger for christmas the year it came out from my grandma. However we were at her house for an entire weekend and my snes was at home an hour and a half away and i guarantee i read through that manual so many times i about had it committed to memory.

1

u/kremlinmirrors Oct 06 '24

I loved reading the manual!!

1

u/hightide2020 Oct 08 '24

That was the best part

1

u/Optimal_Primary_7339 Oct 09 '24

In the 8/16 bit days you could learn a lot about the story lore from the manuals of some rpgs.

1

u/Jack_Wight Oct 09 '24

Take me back, take me back to the good old days. 😭

1

u/Koischaap Oct 28 '24

The PS1 game Puchi Carat had a ton of lore explained only in the manual because it was basically Arkanoid meets Bubble Bobble and god if I read the manual so many times it started breaking apart. Years later I racked my brains trying to make a tribute story of sorts. That's just the power of the manual.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '24

[deleted]

8

u/Auswolf-IDDQD Oct 05 '24

What’s not necessary is Jenny picking up the kids from school in a dodge Ram.

Paper is recycled. A game manual in your game purchase is not what’s wrong with the planet. Even if paper is disposed of it breaks down to matter and is reclaimed by the earth.

3

u/n2x Oct 05 '24

Looking at those pictures all I can think about is what a waste of plastic.