The GHZ Forum

Compared to Louisiana, roadkill is fairly rare here - I don't know if that's because the animals are fewer or just smarter - but when the rare critter does happen to meet its end on the road, it's almost inevitably a tanuki. I have yet to see a living tanuki. In fact, I've yet to see a tanuki that didn't have its guts splayed across the road.


So anyway, I picked up Mario 3D Land yesterday. I thought the box was unusually light when I bought it - it turns out there is no manual, just a thin "action guide" showing basic controls. In fact, there are no slips or paper ads of any kind in the box except for the Club Nintendo point card. That's unusual. Even more unusual, the plastic case is full of holes displaying the backside of the cover slip. Is this the normal packaging for 3DS games?

It's neither really a 2D Mario or a 3D Mario, but somewhere inbetween. I think this is the game I was expecting Mario 64 to be 15 years ago. Levels are short and straightforward, but unique and well-designed, which is probably also an accurate description of the game as a whole. I'm only up to world 3, but so far there hasn't been a whole lot that hasn't already been done. It lacks ambition - probably because it didn't have time for that luxury, I highly suspect this game was rushed through the door when it became apparent that nobody was buying 3DS's - but that doesn't stop it from being solid, simple, compelling fun.

It's certainly the first functional use of the 3D screen I've seen. There are simple perspective tricks sprinkled around that would be impossible to navigate without the 3D dial turned up (the game warns you when you're in such an area), but even on a normal playfield, it makes it easier to catch little byways and secret passages and makes for a more rewarding experience in general. You can also choose whether the 3D pops out of the screen or recedes in... this is a really nice touch and the effect is totally different.

Mario is supposed to shrink when he takes damage, right? I still haven't seen that yet I guess because I'm too good. So I don't know what difference that makes if any. After every few stages, 8-bit Peach pops onto the screen and condescendingly reminds you to take a break before you get tired. I wish she'd get back to her other goddamn castle.


Also, can anyone find the third Star Coin in World 2-2?

I tried a demo of this at the London Expo last weekend, and given that I've been working on a 3D film for the last few months it was interesting to see how they handled some aspects of the 3D (I haven't really played any other 3DS games). In the level I played they had some platforms protruding from the screen. This is something you technically shouldn't do with things that touch the edges (it doesn't make physical sense), but they used the clever trick of having the parts that did so be the same black as the body of the console, so it just sort of blended in.. There were also some enemies that spattered ink on the screen, and when that happened they moved the convergence plane (which is where the screen appears to be in the 3D space) back so that the ink looked like it was on the screen rather than in front of it. It seemed they were being quite careful and subtle with the 3D. I wasn't aware of the option to control the depth though, is that something that's only been in this particular game?

As for the game itself, I only got to play one brief level, but it matched up with GG's appraisal. It seemed decent but not enough to make me want to buy the thing yet.

3DS game cases apparently all have those holes in them to reduce the plastic cost/waste when morons throw away their cases. Some Japanese games put things on the back side of the cover slip, like Zelda has rupees visible through them, but my understanding is that they haven't done any of that in the west.

It's a bit of a shame if Nintendo starts dropping their manuals, but I would have expected that from the US side of things before Japan, or maybe in Europe too--if they're anything like their US manuals, printed in at least two languages, they must get enormous, and probably not appreciated by that many people. When I bought my 3DS I was shocked by the weight of the box, but it turned out that was just because it came with an enormous tome of an instruction book that I didn't even look at.

Yeah, there's pictures of power-ups and enemies and shit on the back of the cover slip and it's all perfectly aligned so that the faces are centered in the holes in the case. That's why I wasn't sure if it was some anal-retentive cost-cutting measure or some misguided attempt to create a unique aesthetic.

Anyway, I can't imagine it's very effective...

They've been punching holes in Blue-ray/DVD cases for a while now, and I was hoping the practice wouldn't infect this medium. Alas. From what I understand, it's the likes of Wal-Mart and other big box stores demanding lighter cases so they reduce fuel economy for shipping. Just make the cases more compact, idiots.

So wait, they make the cases and then spend effort punching holes in them? Or are they actually made with the holes which would probably involve a more complicated moulding process? Either way it doesn't sound cheaper to me...

Maybe it's just the policy of their case manufacturer? Nintendo certainly doesn't seem to want to appear "green" or anything.

One other thing I forgot to mention (about the game, not the case) - for the first time ever as far as I recall, you can carry two power-ups at once and toggle between them on the fly.

Tanuki Mario doesn't fly anymore, though.


Up to World 4 - still haven't shrunk even once. I don't think it's gonna happen unless I do it intentionally.

http://www.gamebusiness.jp/article.php?id=4692

According to this article, the manual was indeed removed to cut costs. It also mentions a couple of other games (including a Wii game) that recently shipped without manuals. Apparently this is how it's going to be done from now on.

I don't recall ever reading a manual in my life, and I still think this is really depressing news.

I always read the manuals. These are dark times.

So are we purposely ignoring the fact that the manual is included in the game card and can therefore be easily accessed at any time without having to lug around a freaking book along with your handheld just to make this decision seem incomprehensibly stupid? Just making sure I got it all straight in my mind.

ITS NOT THE SAME

I love my old Super Mario World / Kart / Paint manuals. They're full of official art and flavor information, sadly in German. On the other hand, Sonic 2, 3 and Spinball manuals come up with game info in like seven languages on each page and goodies like official badnik line art, also the obligatory "ways to hurt this cartridge" page is all sorts of hilarious, especially on Game Gear games.

The most recent ones I've got are that of Sonic Adventure International and Sonic Adventure 2. Like G.Silver implied, they're both kind of massive due to all the Spanish and Italian and German in there, yet criminally low-format and printed on cheap toilet paper-mache as opposed to those shiny MD and GG manuals, so they're really not as memorable ...and to add insult to injury, the obligatory badnik gallery section features 3D models as opposed to hand-drawn sketches.

In any case, today is a sad day - a big part of gaming experience is being put behind here.

Neo wrote:incomprehensibly stupid?

Did anyone actually suggest it was a bad idea? I think it's a really smart move, but it's just also really sad to lose another element of those early games, back when a manual was necessary for one reason or another, and tied into the physicality of the actual game. This is just one more nail in the coffin of games that aren't downloaded, games that give you something that you legally own besides a license to play it. It's sad, but it isn't stupid, and it certainly isn't incomprehensible, the reasons for doing it are obvious. Even if they didn't include "the manual" in the game, most modern games (and well-designed retro titles) don't even need one.

CM August wrote:I always read the manuals. These are dark times.

Yes it is, I always look and or read the manuals, the hole things is stupid, just make smaller cases, if there is no manual the cases could be almost haft in size, also holes make it easier to get the thing dirty.

Manuals were an essential part of purchasing an exciting new game in my youth - something to read on the bus home! - but only Nintendo's were truly exciting. The Mario, Metroid and Zelda manuals were lavishly illustrated in full colour. I dunno what US Sega manuals were like, but in Europe they looked like this:



My years of working in a pre-owned game and DVD shop - with their hundreds of hours of taking torn and scratched discs and manuals from their dented, stained cases and filing them away in numbered card envelopes stores in giant cabinets - disabused me of any romantic illusions I ever held about packaging. Before then games and DVDs were precious, luxury items to be cherished and coveted. Now they are merely vessels.

These days manuals shouldn't be necessary to play a game, so I don't mourn their demise... I respect Silv's nostalgia and everything, but I'm cool with physical media dying out entirely, really. The one exception for me is books. I don't think I could ever give up reading from bound printed pages. Everyone likes having nice art to look at, so I'd be happy with a future where we download our games and fill our bookcases with the art and goodies we used to prize our instruction manuals for.

An incidental observation about Japan: they over package everything. You have to rip through three or four layers of packaging to get at any given convenience store confection. I think Nintendo is setting a good example.

Popcorn wrote:I dunno what US Sega manuals were like

About the same as the European ones, I think. Pretty boring, almost always in black and white, and never as nice as Nintendo's.

Were they at least all in English, or with each language in its own section? There's something so uncivil about having to share a page with the French.

They were all English, had color covers most of the time (not on the interior though), were printed on nice paper, and they smelled really nice (at least if you're into that sort of thing). But eventually they did away with the clamshells in favor of cardboard boxes, and the manuals lost their nice paper and became entirely black and white. It was only fairly recently that they started printing in different languages over here (and Nintendo is the only company I know that does it consistently), but each language gets its own set of pages.

Traditionally everything has been in English only, but Canada's increasingly strict bilingualism laws have finally crept into video games in the past few years. For the longest time the game packaging was kept all-English as the US, with a French manual tacked on the back as an extra. Now, however, many game publishers have taken the dark path that film distributors took years ago of reprinting game covers in both languages. This wasn't a huge problem for me until recently, when I discovered that the Canadian release of the Ico/Shadow of the Colossus HD collection on PS3 had ditched the beautiful reversible cover art that it was given in pretty much every other country. I guess the expense of printing a few thousand double-sided bilingual covers for Canada was just too much for Sony, despite the fact that this reversible cover had been a qualified in much of the advertising for months.

Thankfully, I was able to import my copy from the US, and I do the same with most of the films I buy on DVD and BD. Although the lavishness of physical releases has decreased drastically in the last few years, and will continue to do so, I'm still damned well going to make sure that any thing I actually make the effort of buying isn't going to have French haphazardly sprawled all across the front cover.

So in conclusion: fuck the French.

Nintendo's self-published Wii manuals/back covers are typically in multiple languages in the U.S.. The Nintendo DS U.S. games are still mainly in English, at least up to a year or so ago. Don't own a 3DS, so I have no idea what they do for them.

The only Sonic game's U.S. manual I've ever seen that was in color was the one for Sonic Adventure 2 on Dreamcast.

BTW, from the sounds of Gibbon's Mario description, isn't Nintendo breaking its own rule of developing games that require the 3D effect to play? Or did I dream that up?

I saw a couple clips showing infinite bounce tricks with the koopa troopas ala the original staircase trick. The weird thing is Mario seems to get a 1up on the third or fourth bounce, requiring half (if not less) the number of bounces as usual. Does that mean you can float all over the place with the tanuki tail racking up 1ups all over the place or is that maybe just a koopa shell thing? In other games it isn't hard to get a lot of bounces, but the places where you can get enough enemies to actually get the 1up are rare.

Why can't we have a manual for those of us who want one and a brief instruction sheet for the illiterate? It's the best of both worlds!