[General Discussion] Read First, no sir, Play First, no sir, Read First, no sir, Play First

Back in the days of the NES I was real big on manuals. Of course they knew how to make them back then. Compare the manuals for Super Mario Bros. 3, Zelda II, Metroid, etc. with the pretty much anything you buy today. We used to get full lists of enemies and items and shit along with elaborate stories (usually either poorly translated or made up by the translators so they could fill their page quotas), wonderful art that looks absolutely nothing like the sprites you find in the game, all kinds of stuff to make it more interesting. Nowadays we get a short list of moves and a brief overview of the story along with 20 pages of safety warnings.

Of all the recent manuals I've seen I remember the Super Mario 64 DS manual being pretty entertaining, probably since they had buckets of cash leftover to spend on it after doing such a lazy port job. The best manual I ever read was that of Arc the Lad Collection. Yeah, it was full color and hardbound so it isn't a fair comparison, but dammit if I'm paying for a book along with my flat circular piece of plastic with a hole in the middle it better be a good read.

Needless to say I rarely bother reading manuals these days, but if I'm watching someone else play I might glance through it. The only time in recent memory I recall looking at the manual before I finished the game was to find out how to interrogate in Metal Gear Solid 3.

After reading my post I have concluded that there is no hope for me.

Jam it back in, in the dark.