Of course we have certainly been promised games before that never materialized, but I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for this one. I've played a little bit of the Japanese version and was absolutely enthralled until I couldn't get any further due to my ignorance of the language. As soon as I can finish all this writing today you can bet I'll be diving into the US version and the prospect of a sequel leaves me dancing a mad jig.

Professor Layton Sequel Confirmed For U.S. [Game|Life]

1. Boring
2. Not super clear
3. Nor concise
4. Dull
5. Synonym of dull

But this No More Heroes manual is modeled after a comic book and looks to lack Wiimote sketches altogether. Why not take a risk on the manual? It's not like you are going to disappoint anyone if the idea's a miss. Of course, if it is fantastic, chances are that no one will notice then, either.

Marvelous! No More Heroes has a comic book manual [siliconera]

The bottom line is that we're all going to look a bit douchey while playing Rock Band. But some of us can pretend that our alter egos (which only come out at night, btw) are hard rocking maniacs. You see, we only have those Rock Band drums sitting around because they can hold a boatload of coke (which we're out of because we snort it the instant we get it, btw), and they are the next best thing to our motorcycles (currently in the shop, btw) for fornication. Hit the link for three different, fully authorized ways to properly hold sticks.

UPDATE: We're sorry, apparently we linked an idiotic site. Out apologies. Here's another link, per someone who knows what they're talking about. And so you know, our band director is most ashamed.

Wondering exactly how to drive your monster truck off a tropical cliff and do a flame-belching 1080 through a counter-gravitationally hovering ring? At the recent Europe Nintendo Event, they flashed this image on screen, detailing how to drive an Excite Truck.

Looks about exactly how we imagined it. We're not quite sure if "Turbo (Any Direction)" means that you can, in fact, invoke turbo to strafe Also, before you start writing posts entitled "EXCITE TRUCK RACIST" on your blogs, please be aware that the 'Blakguy' at the bottom right corner is another site's watermark and not, in fact, a horrific racial slur. Florian Eckhardt

Excite Truck Controls [GoNintendo]

I only read them when I'm writing a game review, and that's to make sure I didn't completely miss something. My habit of never reading instructions comes directly from my college day habits of obtaining almost all of my computer games from pirate sites. Half the time you couldn't get the full program let alone instructions, so I just fell out of the habit. Besides if I could figure out how to play Civilization without instructions I sure as hell don't need them for Halo or Frogger 3D.

So why include instructions at all? With some obvious exceptions, I think the need for instructions simply points to design flaws. It's like having to explain a punch line. If you have to, you're doing something wrong.

Cross-town rival and all-around great guy David Thomas's latest blog post touches on this too, though he seems more against the idea of those useless "Notes" pages in the back of the instructions. Brian Crecente

Read the Manual

Remember kiddies, when playing the Whack-A-Mole game, these are things to keep in mind:

• Ever play Pull-Out-A-Mole?
• Sticking your face over the hole, may startle the mole, causing it to jump out.
• Mmm... Beer.
• Make sure you kill all moles and bystanders

The real instructions of course are far more innocuous (Please don't put your hand in the hole. Don't put your face over the hole. Don't play while drunk. Don't swing the hammer wildly. ) Brian Ashcraft

Whack-A-Mole [Wiki]