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Quite nice!

Steps Back, Leaps Forward

October and November brought some regression. Wii Party U's digital manual was decent. Super Mario 3D World's was only impressive compared to the previous November's Mario game manual...

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And then we got to December...

December produced two slick, smartly-designed digital instruction manuals from Nintendo. They are, possibly, Nintendo's best digital instruction manuals.

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We got the really good Dr. Luigi one, which wrapped many of its paragraphs in the same sort of medical beaker shape that is used in the game:

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Also in December we got the best digital manual that I think Nintendo has ever made, the one for its surprise download-only release NES Remix. Just look at this one...it puts all the preceding ones to shame!

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That one's marvelous. It looks like a love letter to the old-school Nintendo Entertainment System (and Famicom) aesthetic. Given that that's what the NES Remix game is supposed to feel like, too, it's pitch-perfect.

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A few things to note about Nintendo's Wii U digital manuals:

1) The manuals are viewable on a TV screen or on the screen in the console's GamePad controller. One of the problems with digital manuals for other consoles is that you can only read them on the TV, and reading text on a TV is not that pleasant an experience. A digital manual is more useful and easier to look at when it is physically closer to you. That's an advantage to the Wii U for putting a screen in your hands on which you can view these things.

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2) The Wii U manuals imitate a lot of the aspects of printed manuals. They're presented as a series of pages that you turn (swipe) through one at a time. But they don't strictly utilize a print philosophy. They've adopted some aspects of webpages. They include tappable links that let you navigate from one part of the page to another. Here's an example I captured in which, on the GamePad, I'm tapping the various numbered nodes:

3) The Wii U manuals are also coded to remember where you were on a page after you turn to another page and then turn back. That's a nice touch. Unfortunately, the system forgets where you were, though, if you go a little further away. An example:


Paperless Greatness

I understand that, for some people, a digital video game instruction manual will never be a sufficient replacement for a printed one. I also get that manuals serve less and less of a useful function in an age when games can easily include tutorials within their own levels.

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Perhaps, then, the digital manual is a decent compromise. It's not something that games need. It's not something that gamers need. But it's nice to have without being wasteful and without alienating gamers who downloaded a game instead of buying a copy that came in a box.

As Nintendo's shown, a digital instruction manual can be a thing of beauty. Let's at least get more instruction manuals like these.

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To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo.