And I’m not saying this to belittle the actual game; Smooth Moves is probably my favorite Wii title at the moment (even beating out the unsinkable Wii Sports). It’s innovative, it’s unpredictable, and there are probably a million other things I could (and probably will) say about it that have most likely been said before.
But its instruction manual is just incredible:
In a move of Infocom-esque proportion, the instruction manual for Wario Ware defies all the modern standards and norms of its printed peers. It’s laid out in part like a trashy tabloid, complete with a letter from the editor, and dramatic headline titles for each section. The entire thing is printed in full color as well, and the writing features some of the same dry humor which makes the game so fun to play.
Which I guess brings me to my point. Instruction manuals have become a sort of necessary evil in retail packaging. They’re a place to print the warnings and warranty information, and write the repetitive copy for controller usage and drilling through a game’s menus as well. But one of the first things I look at when I open a new game is the instruction manual. It’s a habit left over from my childhood, when I would open a game like Super Metroid on the way home from Toys R Us, and read through the manual ten times before I even got to put in the cartridge. Since then, I’ve grown to understand the instruction manual to be a subtle reflection of a game’s quality. If it’s thick, and full-color, then I know I’m in good hands. But if the manual’s only a few pages long, and printed in greyscale, I’m worried about my purchase before I even turn the console on.
When a developer understands that, and takes the time to make the manual match their game in terms of presentation, it shows confidence in the product, and a type of attention to detail that I hope to be a part of someday. It’s a cue the industry could take from Apple: the player experience begins before they even open the box.