Procrastination Tutorial
While in the midst of finding ways to procrastinate writing my latest review, it’s about Super Paper Mario, I hit on the notion that the lack of tutorial in this game required lots of extra studying.
Now considering what a stink I made about other games not having tutorials, my serious lack of concern for this no tutorial scenario provided me with tons of fodder – aka lots of excuses to keep from writing.
Why hadn’t I made a huge fuss about this? The obvious answer of course was that, while playing, I never felt that anything needed explaining. I had an innate sense of what I was supposed to accomplish and how to succeed at those tasks.
And yet when I examined the game, so as to understand how it could possibly be intuitive, it became obvious that it wasn’t the game. Lets face it, playing a little Italian guy that jumps on some mushrooms and eats others, slides down some pipes and hits brick blocks with his head, not so intuitive.
So it had to be me.
The first Mario game I played, Super Mario Bros, came out before I was cognizant enough to question the absurdity of the game. That’s right; children provide unconditional love even to their computer games. This absolute acceptance has spilled over onto every Mario title that I have played since.
Strangely enough, this only just occurred to me. Maybe my next Mario game will be judged with adult eyes instead of a child’s blind acceptance. Or not; my Nintendo devotion is pretty solid.
See procrastination leads to epiphany, thus it must be good! Viva la Procrastination!
Never the less, it seems that I had no need for a tutorial because I basically had twenty years of training, since Super Mario Bros. came out a little over twenty years ago.
Of course it was intuitive for me, after twenty years of preparation I should be able to play this in my sleep.
So while I will not argue that this Mario game needs a tutorial, I am still a firm supporter of having tutorials. It’s a great fail safe. You never know who might play the game and tutorials make it much easier for noobies to become immersed in the experience. Besides any good tutorial will be optional.
Lets just note here, that if I complain of a game not having a tutorial that probably means I haven’t been able to overcome the awesome learning curve that the game requires – aka I’m a noob.
<3
Token Female Gamer
May 15th, 2008 at 7:52 am
I feel that Mario has seeped into the general culture enough that there’s no need to explain that deal. At the very worst you can shrug your shoulders and say “It has something to do with drugs.” and be done with it.
On the other hand, we’re currently playing our way through Mario Galaxy and there is part of me that is wishing this game was around 20 years ago to explain how Spelljammer worked to people.
May 15th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Spelljammer is a surprisingly similar to Mario Galaxy.
Hadn’t remembered it from so long ago, had to look it up. =P
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelljammer
Love the wiki!
May 18th, 2008 at 4:57 am
kinda disagree. if a game needs a tutorial, it’s badly designed. if one can’t introduce gameplay through from the beginning, then should redo the design. i think that’s one of the paradigms of nintendo. besides, i’m way lazy and would never bother with tutorials, anyway!
May 18th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Fair enough, though I find that most Nintendo games hide the tutorial in the first few levels or chapters. The progression is such that the player is allowed to get used to each new complexity with ease.
But then you get games like StarCraft or Civilization, even something like The Sims – I won’t even bother to bring up a flight simulator. They require more explanation to understand the intricacy of the controls and of the game.
Saying that a game that has a tutorial is badly designed is a somewhat blanket statement that fails that take into account the vastly different styles and requirements that games have.