Hopefully a Golf game!

We're getting Four Swords, so I don't expect NOA to give us anything else good.

Confession: As a kid, I never played this game on the normal difficulty. Always on easy. Why? Beats me!

@Guillaume

SML2 had an easy difficulty?

Yup. Press Select when choosing the save file, and Mario becomes small.

I had no idea...I didn't think it was that hard, but then again, I was a lot better at games back then.

I'm sure it's not that hard, but I can't be 100% certain because I never tried it!

Well, it looks like you'll have your chance soon!

This was the reason I bought a Gameboy and it was the first game on the system I played and beat. I did not know about the easy mode though.

Was I the only one who read the manuals?

Over and over and over again?

They had kick-ass artwork!

I used to be a manual fetishist.


I collected human hands.

@Guillaume

I used to read them for the little story blurb at the start.

@Guillaume

I read the manuals, too. You're not alone! So yeah, I knew about the Easy Mode too. And played through it on both difficulties.

This news probably shocks no one.

I rarely read manuals anymore. I'm not really sure why.

I bought the cartridge of SML2 a couple years ago, and...I wasn't that impressed. Yeah, it's better than SML but still nowhere near console Mario-tier.

@GameDadGrant
Because most everything you need to know is in the game nowadays.

@anon_mastermind

1.) Eh, I think the gameplay can stand toe-to-toe with the console games. The enemies, variety of bosses, locales, mini-games and secrets are top-notch and some of those features were never even touched upon in the console entries. The game is shorter than most the console titles, sure, but handheld games were shorter back then (as a standard).

The fact that you didn't play it until (somewhat) recently probably had an effect on your impressions, I would guess. Back in - what was it, 1992? '93? - the game was amazing!

2.) Yeah, most everything you need to know is actually "IN" the game now. True. But when I think about it, it wasn't the explanation of the controls or even the story that I read in the manuals. There was... like, other stuff. As Gui mentioned, there was art work. There were descriptions of enemies and funny comments from characters and even notes and messages from the developers themselves. And in Donky Kong Country's manual, Cranky would sometimes appear on certain pages and heckle DK and Diddy (and even the game itself). It was strangely charming to me as a kid. *shrugs*

Oh great, now I feel like going through my games and reading all the manuals, lol!

@GameDadGrant
I totally agree manuals used to be so awesome. Sometimes they even contained critical information (StarTropics), or were required to help solve a puzzle (Layton Diabolical Box). Nintendo is probably one of the only companies who produces quality manuals these days, and in full colour to boot!

Actually there are a few downloadable games that remain obscure...like Kyotokei! I checked out the online manual for that game and it helped me out.

As for SML2, it is quirky enough that I'll give it another go. I wish I had played it back in the day. Nostalgia is the best.

I love older game manuals. Nintendo still does good ones (full color) but they've dropped in quality ever since they did the 3-language thing. Doesn't that use more paper in the long run anyway, when 100% of your audience won't use 2/3rds of the manual? Not to mention the manuals themselves get a lot shorter in that way.

I mean, look how great this is! It shows the worlds, introduces the Koopalings, and (my favorite part of any manual) goes through the cast/bestiary! The art is excellent and it's just a fun read all-around.

Pardon the link being a pirate-y site, it was the best one I could find with the SMB3 manual.

ARRRRGH, it be okay, matey.

Game manuals definitely aren't nearly as good as they used to be. Look at most of EA's manuals...black and white, straight to the point, and short. Nintendo still does them well, but most other companies don't.