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Comment by zeta0134 | Hacker News Reader

Possibly the most famous video game tutorial of all time has got to be World 1-1 from the original Super Mario Bros.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH2wGpEZVgE&t=5s

And really, most of the later Mario games execute this fairly well, with some (sunny) exceptions here and there. Nintendo is unusually skilled at introducing a new mechanic in a way that feels like organic play, and slowly ramping up the complexity in a way that will leave most players feeling like natural masters by the end of the level, without realizing that the level was leading them by the nose the entire time.

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This guy[1] put his non game playing wife in front of a bunch of games, one of them being SMB. He noted that she never learned how to sprint, and that the game doesn't tell you how to do it either. If you can't figure it out on your own, you have to be told about it, or read the manual.

NES games (and other games of that era) were in general pretty bad at tutorials. Players back then were expected to figure things out for themselves, mostly by trial and error.

The video has a bunch of other interesting observations. A common theme is that games often assume that the player has some base understanding of game play that might not always be there.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw

It can be fun to figure this stuff out for yourself. Constantly catering to the first time player can bore or even alienate the experienced player. It’s a delicate balance.

Even for a new player. Learning the ins and outs without being spoon fed can be part of the journey. Of course that doesn’t excuse horrible and unintuitive UIs.

That's what the "skip tutorial" option is for. Many games also ask you to self-gauge your experience level at the start, and typically suggest a different tutorial variant or skip "noob" cues in the tutorial.

Another great example is "A Dark Room" - a game in which the mechanics are introduced one by one in such a smooth way that no tutorial is ever needed.

edit to add a link: http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com it's a very simple free game that (last I checked) can be completed in an hour or two.

I agree 1-1 is great but I don't find it exceptional. Most of level-based games (at least during that time) are like that. You learn mechanics by playing easier levels, no direct verbal tutorials or whatsoever.

And it's not really perfect, for example I literally never knew Mario has acceleration in my childhood (granted, I didn't play on NES but in emulator on computers).

I don't think that video made a decent case. It's a hell of a lot of speculation that sounds credible thanks to good editing and the gift of hindsight.

The truth is that when you bought Super Mario Bros, you read the manual from cover to cover before you started the game, and you looked at the box art and the stuff on the back of the box. It'd tell you everything; the enemies, some description or backstory for them... the manual was an important part of the package.

And that was how pretty much every game worked for a good 30 years since.

1-1 is also overused and overpraised. Watching a bunch of kids playing it is pretty instructive. They do get it eventually but it’s by no means the simple linear set of steps and outcomes it’s often presented as. People get stuck in the most amusing ways that would be overcome more readily with more direct tutorialisation.

That channel also has a video on Portal, which they describe as being "over 50% tutorial, but so much fun that nobody seemed to notice."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_AsF3Rfw8w

Portal has this cool directors commentary mode where they point all this out in detail as you play the levels.

As well as interesting discussions that got me reading up on Binary Space Partitioning [1] and other collision detection trickery. I just wish more UI developers cared that much about interaction latency.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_space_partitioning

Super Metroid is another game that did the 'invisible' tutorial thing well.

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/HugoBille/20120114/90903/The...

That's actually one thing Nintendo devs in general seem to be really good at. I don't think i've ever really played a first party Nintendo game that had an outright tutorial but they're always pretty easy to pick up and figure out.

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