The first screen is sort of a tutorial, though. If you go right first because you’ve played Super Mario Bros. or some other platformer and you think going right might be the way to win, you’re presented with a narrow passage you can’t crawl through. At this point, you’ll discover that you can also go left. There’s another rock formation with a narrow passage, but from this side you can jump on top of it to get over it, and you’ll find the Morph Ball. From the Morph Ball side, you can’t jump back over, so you have to figure out how to get through the narrow passage by pressing down to enter Morph Ball mode. Now you understand the game: find obstacles, acquire the corresponding upgrades, use them to bypass the obstacles.
The first screen is sort of a tutorial, though. If you go right first because you’ve played Super Mario Bros. or some other platformer and you think going right might be the way to win, you’re presented with a narrow passage you can’t crawl through. At this point, you’ll discover that you can also go left. There’s another rock formation with a narrow passage, but from this side you can jump on top of it to get over it, and you’ll find the Morph Ball. From the Morph Ball side, you can’t jump back over, so you have to figure out how to get through the narrow passage by pressing down to enter Morph Ball mode. Now you understand the game: find obstacles, acquire the corresponding upgrades, use them to bypass the obstacles.
Not to mention that at that time, games shipped with an instruction booklet that told you the controls…
some of them used to be really cool and detailed and they should still be a thing TBH if you’re buying a physical game. my boomer opinion
I really liked the illustrations in the game guides, too. Yet another thing that Fandom stole from us 😩 /s
I liked the FFVII manual that gave you bios of all the characters, along with telling you that Cid is “old”.
He’s 32.
he’s old to 13 year olds. And young enough to 40 year olds to want to sacrifice himself in the name of space flight.
And also young enough to piss off his wife.
Yeah, the best games back then had tutorials built in. Super Mario Bros. level 1-1 is probably one of the best tutorials ever made.
The first areas of the Halo 1, 2, and 3 were all designed to have all the movement training in it and have sections for the new weapons.
The level 1-1 glazing is crazy. It’s iconic for being the most played level but it’s not an incredible engineering feat.
I just said it was a good tutorial…
Not your particular comment, the common view on level 1-1 is it’s the perfect tutorial. I’m not targetting you specifically