HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Was thinking the same thing. The Nintendo designers were always so meticulous about the design of the levels, especially what’s visible to a player at any given point.

To get a sense for this, watch this video [1] (from 7 years ago) walking through the design of level 1-1 of SMB. It’s crazy what (likely) went into planning the design of each level of the various Mario platformer games.

But like OP, this is strictly looking at it from a gameplay perspective, ignoring the impressive technical feet that this is.

[1] https://youtu.be/ZH2wGpEZVgE

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.

⬐ ineptech

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.

⬐ thrdbndndn

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).

⬐ ljm

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.

⬐ meheleventyone

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.

⬐ notriddle

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

⬐ madeofpalk

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

⬐ notriddle

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

⬐ grawprog

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.

⬐ vinkelhake

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

⬐ rapind

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.

⬐ keerthiko

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.

Proper teaching looks less like what most teachers do, and more like what (good) game designers do.

• Hide the tutorial for the problem, in the "shape" of the problem, so the student won't even realize they're being taught something. (See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH2wGpEZVgE)

• Make the student/player feel a need for a new tool, before the tool is introduced. Have them try (and perhaps fail) to solve the problem without the tool first. (See the "keys and doors" discussion in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouO1R6vFDBo&list=PLc38fcMFcV...)

• For each new concept, present its lesson as a series of spaced-chunk challenges, where each chunk ramps the difficulty up to a climax and then down again to a gentle denouement. Give the learner's mind a chance to feel a sense of mastery over already-understood concepts, not just the continual stress of new challenges. (See https://boingboing.net/2015/09/14/super-mario-maker-levels.h... or http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2011/12/a-pleasant-journey-through...)

• Gate problems behind proof of mastery of previous micro-skills, not just in the form of obvious tests, but also in the form of multi-step problems for new knowledge which can't even be approached without also having another prerequisite skill. Ensure that it becomes impossible to "leave behind" a foundational skill—i.e. ensure that the learner will get stuck without the new tool, and so realize they need to backtrack to pick up that tool, rather than flailing uselessly at the next problem.

• Meter and visualize progress. Map acquisition of micro-skills directly to some sort of measurement the student can look at (a level number; a tech tree; a skill grid), to feel that they're making progress. Ensure the system is designed such that this number goes up not just when they make progress on new skills, but also when they go back to shore up their knowledge of old skills.

Etc.

> You can definitely feel the 'steering' if you're looking out for it

The implicit steering is one of the things that Nintendo is famous for though. At least among game designers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH2wGpEZVgE

What the video doesn't point out is that if you don't run to the right, the timing of the jump to avoid the Goomba makes you hit that first question mark block by accident.

It's certainly a nice enough script for what it does, and I can see it being useful in some instances, but... a lot of this 'feature tour/tutorial' stuff strikes me as more of an excuse to not worry about ease of use. A good site design should be intuitive in of itself, not something that requires a guided tour to figure out.

It's a bit like the modern gaming world to be honest. In the old days, games like Super Mario Bros was designed to teach you through level design, so you'd figure out how things worked without getting a huge info box thrown in your face.

Like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH2wGpEZVgE

On the other hand, games since got obsessed with tutorials detailing every minute thing about the title, leading to such over the top insanity as this 'help DVD' included with Super Mario Galaxy 2:

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

These tutorials on sites and in mobile apps remind me all too much of the latter. It's like 'we won't use our product to teach people in a natural way, so we'll put in a guide for complete dummies instead'.