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Retro Gamer to the Rescue After Mana Collection Released With No Manuals

Square Enix's Seiken Densetsu (Mana) role-playing game series has entertained gamers for over 25 years. North America, too, has fans of the action role-playing game series. While we haven't gotten the opportunity to play every entry, Secret of Mana and it sequels have sent players to battle Rabites and collect Elemental Spirits year after year. Veteran players are accustomed to the series' Ring Command menu and later installments Land Creation system.

Newcomers found themselves out of luck with the Seiken Densetsu Collection release for the Nintendo Switch on June 1. The game collection brings together the first three Mana titles on either a physical or digital release. Regardless of which version players picked up, what the collection didn't include was any kind of instruction manual.

Some Twitter users expressed their "despair" that no paper or electronic manual was included. Twitter user @tabarzin noted that the extremely limited menu screen explanation only provides rudimentary pointers such as indicating the "leader change" button. Twitter user @ice_kai posted a picture of the explanation screen and said, "I want Seiken Densetsu to add instructions with an update. You can't understand with just this."

Twitter user @bravoX2 said that the lack of manual made the release seem sketchy, as if it was plain software sold without the materials it came with. They also commented, "...I don't really want to say it, but isn't this just cutting corners?"

Players took to Twitter to vent their troubles only to find that one retro game fan had their backs. They still had the instructions from the original release over 20 years ago.

Taking matters into their own hands, @bravoX2 decided to post pictures of what appears to be the entire paper instruction manual from Square's original 1991 game. Here are the first few pages from the series of tweets:

The generous Twitter user noted that they will delete the tweets if instructions are officially released. They also posted a link to Nintendo's official webpage for the Virtual Console release of the Seiken Densetsu 2, which includes some explanations.

[Via Hachima Kikō]