This is awesome, I don't know why it was done before. Vita games are like that as well. Down with paper manuals!

Hope this is just Sega doing this, I'd much rather have the physical manual.

Same here. I find it the case looking bland without a manual.

I would prefer a physical manual.  I'm not dumb.  I know the reason to not include one is entirely for the publisher to save a buck.  But then I have noticed that manuals are pretty lousy these days.  I remember back when a PC game would come with a manual that was like textbook with all sorts of cool details.  But those days are long gone and it has been a while since I felt I got any real value out of a manual.  The sad thing is that manuals have degraded in quality to the point where switching them as is to a digital format isn't a big deal.  I'm not going to get back the "glory days" of manuals anyway.

Still it's something else from my childhood that is switching from a physical format to digital one and that is somewhat depressing.  With the switch to digital, there is less emotional attachment.  Everything becomes disposable because it is instantly replacable.  If you don't to treat your book or album or videogame cartridge well, you risk wrecking it and thus losing the product.  But there is no necessity to "care" for digital objects, thus less emotional attachment.  Maybe not having an emotional attachment to a possession is a good thing in the long run but it feels weird and I feel like a dinosaur in today's world.  It seems like I am the last of one generation while people only five years younger than me are the start of another.  It is strange to feel disconnected from people so close in age.

I miss having manuals. We haven't had real game manuals in console games for a while. What happened to the days when they came with tips from the developers of the game? Game manuals had cool artwork and information you wouldn't get anywhere else. I'm tired of opening my "game manual" to find it's just the basic directions for saving and simple controls in three languages. And for that matter, I'm tired of my game cases being in three languages instead of telling me more about the game.

You don't think it's any convenience for the consumer? I mean, if the manual is in the game, and if it can be accessed at any time in the game, then it saves you the trouble of having to get up and go flipping through the manual. This is especially useful to a portable system, where you may be out somewhere and don't have the manual with you

Secondly, this essentially allows unlimited space for the information in the manual. Manuals were probably getting less detailed because it cost less to print fewer pages, and with manuals today including multiple languages, that's still a lot of pages. But now, without cost restrictions for length, manuals can contain a lot more information in as many languages as they feel like translating without having to pack in big, bulky, expensive manuals. Now, if they don't actually start doing this then that's something to complain about... but hopefully they will improve them.

Let's be honest here: the otaku in Japan who buy this game don't need the manual.  They buy this series for pretty much one thing only, and to increase the player's enjoyment of that the developer would be better off just packing a couple tissues in with the game.

On a more serious note, I do miss the days when a game's manual actually meant something.  When there was actual work, color, and background information you might not find in the actual game.  Blizzard in particular used to be masters of making an awesome manual.

Excuse me, but what are you implying? This is a rhythm music game featuring female and male Vocaloid characters with no pervert features what so ever. Have you ever played one of these games?

No, but I've seen plenty of footage of them.  Stuff like this is popular, though, in anime for the same reason.  It's your little moe idol, and there's certainly an alarmingly-large fetish for that in Japan.  I really can't stand moe, and it's all over that game from what I've seen in screenshots.

Well, that isn't certainly why I and others play the Hatsune Miku games mostly. It is a pure interest in the world of Vocaloid and the impressive stuff people have done with it. Hatsune Miku and the other characters that are created all have their own voice modules, which present the different styles of music that can be made with it. I haven't tried to make a song in this fashion myself, but I surely bought a few albums. I see the characters as something that gives it more soul, but hey maybe I am just being weird. I already played mostly through the game and nothing really screams the term moe to me. It is a matter of taste I suppose!

What are they thinking!? I like reading manuals but for 3DS games there pretty bland and boring and now they do this!?