He Knows About Timed Hits

"To check your map, you should... How do I put this? Fill your right index finger with a wish. Or strength. To put it another way, I guess do something R-Button-ish?"

— Mapson, Mother 3 (fan translation)

There are some games where the tutorial is done by Breaking the Fourth Wall and the instructions for the button presses come right out of the character's mouths.

This is largely because giving a tutorial to a player in a game is not particularly easy to do well. Even many better-done Justified Tutorials have to resort to Painting the Medium via on-screen text or the like to get across the fact that you must push button X to do action Y. So sometimes the game just admits it's a game.

Now, whether the characters continue to have Medium Awareness after this will vary, but this is done usually when the game isn't that serious and already loose with the Fourth Wall. Sometimes, especially if the game is multiplatform or has multiple control schemes, the instructions will use the button's function as its title to cover all the bases, resulting in bizarre scenarios where you are told to "press the Fire Button to shoot!".

Compare Lampshade Hanging. Contrast Signpost Tutorial.

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Examples:

Action-Adventure Games

• A lampshade is hung in Asterix & Obelix XXL 2: Mission Las Vegum, where the characters will audibly wonder about who their advisor is talking to, and express explicit concern over a certain "button" he keeps mentioning.
• In Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2002), Giles has Buffy go through training. Where the vampires come from is explained as being all a dream. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds revolves around an attack on the Magic Shop, where Buffy is guided by Giles, Xander is guided by Anya, Willow is guided by Tara and Spike is mocked by Buffy. By the time you get to Faith, you'll be wreaking the kind of havoc that would have her glued to the screen.
• In Cave Story, there's Cthulhu at the very right side of Grasstown who gives you advice to hold down the jump button while on vents to float higher. Later, there's Booster and his instruction on how to use Booster 0.8.
• In the Dragon Ball Z game, Buu's Fury, there is an area in the beginning of the game where several characters are training, and they tell you the various commands. Hilariously Lampshaded by one guy who says something along the lines of:
  NPC: What are all these guys talking about a buttons and b buttons and hp bars? Do they think we're in a video game or something?
• Dust: An Elysian Tail uses this as well. This caused a small issue when the game was ported to the PC, because the game is fully voice-acted and the PC port has remappable controls. For example, the text will show you a picture of the right mouse button while the voice-over calls it 'the secondary attack button' which can be jarring. The port does, however, play with this early on to help establish your support character as a loudmouth.
  Fidget (text): "If you press [middle mouse button]..."
  Fidget (voice): "If you press the super ballistic Fidget action button of power..."
• In Holy Umbrella, besides Signpost Tutorials, there are a few NPCs who explain controls, such as the one who mans the "Bargain Info Corner" in the First Town and offers lengthy explanations of the game's action controls and submenus.
• The first few logs you find in Iji are from Dan, and detail the controls, moves, etc. Dan himself will chime in a the very beginning of the harder Difficulty Levels, explaining how they're different from the "Normal" difficulty. Then, you find this log:
  Author: Tasen Scout KT581:PKBE
  Subject: What's a `Pause menu`?
  Seriously. Commander keeps telling us, 'if you ever forget about your weapons, enemies or abilities, check the Pause menu by pressing Escape'. If this is some new helmet interface upgrade, I bet the Soldiers are keeping it from us Scouts.
• Jables's Adventure features a few tongue-in-cheek tutorials. For example, to explain that you press X to fire the gun:
  Squiddy: Have you noticed how much the trigger looks like an [X]?
  Jable: The resemblance is uncanny!
• Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil: In the tutorial level, Popka explains to Klonoa how to do a double jump, only for Klonoa to say he already learned how to do that back in the first game.
• The Legend of Zelda: Several games in the series, most particularly the The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games, have some early-game areas where people cryptically explain the interface. For example, a child tells Link "Hey man! When you want to save, just push all the Buttons at once! ...Uh, don't ask me what that means, I'm just a kid!" Made especially confusing because the button combo in question — A+B+Select+Start — is used on most other Game Boy games to force a Soft Reset. Made doubly confusing if you're playing on a Game Boy Advance and aren't aware that the L and R buttons on that particular system aren't used in GBC games other than to optionally resize the screen, so you try pressing those along with the others simultaneously.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past had some castle soldiers that would talk to you at the beginning of the game when trying to free Zelda from prison in Tutorial form - "I bet you can't wait until you're old enough to use a sword! (Press B to use your sword once you get it.)" Unfortunately, this was rarely noticed as the player was trying to avoid detection, not to mention that the first thing the soldier says is "Hey hey! You're not allowed in the castle, son! Go home and get some sleep!"
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time:
    • The game has an NPC who tells Link "Please... With C... Sell me something with C..." What he means is he wants one of your C button items to buy, but is vague on what exactly he wants. He only wants fish, bugs, and poes. Potions and milk won't work since Link drinks it instead. Later versions clarify (slightly) by having him specify, "Sell me the contents of a bottle".
    • The tutorial portion has the Know-It-All Brothers explaining the game mechanics, equipment screen, etc. as if it's all normal but without truly getting into Medium Awareness. Once you return to the forest later in the game, one of them will even say "Show me some fancy fencing! All I've done is tap B all my life!"
  • Majora's Mask: The Curiosity Shop Guy asks Link something to sell with the C button (C stick in the GCN version).
  • The Wind Waker: Aryll, when she teaches Link how to use her telescope; Sturgeon, both in person and in his notes; Orca, when teaching him swordsmanship; and Niko, when teaching him how to swing. Also, Sturgeon's granddaughter Sue-Belle tells you how to pick up, throw, and put down pots so you can tell Aryll how. Maggie even relates that she used Y, Z, and X to show her father her Skull Necklaces.
  • Twilight Princess: The kids, when they clamor for a demonstration of Link's skill with sword and slingshot; Midna, in instructing him about his powers; and the Hero's Spirit, when teaching him new skills. Also, Jaggle tells you that his kids don't seem to grasp the concept of Z-targeting (or L-targeting in the Gamecube version) to talk to somebody from a distance.
  • Phantom Hourglass has the hilarious "Oh, do you know how to walk?", due to the touchscreen being used for movement, rather than the D-pad.
  • The original game would show you the basic plot of the game and a list of all the items Link could find, and closed with Link holding up a parchment that said, "Please look up the manual for details."
  • While Breath of the Wild typically has a more realistic approach to tutorials (in-universe characters will simply bring up topics like swords and horses while the game brings up a brief textbox saying how to use those things), Ta'loh Naeg's Shrine near Kakariko Village involves the monk himself telepathically telling Link how to use the advanced combat techniques in terms of what buttons to press when.
  • The remake of Link's Awakening has the original kid who explains how to save the game, but now he's much more specific, telling you to press the + button and then the R button to get to the "system screen." He still doesn't know what any of it means, though. Another kid explains the proper inputs for accessing and manipulating the ingame map.
• In Ōkami, Exposition Fairy Issun will lead the player around by the nose at first (almost literally). Thinly-justified since he's dealing with a goddess in the form of a wolf who has been a statue up until about five minutes ago.
• In The Simpsons Hit & Run, the tutorial missions are narrated by an extremely bored Bart. (As well as commentary on unlocked achievements and any new item type.)
• In The Simpsons Game, the tutorials are entirely justified, as the various characters find out they're in a video game that they found the manual for, so when they learn about a new ability, they just read the manual to find out what to do. And the manual they're reading is the same manual included with the game, so you can read along. It's then subverted later in the game when Bart starts pointing out various videogame tropes, like the fact that an alien UFO shoots four lasers and then exposes its weakpoint that they can hit. The aliens are listening in, question why the hell they do that, correct the mistake, and then go off and destroy some stuff.
• In Star Fox Adventures, some of the Earth Walkers at Krazoa Palace tell Krystal how to go into Head View, how to roll, and how to sidestep; and The Warpstone tells Fox to press the Control Stick to go to one of the three places he makes it possible to go to, or to press B so he can go back to sleep.
• Tomb Raider:
  • In the first six games of the series, Lara Croft herself tells the player how to control her, always mentioning which button to press and staying in character throughout.
  • In Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Lara's guide Verner Von Croy tells Lara the controls for the game throughout the first level, while she simply listens without noticing anything odd.

Action Games

• In Astro Boy: Omega Factor, Astro Boy seems to tell himself how to hurt one of the early bosses.
• Lampshaded in The Emperor's New Groove Playstation game: the children giving control instructions have no idea exactly what they're talking about ("I can't find my square button...") and the main character repeatedly wonders how the kids keep beating him to wherever he's going, among other things. (Which they simply answer by admitting that they're tutorial characters.)
• Justified in The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, as the tutorial is actually a VR simulation designed to let the military experience the Hulk's capabilities firsthand. Know your enemy and all that.
• In the Monster Hunter series, the bigger emphasis on plot in Monster Hunter 4 and especially its Updated Re-release 4 Ultimate makes it egregious to the point of banging its fists against the Fourth Wall. Special mention goes to the Hunting Trainer from Monster Hunter Freedom 2 and Unite and the Ace Cadet from 4 itself, both of whom are in charge of their respective games' Basic Mechanics and Weapons Training sections, though the Guildmarm isn't without her moments.
  Guildmarm: "When you accept a quest, do you imagine colored tickets floating over your head? Because I do."
• In Shadow the Hedgehog: "Press the X button, Shadow."
• In the game adaptations of the first two Spider-Man Trilogy movies, you begin as Peter Parker getting a tutorial on running, jumping, locking on, attacking, web-slinging, and the works from a rather humorous narrator (voiced by Bruce Campbell) who appears to be speaking in the point of view of an audience member, or, in this case, a player. At one point, he leaves the tutorial to go get a sandwich - his next voiceover starts with him smacking his fingers.
  • "Go ahead, just jump off that building. No worries, go ahead, do it. ...Wow, you actually jumped off. Do you always do what people tell you? Well, in order to avoid you hitting the ground at terminal velocity, I suppose I should tell you how to keep from becoming road pizza."
  • (if you shoot a webline before he berates you) "Huh. Guess you're smarter than you look."
  • (If you try to crawl down the side of the building instead) "Yeah, funny how when I said 'jump', I actually meant 'jump', not 'crawl'? C'mon! Do it right!"
  • (If you skip the tutorial and pick up the hint in the first level) "Of course you'd KNOW that if you played the basic tutorial, but I guess you're just COOLER than the rest of us."
  • Ultimate Spider-Man (2005). Peter Parker is naturally chatty, which the programmers use. Straight up text-commands on the screen combine with Parker's rambling to provide a tutorial. But to really make it notable, in the context of the game, Parker notes that his double-jump completely violates the laws of physics. "Along with everything else I do." Mentioned again in the game adaption of the third movie during the tutorial sequence once again narrated by Bruce Campbell. After being instructed on how to double-jump Campbell states how this is also known as 'completely breaking the law of physics.'
  • Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions: Amazing Spidey is tutored in the ways of the controls by Madame Web and onscreen instructions, but Spider-Man can't help Lampshading this. "This quest involves jumping!?"

Adventure Games

• In Blackout, one of the side characters is an old Blind Seer who offers the Player Character to either read his subconscious or tell him about his fate. Whenever her services are requested, she holds out some objects her hands and directly asks the player to "click" on them.
• In Chicory: A Colorful Tale, several characters teach Pizza, and by extension the player, the game's controls:
  • Cola running late when Pizza first meets them, and instructs how to open your inventory to change outfits while putting on their work apron.
  • Ginger knows what keys to press to change the brush's size (to make it smaller).
  • Lemon talks about how to use the brush's erase feature when they're dismayed by Pizza's rather basic colors.
  • Macaroon tells the player how to use different colors with their brush while requesting to paint his house in "tough" colors.
  • Pea knows both about how to resize the brush (to make it larger), and also how to quickly fill in an area with the basic style.
  • Thyme directly talks about the game's co-op functionality.
• In Ghost Trick, Ray outright tells you what to do with your stylus and the touch screen (or the keyboard/controller in the HD remaster) to trigger certain actions, such as moving your soul or the camera around. He also mentions the hourglass in the upper screen/right border during the "4 minutes before death" sections.
• Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures has Bonifacio, a man sitting near a fountain whose only role is to provide you a tutorial. He very quickly breaks character by telling you about how to walk, push objects, or pick up items with your mouse, and finally how to adjust the difficulty in the options menu.
• In Last Word, The servant, Will Banter, outright says that, "I see you have enough Stored Experience. I’m obligated to teach you a few of the more advanced skills I’ve seen over the years."
• Legend of Kay gets around this, somewhat. The game features both on-screen text and voice acting for nearly everything, but in the beginning, when teaching Kay the basics of fighting, the voice acting for the characters describe everything that Kay needs to do, but only the text itself references specific button pushes.
• The Book of Patterns included with the LucasArts adventure game Loom is written entirely in the style of an authentic in-universe document, except for the iconic instruction: "A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
• In My Little Investigations Pinkie Pie, the Fourth-Wall Observer, cheerfully gives the players a tutorial, while Twilight is left scratching her head as to who is Pinkie talking to and why does she insist on teaching Twilight how to walk.
• In Titanic: Adventure Out of Time, upon first trying to leave your state room, the steward Smethells will prompt you for a tutorial and proceed to tell you how to move about and examine things using the arrow keys and mouse.
• In the NES game Tombs & Treasure, should you end up stuck in the game's one inescapable trap, the main character just outright tells you to press the reset button.

Fighting Games

• BlazBlue: Continuum Shift has a tutorial consisting of vampire-girl Rachel giving game advice in the most sarcastic and insulting way possible. ("Goodness, you managed to walk forward! I may faint from surprise," and "Do try to let this information permeate that mass of rotting meat you call a brain.")
• Mortal Kombat: Deception has Konquest Mode, something of an adventure mode that leads to either training or defeating the playable cast (barring any console exclusives like Shao Kahn or Blaze). For the tutorials, they have characters teach the Player Character, Shujinko, how to perform the attacks, fighting styles and combos at their disposal.

First-Person Shooters

• In Borderlands 2 Claptrap tries very hard to avert this when explaining his 'secret stash' (that allows the player to swap items with their other characters.) Ultimately he cannot find a way to explain it in-universe and just gives up and tells you what it's for.
• Command & Conquer: Renegade has a tutorial mission where Logan and Gunner mention in-game controls.
• Reyes on the keyboard controls in Deus Ex's tutorial.
• Half-Life:
  • Half-Life has this of course with the holographic woman giving you primers on basic actions and specifically mentioning button presses. Curiously, in the expansion pack Opposing Force you get to visit the wreckage of the training area and the hologram is playing, although the tutorials she recites are completely in-character and make no mention of button presses.
  • Averted in the sequel. Valve put heavy effort in making the tutorial sections as natural as possible, going for onscreen prompts and believable obstacles rather than actual dialogue.
• Played with in Portal 2 where Wheatley asks you to say apple, and the usual onscreen prompt tells you that the space bar makes Chell speak. Instead, you jump, and Wheatley concludes that you've had massive brain damage.
• Receiver's plot revolves around the player character finding and listening to tapes explaining the situation. Given that Receiver's whole shtick is giving every single function on the gun a corresponding button, one of these tapes tells the player character to refer to diagrams labelled things like "LMB" and "RMB" to perform various tasks.
• TRON 2.0 plays this straight with the keyboard prompts in its tutorial, though this example could be handwaved with you being inside a computer.

Miscellaneous Games

• The cat in the Wii Photo Channel explains how to use the B button to scroll, but has no idea where to find this B button. (It's on the back of the Wii Remote.)
• In Star Fox 64, most instructions exclude button presses from the verbal part: the character will simply say "Do a barrel roll!" while pictures of the buttons to be pressed appear in the text box but are not spoken. However, there is a part where Peppy says, "To barrel roll, press Z or R twice!"
• Done often in the WarioWare games when starting levels for a new developer.
  • WarioWare: Smooth Moves interrupts gameplay periodically to show you how to use a new form, with a narrator speaking in a relaxing tone about that particular style, complete with soft piano/Japanese instruments in the background. Example:
    "The Remote Control. Hold the Form Baton straight with the tip pointing forward. This simple stance reflects one of life's greatest - and fiercest - sports: channel surfing."
  • WarioWare: D.I.Y. has Penny teaching Wario and the player how to use the game-making system. Wario isn't the best student, but he certainly has the patience to try and do things the inefficient way. Only the first of three tutorials is required, but they are worth it just for the humor.

MMORPGs

• The tutorial in Achaea does its best to have a fourth wall - being a text game, the only hints about controls are that anything the player actually needs to type in to progress will appear in CAPITALS when the guide says it.
• City of Heroes relegates much of its tutorial to a strangely serene voice that interrupts the frantic police chatter of the minor apocalypse you're going through in order to tell you how to control your character. However:
  • The fourth wall is rendered semi-transparent in the ongoing Tutorial missions available from Twinshot and Dr. Graves. The dialogue about experience points, chat channels, and enhancements are written in such a manner as to seem plausible in the four color comic book world City of Heroes takes place in. Flambeaux's excitement over finding an enhancement that ensures the stability of her hair is particularly memorable, though.
  • While it isn't a tutorial mission, one of the random tips you can find during the Valentines Day event strongly implies that the color based threat ranking system used in the UI is a canon element so prevalent, that even the extra-dimensional invaders use it.
• Some non-player characters in RuneScape explain some of the game's controls, minigame rules etc. and especially when it comes to keeping password safe.
• World of Warcraft once re-did the beginning of the game so that your trainer gives you a specific quest to use your first learned abilities, either on training dummies (for damage-dealing classes) or on wounded comrades (for healer classes). This provides a plausible way of showcasing your class's abilities without breaking the fourth wall. Before this, the start zones were not implemented as an explicit tutorial but the in-game engine included tutorial windows, souped up in a patch in 2009, which by default appear every time you start the first new character on a new server.

Platformers

• The Banjo-Kazooie games are a pretty odd example: the different moves are taught by various mole characters who always address the eponymous duo, never the player (even though the fourth wall is broken a lot in general) yet still make references to the controller buttons. Jamjars' sequences in Tooie are particularly noteworthy because they rhyme, and given that one N64 controller button is Z, some of the rhymes only work if you use the British pronunciation (zed).
  • What makes it funnier is that the controls have been changed in the XBLA version, yet Jamjars recites the same instructions with the new controls inserted. Obviously, it no longer rhymes.
• In the Flash game Colour My Heart and sequels, B+W City contains signs telling you to use the arrow keys to move, and the mouse to interact with objects. Well, it's better than the signs telling you to give up now…
• Conker's Bad Fur Day begins with an in-character tutorial/explanation involving both the player squirrel and other NPCs talking to each other and to the player. Possible subversion as many of the characters, including Conker himself, are drunk and rambling. There is also the implementation of large 'B' buttons in the game world where the user is prompted to 'Press B' for context sensitive actions. (The NPC who explains this mechanic flounders humorously. "It's sensitive to... to contexts.") Later on the player will have to buy a manual to explain some of the more complex moves to both himself and the player. ("Ten dollars. Manual love you long time.") This even occurs when fighting the final boss, if you listen to the ship's AI.

  Ship AI: "Did you know you can block? Hold down the Z-trigger. Idiot."

• In Densetsu no Stafy 3, Starly introduces the stage screens by talking directly to the player, telling them which buttons to use during her spiel.
• The Flash game Elephant Quest has other elephants explaining to your elephant that he can move with the arrow keys, shoot with the mouse and press the down key to talk. Then one of them adds "What's a down key?"
• In The Emperor's New Groove, Tipo and Chaca have this with their dialogue. But only the dialogue; the characters themselves have little clue what they're saying and often comment afterwards with things like "...but I can't find my Jump Button!". Per the game's style, Kuzco will point some of this out, such as calling out health-giving bananas as being an "obvious plot device".
• In Kao The Kangaroo: Round 2, the characters do this a lot, and it usually takes the form of "to jump, press the jump button".
• Kirby:
  • Kirby Super Star featured the "Beginner's Show", where a narrator taught Kirby and the player basic game functions in front of a live studio audience. Although this returns in Kirby Super Star Ultra, it takes a step backwards by not giving the player any opportunities to test the controls in the tutorial itself.
  Narrator: "This is the controller! It's the gray thing with the purple buttons!"
  • In Kirby and the Forgotten Land, struggling too much on certain areas of the game, such as boss fights, will prompt Elfilin to explain the basics to Kirby.
• While the Narrator in the LittleBigPlanet games tells the player how to move and jump, the in-game characters usually explain everything else.
• Mega Man X5 has a tutorial explaining the basic controls of the game. It might have been justified since the inclusion of ducking, for the first time ever in a platformer-style Mega Man game, though gamers would have been able to read the damn manual or press down instinctively.
  • However, since it was optional, gamers who jumped straight into the main game were greeted with Alia, a navigator that wouldn't stop interrupting you at the worst times about the most inane things. Yes, I see the spikes up ahead. No, I did not plan on trying to walk on them. Her commentary could not be skipped, unfortunately. Thankfully, in X6, though she returns, listening is optional.
  • Ironically, she actually had some plot-relevant things to say (especially pre-boss fight) in X6.
• Mega Man Zero 2 has a very bizarre and depressing example where a resistance soldier tells Zero to press up on the D-pad to talk to people.
• Mischief Makers has NPCs who explain how to use the controls, some of them telling the player exactly how to do what they don't want to happen.
• Practically every Nintendo DS game in existence needs one of these, given the unusual control scheme. Expect many, many NPCs teaching you how to walk with the stylus. A few games, such as Kirby: Canvas Curse, have an in-game device, representing the stylus.
• Pizza Grannies in Pizza Tower tutorials explicitly mention controls of the game, telling what keys to press to make the character jump, grab etc..
• Throughout Rayman 2: The Great Escape, characters occasionally tell you button commands in the usual throwaway manner (usually whenever you get a new power up). However, this particular exchange stands out:
  Globox: Ly gave me Lums to make your fist stronger. Ly said: Press (attack button) longer to make your shot stronger.
  Rayman: Keeping (attack button) pressed makes my shot stronger! O.K.!
• In Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc, Murphy gives you a tutorial by reading instructions from the manual.
  Murphy: The manual says that you have to use the jump button in order to jump. Wowee. Now that's what I call info.
  • The manual even responds to Murphy's wisecracks using textboxes, although he never acknowledges that the manual is chewing him out. So either Murphy just doesn't care, he's skipping past those parts, or these textboxes are only visible to the player. Needless to say the fourth wall has a big open door through it that doesn't close until the tutorial stage is over.
  Manual: This time Murphy, you've gone to far! You can kiss your career goodbye!
• Shantae: Pigtail-ed little girls:
  • Shantae: Risky's Revenge: At the left-most of Scuttle Town, outside the save room:
    I love to run! I could always WALK, but then I'd have to hold down my ATTACK BUTTON all the time.
  • Shantae and the Seven Sirens: At the left-most of Arena Town says that Shantae can use the Dance Button to suck up loot from a distance:
    How do you even do that?
• When first entering the town in Shovel Knight, a guard says "Press ↑ to talk to everyone!", in contrast to the Plains Of Passage that had Instructive Level Design instead.
• The tutorials from the Sly Cooper series mention button names in-character, and no one bats an eye. It's gotten to the point that the oft repeated "Jump and press the Circle Button," tutorial has achieved something of a memetic position with both the creators and the fandom. During a podcast with the three main actors doing an ad-lib heist, Bentley says the plan is that he'll be in the van while Murray will head in front and Sly will "Jump and press the Circle Button".
• In the Sonic the Hedgehog series of games, especially the newer, three-dimensional incarnations, there is often a helper character who explains basic controls in a somewhat grating fashion. In Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog, it's a helper character or a non-active member of the team. This is usually grating and irritating, especially in Heroes' tutorial mode, but Shadow used the trope to help characterize Sonic and Knuckles. Sonic and Knuckles explain guns to Shadow but remark about how they wouldn't use them.
• Spyro the Dragon:
  • In the second, third, and fourth games, the first level is devoted mostly to teaching you how to play the game. As such, you will be stopped quite often by characters such as Hunter, who will yell at you things like "Press the JUMP button to glide! If you press the TRIANGLE button, you will hover! Remember, hold L2 and R2 to center the camera behind you! Do you like the Active Camera mode, or shall I change it to the Passive camera mode?" In fact, they're so overly enthusiastic about telling you how to use the buttons on your controller that it makes you wonder if they're Lampshading this trope.
  • Even in the first game, which had much less intrusive tutorials overall, occasionally a dragon Spyro freed would, in all earnestness, advise him to "press the X button at the very top of your jump" or to "press the triangle button to drop down in midflight".
  • The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning: The main character is given tutorials by the Dragon Elders. This is, however, an avoidance of the trope, as listening to the background noise while the text instructions come up on the HUD allows you to hear standard martial arts training.
• Occasionally happens in Super Mario Bros.:
  • In the DS version of Super Mario 64, Bowser says this during the first fight with him: "A wimp like you could never throw me out by circling the touch screen! Never!" Both the N64 and DS versions have the Lakitu brothers specifically telling players which buttons to use at the beginning of early stages.
  • In Super Mario Galaxy, in the intro, Luma first tells the player to press A to jump. After some dialogue with Rosalina, Lumas tell the player to shake the wiimote to spin and defeat enemies.
  • In Super Mario Sunshine, FLUDD, your talking water pump, gives you a tutorial that mentions the L and R buttons (or, if you're playing on the Nintendo Switch port, "the buttons").
  • In Super Mario Bros. Wonder, prince Florian sometimes chimes in to explain game's controls. A few talking flowers also do this.
• In Wario World, some of the Spritelings explain some of the controls upon being freed.

Puzzle Games

• Done quite cleverly in Fixation, the prequel to The Company of Myself: The player character is meeting a therapist, and as the player is learning the controls of the game, the character (who's suffered a mental breakdown) needs to learn to do simple stuff like breathing and talking all over again.
  Therapist: Try to forget about your problems for a second. For now, let's just think about either the S or Down Arrow Key.
• Hotel Mario features Mario blatantly Breaking the Fourth Wall and saying "if you need instructions on how to get through the hotels, check out the enclosed instruction book". The cutscene even pauses for a few moments, presumably to give the user time to find said instruction book.
• In Pâquerette Down the Bunburrows, the protagonist sometimes explained controls to the player.

Real-Time Strategy

• Myth The Fallen Lords and Myth II Soulblighter feature an optional tutorial session by a world-weary narrator. It's pretty boring, unless you intentionally repeatedly screw up…
  Narrator: "No! Press the B KEY! BBBEEEEEEE!"
  Narrator: "Now hit the space bar. No! The space bar! The big key below all the little keys!"
  • The key mechanic in Battallion Wars is being able to take control of specific units. The ones giving you orders not only acknowledge this but will often tell you which units to control, leading to the hilarious impression that you're actually some sort of body-jacking ghost.
• In the World in Conflict tutorial, you are a West Point graduate undergoing additional training before being sent to fight in the war against the Soviets. However, that doesn't stop your instructor from mentioning the various mouse and keyboard controls. A particularly surreal moment occurs in the first part of the training where you instructor prompts you to move the camera in every conceivable way culminating in a section where you must move it through floating red rings and finally claiming that "They DO teach useful things at West Point".

Rhythm Games

• Rhythm Heaven: The DS game begins with the bandleader from Frog Hop telling you about the touch screen controls, segueing into the "flicking" tutorial (which isn't narrated by a character).
• In Space Channel 5 (particularly in Part 2), Fuse, the director of the in-game newscast, does this frequently. For example, he says, "Press the X button when you hear 'Chu!'" and "Press down on the directional arrows, you've got a guitar, too!"

Role-Playing Games

• Atelier Iris interrupts the story for a long series of amusing "Popo's Fourth-Wall Lecture" tutorials whenever a new skill or technique becomes relevant. Popo will occasionally call other characters to help him explain things.
• The first Baldur's Gate game had a tutorial section set around Candlekeep before you leave with Gorion, which even incorporated an illusionist who conjured up extra party members to help you learn how to fight as a group. This was a pretty purposeful invocation of the tutorial trope, though: the inhabitants of Candlekeep know you are going on a journey and are teaching you survival skills. The second game has a long-ish prologue where you fight your way out of imprisonment, meet the characters from the first game who were ported to the second, and acquire new, level appropriate equipment, but it's not a tutorial as such and it's assumed you know something about how to play the game.
• The Bard's Tale: An old man NPC appears out of nowhere in a basement to explain the game's basics — but to the Bard and not the player. The bard assumes the man completely insane and basically plays along while the man gives the tutorial.
  Training NPC: Push the triangle button.
  The Bard: What? What're you on about? What button? You're completely insane, aren't you? ...Y'know, I ran into this other guy once. He kept talking about mice I couldn't see!
• In A Blurred Line, Eisen’s simulation works like this:

  Tower Guard: The Tower is dangerous, Princess! I can’t let you up until you’re at least level 5!

  Dalia: I hate video games.

• Potentially justified in BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm. It’s a game set inside the internet, so hearing the characters yammer on about keyboard controls really isn’t that strange.
• Breath of Fire IV goes to a conspicuous length to avert this trope by having all the tutorials be addressed directly to the player.
• The second Dark Cloud game (Dark Chronicle) has a tutorial given by Donny, who shatters the fourth wall talking about buttons and menus. Max acts completely normal. This is really the only time the fourth wall is absolutely broken during the length of the game.
  • Additional tutorials can be accessed during the game from the menu, but these are standalone scenes. The first few tutorials are given in regular dialog and just seem really out of place.
• Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus features a pre-monsterized Vincent (still in the Turks) undergoing "simulation battles" for training purposes. The female computerized voice doesn't reference buttons, but does ask you to do specific actions in order to pass to the next tutorial level.
• The .hack//G.U. Games have an example of this. The game is set in an MMORPG, and so it make sense for other people to instruct the player how to play the game, and they are even using PS2-like controllers in-game as well.
• While raiding the ship in Dubloon, there are question-marks that give instructions on how to play the game. Once you're finished however, further instructions are given by signposts and people.
• Eternal Sonata has Polka do the first part of the tutorial by talking to herself. In the later parts, Allegretto teaches Beat to fight. But of course he's still talking about user interface and button presses instead of anything in-character.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Most games have a "Beginners Hall", where you are taught about various in-game functions. They try to do it in character, particularly in Final Fantasy VII where Cloud, as an experienced fighter, does the lecturing, but talk about slots and buttons still makes it in. An extra bout of comedy can be gained by talking to other students and their instructors, often being told the same thing: "No, dummy, you press 'X' to attack." Cloud even converses with the map cursor above his head at one point: "Huh? Finger? What the hell?" He also makes a sarcastic remark about one of the status effects, and talks about how to use the buttons to force one of his allies (who he has a certain rivalry with) to do more work. This game also has the infamous "If you press the Cancel Button (earlier marked X) to run," which like most such Engrish was corrected in the game's PC port.
  • Final Fantasy VIII also tries to work the tutorials around the characters and plots. Most of the tutorials are given to you by your teacher, so it makes a certain amount of sense that she would be lecturing you on the basics... except that the tutorial sequences all happen either immediately before or sometime after the second half of your final exam (the written portion having already occurred a week before the game began) so there's really no point at which you're told anything that the characters shouldn't already know. Also, the game just has fun with it when it comes to the chocobo-system explanation:
    Chocoboy: Ok, now that the theme song is playing, here's an explanation of 'Chocobo World'. It's real easy!!! Insert the PocketStation(tm) in slot 1 or 2. From the menu's [Save], select 'Chocobo World'. Then, 'Chocobo World' will start, and your chicobo 'Boko' will begin its journey.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has Mr. Leslaie and Ritz for the movement. While the Laws and JP are introduced by Montblanc and the Judge. Its sequel has Cid's clan mates which are a Nu Mou Black Mage and a Viera White Mage.
  • In Crisis Core various characters talk about the menu and the buttons with straight faces.
• Gothic averts this by not explaining to you the new timings or key presses when you get training, leaving you to figure out how to use a few of its trick moves and what perks you've gained from this training. The dialogue the NPCs do give seems to be a more realistic approach to accomplish the training - not holding a one-handed weapon with two hands, a mistake your character had been previously making and corrects himself on for the rest of the game - rather than a meta-game technical "press (buttons) to perform (moves)".
  • The trainer also explains how to do more complex maneuvers, such as after striking forward twice, you should spin around, as this often confuse opponents.
• Hide 'n' Seek: Battle Monster Tactics: Although some players may have trouble learning how to play through the game anyway, every time you start over you have to deal with Toppy telling you.
• In Kingdom Hearts the tutorial is a dream sequence where an otherworldly narrator (actually Mickey Mouse) explains the controls to Sora.
• In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. the very first character encountered not only serves as Mr. Exposition (even though, story-wise, the player character should already know everything he says ...or should he? ), but also teaches the player how to use the keyboard and mouse. In the sequel, this is avoided by giving all tutorial hints through the HUD.
  • Can be defied if you want: he will hold your hand through the first sections, but he only breaks the fourth wall if the player asks for help or stands still for too long. So if you know what you're doing, it is possible to play through the tutorial without this trope coming into play.
  • Mocked in the sequel when introducing the new NPC influence feature. Someone says something, then the HUD explains how the influence system works in place of where dialogue would normally go, as the camera looks at various characters standing there. Afterwards, someone asks if you're ok, since you just stood there blankly for the duration of a line, and you get a chance to try influence.
• In Last Scenario, a villager who teaches you about Hex mentions that you have to press the shift key to challenge someone for a game.
• Live A Live attempts an exceptionally strange variation on this in its Prehistoric chapter, where a village elder attempts to explain Pogo's ability to the player despite the fact that their storyline predates spoken language. To solve this, the elder holds up a giant rock with a letter "Y" engraved on it to indicate "press Y to activate the ability." This, combined with an absurd amount of pantomime, resulted in an explanation that confused as much as it helped. Akira's chapter has a more normal version of it where Akira himself explains how to use his telepathy.
• Lufia & The Fortress of Doom has in-game text that explains how to select and learn about the player characters' spells. It might make a little sense for an NPC in the First Town, but this tutorial also appears on a plaque on Doom Island during the Action Prologue, when you're controlling Maxim's uber-powerful party.
  • In Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals, one NPCs mentions pressing the R button to preform a certain action and then wonders what an R button is.
  • Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals also has characters do this. This is lampshaded several times, most prominently when Guy and Tia explain the controls for a tank.
• Magna Carta 2: The characters will go over gameplay basics both in the optional tutorial and in the story proper without any attempt at integrating it into the plot whatsoever. They seriously sound like they're reading the instruction manual themselves!
• Happens all the time in MARDEK, starting with Mardek's friend Deugan explaining the basic controls to him. Mardek has no idea what he's talking about. There are similar examples throughout, including this gem in Chapter 3:
  Insignificant Eveetman: Did you know you that can press L at any time to view the Chat Log, even when not speaking to anyone? I don't know what that means though! It sounds like some code, like I'm a member of a secret club, or a spy, but I don't remember joining or being one! They must be VERY secret!
• Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga: Several sets of Koopas on board the Koopa Cruiser seem to be ignoring you while engrossed in lessons about basic things like switching the lead character, jumping, and so on. And you see them accomplishing these actions. Presumably the guy at their controls has nothing better to do than to keep pressing their buttons.
  • Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story does this normally with many tutorials, although the strangest one is where Fawful warns Bowser's opponent about the timed hits Bowser is supposed to do. Do not press X now! and BADNESS! If you are holding back your punch to the last second, pressing X, that is BADNESS! Do not have naughtiness and press X at that timing!. Of course, doing what Fawful says not to do makes Bowser hit Midbus twice as hard.
• Several Mega Man Battle Network games have particularly grating examples of this trope (a couple justified it, but not much). Each time, Lan and MegaMan talk their way through a three-round battle with basic enemies — and Lan, whose NetBattling skill has repeatedly saved the world, always forgets at least one essential point.
• Nearly averted in The Misadventures Of Tron Bonne. Tron goes to great lengths to explain the mechanics one of the game modes in almost believable in-universe terms to one of the Servbots, and then reassures him that he can press START to retry if he doesn't understand.
• Played with in Mistmare, where the protagonist is the one lecturing students on world mechanics. Button presses are notably absent.
• Mother series:
  • In EarthBound, a mole explains the tactics of Pre-existing Encounters to Ness, but slips up several times by referring to the "TV screen." Another NPC wishes he could recover PP by drinking water, and then wonders what PP is.
  • During the prologue of Mother 3, Hinawa's father Alec interrupts Lucas and Claus's playtime to explain how dashing works ("Try to imagine something called a B button!"); after the Mole Cricket battle, he breaks the fourth wall to explain how to save (by talking to frogs). In one of the game's most defining scenes, the player is directly asked to suspend their disbelief during a tutorial.
• Prelude of Neverwinter Nights Lampshades it a bit by starting in Academy and all that, though it's still impossible to do in-character.
• Persona:
  • Persona 3 Portable: A character explains that you can fast travel by using the square button and says "...though I don't know where you'd find one of those."
  • Persona 4: Lampshaded. In one instance one of the NPCs tells you how to use the square button to fast-travel, and then follows up with something along the lines of "Do you think I'm weird for saying these things...?"
• Pokémon, in any incarnation, does this a lot:
  • Ironically enough, for the longest time, only the Generation 1 and 2 games gave the player the option of skipping the explanation on how to catch Pokémon, one of the central mechanics of the game; all of the other games until Pokémon Sword and Shield did not, much to both the rejoicing and irritation of returning players. Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire plays with the tutorial by assuming you already have the knowledge (since your character's in-story father is a Gym leader), but total newbie Wally doesn't, necessitating you to explain it to him.
  • NPCs all over the world don't just explain game mechanics and what buttons to press by means of pleasant conversation, they also explain the intricacies of certain attacks and strategies as well as the Pokedex's various functions and the PC, since those exist in universe. FireRed/LeafGreen, remakes of the first games, turns game mechanics explanation more into a Justified Tutorial by providing items such as a "Teachy TV" which allows you to watch an irritating TV presenter go through game mechanics.
  • The first town beyond the player's starting town usually also has a "tour guide" who walks the player to the various important buildings and explains their purpose.
  • There's an NPC in each game who'll tell you they're saving their game so they can take a break. A variant of the "I'm saving my game" person has also been in both the second and third generations of Pokémon games, though in the fourth generation they do try to keep in-character by explaining it as writing down your data in a journal. This all makes more sense in the Japanese versions of the games, where the "Save" command has always been known as "Report".
  • There are several pairs of NPCs in various locations who claim to be trading their Pokémon while holding Game Boys.
  • In some games, your mother teaches you how to run: at the start of the games, she gets you a pair of "running shoes" which… include their own manual! Naturally, your mom proceeds to "read the instructions".
• Lampshaded in Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale. Recette gets confused when Tear occasionally mentions the controller buttons and "custom.exe" during her tutorials.
• The first Shadow Hearts game subverts this altogether as all the tutorials are done entirely via Infodump through the Help option in the main menu. Both Covenant and From the New World do feature tutorials addressed to the player about the new and improved battle system, though.
• Incredibly blatant in Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE Online, especially during the Virtual Battle and early Home III acts.
• Justified in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time by having the tutorial level be Fayt teaching Sophia /how to play a video game/.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars is the Trope Namer. Early in the game, Toad offers to teach Mario how to use items and Timed Hits. If the player declines to listen to the (optional) tutorial, Toad tells The Goomba that has shown up (for the sole purpose of being a teaching aid) that Mario already knows about Timed Hits, causing it to run away in fear.
  • Super Paper Mario: Lampshaded. Whenever one of these comes up, it becomes clear that Mario has no idea what the person is talking about, and they simply say something about how the "great being who watches us from another dimension" will understand it. This game also has a character named Otto who professes to have hot tips on how to make your quest easier, but serves as another Lampshade when they turn out to be things like "You can press 2 to jump!" more than halfway through the game. It's really there to set up the guy in his place in Flopside, who is much less confident in his much better advice about hidden areas and such.
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: Played with. In the third chapter of the game, Mario is given a tutorial on how to challenge opponents in the Glitz Pit. When Mario is signed up for the tournament, a Toad named Jolene gives Mario in-depth instructions, button commands and all. Later, one of the fighters in the tournament retires, and a newcomer comes to take his place. Jolene takes the newcomer in and gives him the exact same instructions as she did to Mario, once again including button commands. You're also asked to meet certain conditions in each match in order to advance. These usually include "Appeal three times," "Don't attack for three rounds" or "Only let your partner attack." The newcomer's instructions are to "do a triple flip and meow."
  • Paper Mario: The Origami King: Early in the game, Toads that Mario rescues will offer him some advice. These directly mention buttons and controls in the game, along with their purpose.
    Toad: I'm saved! And now I'm gonna save YOU, Mario... Try pressing + sometime when you're in a pickle. It'll open up a whole new world of info. Seriously! I'm talking controls, settings, basic info... It's all right there for you.
• Tales of... series:
  • In Tales of the Abyss the hero's martial arts teacher, who has been teaching him for years, goes over how to use the controller and attack. The concept of teaching him the very basics after years of training and practice is strange enough, but him naming the controller buttons to push sounds even sillier than you might think.
  • Tales of Symphonia has Genis fulfilling that role towards Lloyd when a wild monster wanders into the village. Even sillier because Lloyd is a self-learned swordsman and should probably know these things already, whereas Genis is a wizard who's had no part whatsoever in Lloyd's training.
  • Tales of Phantasia has several NPCs who keep mentioning D-Pad combinations to use when a certain item has been found and much more general instructions on how use Rheiards.
  • Tales of Vesperia and Tales of Graces both subvert this, doing away with immersion-breaking tutorials because all of the characters involved are seasoned warriors (and in Vesperia, everyone except Yuri and Karol are some variety of Magic Knight, leading to homogenized movesets.) Game controls are instead explained through on-screen hot tips during or after battles.
• Comes up in TCT RPG; during a bout of childhood imaginary battling, Alex explains the controls to Kyle while he plays superhero and she a supervillain. Later on, children claim to have been visited by angels in their sleep… telling them stuff relating to the controls.
• Technomage Return Of Eternity: The very first spoken dialogue in the game has Melvin telling you to use the "action button" to scroll through and close dialogue boxes, as well as using the "appropriate buttons" to rotate the camera. Some later tutorial dialogue also alludes to the action button, and one early quest has a character say he's rewarding Melvin with experience points.
• Undertale has a few minor NPCs, mostly Froggits in the tutorial area, that try to explain some of the finer points of the game's controls, without necessarily understanding what they're talking about. One Froggit mentions how his friend keeps skipping through his dialogue by mashing a button, and then complains if he catches you doing that. More egregiously, Papyrus explains the special action controls for his Boss Battle while you fight him. And of course, there's Flowey, the first character you meet, who knows far more about the game mechanics than those other characters combined, but happens to be more than a bit of a lying bastard.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: A couple of examples.
  • When Ivy and Mint are first exploring the cave, Mint casually mentions that the SHIFT key is used for running.
  Mint: Oh, and Ivy? You might be able to catch me if you use SHIFT to run.
  • When you recruit Amos for Sanctuary, he becomes the in-game reference for meta-game data, such as the number of steps you've taken, or the number of times you've saved. The general impression is that it's Played for Laughs. One of Lovie's many dialogue phrases does this as well.
  • Rose, in the post-game area, basically does nothing but this.

Simulation Games

• Tutorial of Babylon 5: I've Found Her does it in-character and Lampshades head-to-toe.
• The tutorials in the Black & White games are narrated by your Good Angel, Bad Angel advisors and go over the minutiae of mouse and keyboard commands in exacting, unskippable detail.
  "No, let's try rotating first."
• Many later Harvest Moon games feature a very lengthy introduction, often peppered with various tutorials regarding game mechanics. Sometimes, these tutorials are optional… sometimes, not so much. The information is usually often kept on a bookshelf in your character's house, as well, for later reference. Unlocking new things to do will also often lead to more tutorials (like buying an animal, planting a crop, unlocking a paddy, etc).
• MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat uses this in its tutorial missions. The keyboard is explained away as a "control console" but…it's a keyboard. Complete with keys such as Ctrl and Tab.
• Robot Alchemic Drive justifies it because, as shown in an early cutscene, you're controlling your giant robot with an exact replica of the PS2 controller.
• Vega Strike has in-character tutor. GNN says "Cephid Security Initiative (CSI) is offering training for pilots with the purpose of enhancing flight safety". That turns out to be one guy, Oswald on a LIHW light fighter hanging near the Player Character's starting point, to explain ship controls and give tutorial mission objectives. PC being an independent Privateer in open space, it's of no consequence whether player follows his instructions or simply ignores him and continues to accelerate until the little nuisance is beyond communication range.
• Training missions in X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and X-Wing Alliance will sometimes make reference to the keyboard commands for whatever task or system the player is learning about. TIE Fighter extended this practice to the Stele Chronicles as well, with characters being said to hit the F9 key when charging their lasers.

Stealth-Based Games

• Metal Gear:
  • The series is probably the only one to actually implement this trope as character development as much as player tutorial, and its No Fourth Wall instruction sequences are regarded very fondly by fans. Most characters, from Mission Control to bosses to the Player Character, usually does this at least once without batting an eyelid.
  • Metal Gear Solid:
    • In one codec call, Master Miller describes how to 'stalk' over a 'noisy floor', giving a long description of how to adjust weight and move feet and so on, and then suggests he could wear his socks over his shoes as well. Snake complains that he can't do any of that, so Miller suggests he press X to crawl.
    • A torture minigame is introduced with a creepily cheerful button exposition sequence, culminating in the torturer looking straight at the screen with a growly, "Don't even think about using Auto-Fire, or I'll know."^note His looking at the player only happens in The Twin Snakes; in the original version, he's still looking at Snake. And it's a very serious, genuine threat; even just pressing the button faster than the game expects can trigger Ocelot's wrath.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty:
    • Otacon tends to talk about buttons and memory cards to Snake, who doesn't break character and assumes his fellow is just being nuts. Pressing buttons to hear Snake's thoughts on Otacon's button-ramblings usually results in a snappish, irritable "I know all this, I'm the main character!"
    • After the Tanker chapter is finished, Raiden's introduction includes the exact same tutorial that Snake got. For the record, that's a plot point.
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater:
    • The Boss gives a complicated and difficult sounding explanation of how one would move silently in real life. However, Snake is speechless for a second and The Boss settles for saying "But all you need to do is press the directional button in the direction you wish to move," since the real life info is useless to the player.
    • There's another conversation where The Boss goes into detail about using your sense of smell to your advantage, only for Snake to point out that he can't smell anything at all. While anosmia is a real condition, Snake's reaction is more likely because the player can't smell anything through the game itself.

Survival Horror

• Resident Evil: Outbreak File #2 contains an entire scenario, "Training Ground", devoted to explaining the mechanics of the game as well as updates from the first game's controls, using partner characters and sudden changes in status to let you perform the functions it asks of you.

Third-Person Shooter

• Dead Space reminds you to blow the limbs off enemies four times in five minutes.
  • The sequel does the same, but Isaac's weary response is "I know, I've had a lot of practice"
  • And the third game has Isaac telling the others how to do it.
• In Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, thanks to his Gameplay-Guided Amnesia, Nick Scryer doesn't get new powers so much as remember them, which is represented by a Flash Back of him first being trained in whatever power it is.

Turn-Based Strategy

• The Battle for Wesnoth tutorial does this pretty openly, down to discussing hit points and experience points in-universe...while using main characters from the "Heir to the Throne" campaign where most players will eventually meet them again.
• Wonderfully done in Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, where Etna gives the tutorials and stays perfectly in character throughout. This tends to involve bullying the hell out of Laharl. At one point, the game automatically plays through a battle sequence, resulting in Laharl getting killed - he complains that he doesn't like this tutorial. When Etna comments that only an idiot would do that, he yells at her for 'making' him do it.
  • Disgaea 2 does basically the same thing with Adell and Rozalin.
• At the start of Makai Kingdom Overlord Zetta says "I'm going to ramble on for a bit." then proceeds to deliver a tutorial to the player. (There's nobody else listening.) But Zetta's Netherworld seems to lack a Fourth Wall to begin with.
• Done constantly with the first three Advance Wars games in their tutorial levels. in which your instructors make explicit mentions of button presses and even in-game menus. This was finally curbed in Days of Ruin; in-game characters will talk generally about certain features, like unit abilities and menu functions (e.g. "It's a good idea to check up on the status of the battle periodically."), but actual instructions referring to buttons and menus are left to prompts that appear on the top screen.

Visual Novels

• Monika in Doki Doki Literature Club! has some dialogue about how the game works, such as telling you about the save system early in the game. This turns out to be Foreshadowing that she is Medium Aware. Ironically, this also means you can't use the load game function to undo some things you might want to, because Monika's clumsy meddling breaks it. Later on, you even need to do the exact thing she tells you not to do to the game's files if you want to advance the plot, making it an unintentended Player Nudge on her part.
• In the fifth case of The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures (3DS only), when Ryunosuke is about to look through a stereoscope, Herlock Sholmes reminds us to turn up our 3D screens.
• In her tears were my light, the first time you are required to use Time's rewinding powers, Time will remind you that there is a button that lets you do so.

Non-Video Game Examples

Gamebooks

• The GrailQuest books open with Merlin explaining that the book is a spell that transports the reader into the body of Pip in Merlin's time, but that they will need to bring two dice, a pencil and a sheet of paper with them. He goes on to explain about Life Points and the combat system.
• In the French Gamebook series Les Messagers du Temps, the protagonists' mother Chronada will explain to them and the reader about how to use their dice to roll for their statistic points and fighting.

Pinball

• In most Licensed Pinball Tables, the characters from the property in question may break from their typical dialogue and mention pinball mechanics with phrases like "Hit the lit ramp!", "Score Multiplier increased!" or "Extra ball is lit!"

Webcomics

• Parodied in the RPG webcomic Adventurers! (comic #441) in which one of the characters complains that he doesn't have an "X button."
• In Kid Radd, When Radd is brought under Gnarl's control, Sheena tells him to "Pound the buttons or something" to break free.

Web Videos

• In Half-Life but the AI is Self-Aware, Dr. Coomer cheerfully explains how to use medical stations and the like to Gordon, and even comments on things that aren't actually in the game, like a supposed Golden HEV Suit unlocked by beating the staff ghost in the level "On a Rail." This takes a turn for the creepy when Coomer starts Noticing the Fourth Wall.
  Coomer: Gordon, Bounce Pads can be used to increase your jump height! You'll need them to solve a number of "platforming puzzles" up ahead!
  Gordon: How do you know that?
  Coomer: I... (worried) I don't know...
• As is traditional for Mario RPGs, in Paper Mario DND, Professor Jam explains to the party how combat mechanics work.

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