Instruction manuals...I remember, back in the day, the NES and SNES era days, when I always faithfully read the instruction manual before playing the game.

...

But these days, I'm often so excited to begin playing a new game, I skip right to it, and I just refer to the in-game tutorials if there are any.

Honestly, in this current generation of gaming, there've been quite a few times already, that I never even read, let alone touched, the manual for the game, didn't realize it until after I finished the game, and then only decided to look through the manual to see if there was anything interesting I could've missed.

Which raises the question: Since games just include instructions on how to play them in-game, is it really even necessary to include a physical, printed version of the manual with the game anymore?

Do you still read manuals at all yourself? Are games pretty much self-explanatory these days?

I ALWAYS read the manuals in the old days. Not so much in the past decade or so... but I think that's partly because they're not as interesting as they used to be. That and contemporary games often do a better job of easing the player into the action.

^This pretty much sums up my views as well. Basically manuals are no longer necessary as a means of understanding the game mechanics and story; yeah, remember back in the 8 and 16-bit days when nothing much about the story was actually explained at the beginning or even during the game, and you had to read about it in the manual? Granted console games didn't have very complex storylines back then but it's fun to think about now as some games just go on and on about the story (MGS2).

Another reason I liked checking the manuals back in them days was because over here in Sweden, while games themselves are never translated into Swedish, the manuals at least used to be, often down to the names of characters and places, which could get rather confusing but oh so hilarious at times. I should really try to dig up some of my old NES games and have a look....

I liked them because they were often in full colour and had delicious artwork. Just something you don't see nowadays. I'm not sure how many people would agree with me, but presentation matters for a lot more than what I'm sure people would be willing to give it credit for.

I always look at them before I play. Even now. I guess its force of habit really. I really do hate the new Nintendo manuals nowadays though. They seem so thick brimming with information then I see the manual is like 7 pages then the rest is in Spanish and French. I dont have anything against foreign languages but geez....

I think one reason I stopped reading them was that I was driving myself from buying the game...

But game manuals also used to be a lot bigger. Often they'd have a guide for the first bit (or more -- see FFII and FFIII), and a lot more art and pictures. Data on items and stuff too.
They also tended to be in color but that stopped as well (outside of companies like WD).

Never read them before and hardly ever read them now, unless there's something about the game that I don't understand and which is not explained properly in the game itself.
I do always peruse the manual when I buy a new game, just to get a general feel of the game and its contents, but I don't actually read it.

I do really appreciate it when the presentation is good though.