Auto Pilot Tutorial
Many games have tutorials that must be completed before the game can begin. Even if you've already beaten the game, if you start anew you must do the tutorial again, which can be frustrating. However, for someone who is just starting, tutorials can be more useful than reading the manual as it gives some hands-on experience before being thrown into the action.
An Auto Pilot Tutorial, however, is more like watching a manual than actually practicing. Control is taken away from the player as the game demonstrates how to perform tasks by itself, usually with either voice-over or onscreen text explanations. Some people might find this more helpful than just being told what to do step-by-step in a controlled tutorial, as with the auto pilot the player has an idea of what they're expected to do and what it looks like to do so correctly.
Compare: Forced Tutorial, which this almost always is, Attract Mode, which this resembles when not forced, and Justified Tutorial, which this never is.
- Some of the Metal Gear Solid games shows the player how to play by automatically scrolling through the items and sometimes controlling the player character.
- Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney does this a few times. One where the game automatically goes to your evidence, scrolls to the next page, chooses a piece of evidence, and chooses to examine the item in 3D. The game also plays itself for a while when it shows you to how to do forensics at a crime scene.
- Many RPG games love to do this by scrolling through your menus.
- VERY SLOWLY.
- Even PAST THE DESIRED OPTION AND BACK AGAIN. Final Fantasy, I'm looking at you.
- FFX had the Blitzball tutorial, and it was interactive (to an extent). Picking an option OTHER than the one the game tells you to simply gives the response: "We'll be learning about that later, just click this one for now."
- VERY SLOWLY.
- Spoofed as early as Disgaea: Hour of Darkness where Etna delivers the tutorial to Laharl by forcing him to get beat up. "And that was what not to do." "But you made me do it!" The sequel has Rozalin and Adell replace Laharl and Etna, respectively.
- Keep in mind that Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories allowed you to skip the tutorials and just play the tutorial levels like they were standard maps. And the series skips the tutorial segment on a New Game+ (you still have to beat the tutorial map(s), though).
- The seventh Fire Emblem game and the first Advance Wars game force you to make specific moves for a turn or two and then return control.
- Though it doesn't do it if you choose normal. In normal, you can do it however you wish.
- Starting with the Second Generation, the games had moments in the beginning of the game where another trainer would take you into the grass and engage in a wild Pokemon battle to show you how to catch it and you have to watch it because its impossible to skip. Before these games they had these tutorials, but they were completely optional.
- The Pokémon Trading Card Game for Game Boy did this by having your first match against one of Prof. Mason's assistants be played with stacked decks and instructions that forced you to play particular cards. Later you could practice against this person by using the same decks but without restrictions on moves.
- Ascendancy's tutorials used this.
- Whenever you get a new Bros. Item or Bowser Army in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, if you choose to practice, the game demonstrates the move for you before letting you try it yourself.
- The first two games in the Rollercoaster Tycoon series feature this. Thankfully, they are not mandatory and can be stopped at any time while they are running.
- The Puzzle League series of games feature these tutorials - however, they are welcome due to the facts that they are optional and extremely in-depth (with six main sections and more supplemental sections featuring things like demonstrating the timing necessary for time-lag chains.
- Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games has these.
- In Wario Ware: D.I.Y., the game-making tutorial is shared between Wario, Penny, and you.
- Oddly enough, this also qualifies as an Auto Pilot Tutorial for the in-game characters as well - Wario will try to do many counter-intutive things (like attempting to color the entire screen with the line tool), get bored, and Penny will take over and show him a better way to get things done (like the fill tool.)