Earliest Known Forced Tutorial?

[BoringSupreez]

Does Tomb Raider count,I cant remember off hand if it was optional.Traning in her mansion?

It was optional.

Nice, that at least predates Banjo, never was into the Tomb Raider series when it was brand new. Although one of my friends once told me he found a code that gave you an animation of Lara bathing nude.

Only the PC version, and it was a mod, not a cheat code.

[GryeDor]

Rockman X on the Super Famicom had a forced tutorial, but it was so well designed, you wouldn't know it.

I dunno, I'd call that a very loose definition of forced tutorial at best.

I'd agree, we're talking like, the game dumps you in a closed environment and actually won't progress until you've carried out the instructions the game is telling you to do. Mega Man X's opening level thankfully doesn't tell you things like, "Holding the Y-Button charges your Mega Buster. Try it on this enemy here!" It encourages you to discover the game by yourself through its design - you're right on there (i.e. pits that are too far to make it in one jump so you end up jumping up the wall). I love that stuff.

[TheyCallMeTheSwede]

I just played Chrono Trigger recently, I did not know by now if you are in 1000 AD, there is actually a house dedicated to tutorials, so I would say its in early example of a skippable/optional tutorial. To go even earlier but I don't really count because every game has one, the Neo Geo games, everytime you start up a game there is a "How to play" screen which you can skip, I am not going to name one anyway because I think we are going to split hairs here.

[GryeDor]

Come on guys, any more? I'm really interested in finding the first game that made the jump from Level 1 to Tutorial Level.