We’re aware that Nintendo is aiming to crack open the mainstream gamer demographic with the Wii and that a large part of this audience might not be familiar with video games consoles and their quirky controllers, but just how much hand-holding do these newbies really need?

The attached pictures are scanned from the Japanese Wii manual. As you can see Nintendo seems to be on a mission to limit/negate the ‘idiot factor’ wherever and whenever it dares to raise its ugly little head. And they are to be saluted too for doing so too, for without such useful and timely advice how would we have known not to offer our Wii a smoke or a drink, wrap it up in a blanket, leave it out for the binmen, throttle ourselves with the Nunchuk cable, smack our mates in the kisser with the Remote or – like you do – insert what looks like a lucky Shamrock into the cooling fan?

Phew – with mere days before our own launch it’s a good job we found all this out in time, isn’t it. A lucky escape all-round, eh readers...