For years now, I've seen accounts from people online who claim the Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald game manual (the one that came with the game itself, NOT a separately-bought resource or strategy guide) had some sort of translation or guide to Braille for the Regi puzzle. Most people seem to think that all versions of the manual included this guide, and those who don't remember it just threw it away or forgot.
This always puzzled me. I was a very bored kid who had actually read those manuals several times, and I didn't remember anything of the sort. I recently decided to dig through my old stuff to see if I still had them, and lo and behold – not just the intact manuals for Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, but I even kept the one from my Japanese Emerald version!
I took some photos to share. Reddit isn't allowing me to post images for some reason, so I created an Imgur account and uploaded them there:
Long story short, the American versions of the Ruby and Sapphire manuals only mention the puzzle briefly in a "Trainer Tip" on page 61. They tell you that it "might be Braille" and give no other help beyond saying you can contact Nintendo.
Emerald's manual didn't even have that! It removed the Trainer Tip entirely in favor of an expanded multiplayer section that details how to connect to FR/LG/Colosseum/Pokemon Box RS and the various multiplayer minigames. The Japanese Emerald manual was the same way – although I can't read Japanese, flipping through made it clear that there was no Braille translation of any kind.
I've expressed these findings in a couple places online, and from the anecdotes I've gotten it seems this might be a regional difference. One person said the Braille guide was definitely in their UK version, while another thought it might have been a European vs. the rest of the world deal.
So I thought I'd ask Reddit – was the Braille guide included in your country's game manual? Was this truly a regional difference, and if so, which places got it? Which places didn't? Why do you think they did it like this?
by Humble_Scene5685