Poll of the Day > Remember video game instruction manuals

(+) Yeah! (+)

I miss those days!

https://snolli.fr/dwl/gamelist/docs/The%20lost%20vikings.pdf

I liked it when games came with supplemental materials, like the Grail Diary that came with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/b4c90f32.jpg

And I remember the copy protection that took the form of a sheet and a red filter that you placed over it to read the code.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/8/8d401b74.jpg

yeah I definitely have nostalgia from driving home from the store in the backseat of my parent's car, going over the instruction manual hyping up the new game

BUMPED2002 posted...

Remember video game instruction manuals?

I still have one of these in my office:

https://i.ebayimg.com/thumbs/images/g/46UAAOSwVYZf0q-y/s-l500.jpg



captpackrat posted...

I liked it when games came with supplemental materials

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Feelies

I got a crate full of PC game manuals and supplements (copy protection, cloth maps). It's old and useless and smells funny but I can't bring myself to throw it away.

If someone else threw this crate away 10 years ago I probably wouldn't have noticed.

josh posted...

I got a crate full of PC game manuals and supplements (copy protection, cloth maps). It's old and useless and smells funny but I can't bring myself to throw it away.

If someone else threw this crate away 10 years ago I probably wouldn't have noticed.

Noooo, don't throw it away. It'd be a shame to lose that stuff. Do you remember for which games you have that stuff for? Some of it is probably worthwhile to sell.

HelIWithoutSin posted...

Noooo, don't throw it away. It'd be a shame to lose that stuff. Do you remember for which games you have that stuff for? Some of it is probably worthwhile to sell.

CRPG manuals, like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights and such (including the cloth maps for 1 and 2), the Oblivion lore book iirc and the Septim coin. Stuff from that era, from BG1 on-wards probably.

The Switch version of Rune Factory 5 came with a manual, which really surprised me. I do generally miss them, though it makes sense that they've been phased out with how much more efficient it is to provide instructions in-game.

Yes I was reading the one for battlefront renegade squadron

I miss games not having so many tutorials.

I still have many of those games. I usually read the instruction manuals before playing the games.

captpackrat posted...

And I remember the copy protection that took the form of a sheet and a red filter that you placed over it to read the code.

I remember having a solid 3/4 of the TIE Fighter codewords from the instruction book memorized, because I kept misplacing it and not being able to sign in to the game.

I remember when strategy/sim games used to come with 300+ page manuals just to over-explain the game and every possible bit of back-lore associated with it. And of course, when Myst came with a literal notebook (not just a few blank pages at the end of the manual marked "notes") because of all the notes you needed to take to understand everything. I still have a copy of the Red Baron manual that was basically a complete history of World War I, the aircraft, and the biography of every Ace featured in the game.

https://www.fangamer.com/products/tunic-hardcover-manual

does this count

because i have this

A long, long time ago the World was in an age of Chaos . . .

I was reading online the booklet to the original Legend of Zelda game and I was enthralled by the backstory. It would be a pretty neat send-back if somehow the movie starts off with Impa being sent by Zelda to find a man of courage and then Link is revealed to us by running into Impa and saving her from distress.

impa would never be in distress

she would be the cause of the distress for any assailant

Any damsel that's in distress be outta that dress when she meet Jim West Link.

Oh yeah. Instruction manuals were great. They made it fun to learn all about the characters, items, and controls for the game. And the artwork was usually cool too.

And I'm generally not one for stories in games, but those intro stories that some games had were one of my favorite things in the manuals.

I certainly remember passwords being incorporated in reading material, like the images above. I think Sierra might've done it in some of their games too.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Any damsel that's in distress be outta that dress when she meet Jim West Link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPhXKak_bHw

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/04c6cda1.jpg

Infocom always had good feelies.

https://gallery.guetech.org/greybox.html

(Click one of the game boxes to see the feelies for that game.)