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ITT We fawn over old manuals and strategy guides

Search your heart, you know it to be true...

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and I think it's almost impossible if you haven't sneaked a peek into this guide at some point in your life...

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It's in terrible condition, but I still have the official Ocarina of Time strategy book. It's good for a nostalgic read every now and then.
I also have the Dreamcast strategy guide that came out @ launch, it has like 10 miniguides for all the launch games, like Soul Cali, Blue Stinger and Sonic Adventure.
 
Syndicate Wars had a pretty cool official strategy guide. The entire guide is written in character as an informant in the cyberpunk age. Highlights include descriptions of the weapons and an explanation for the lighting engine compared to the first game's universal illumination :lol
 
mavs said:
Syndicate Wars had a pretty cool official strategy guide. The entire guide is written in character as an informant in the cyberpunk age. Highlights include descriptions of the weapons and an explanation for the lighting engine compared to the first game's universal illumination :lol
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I would have killed for this back in the day...
 
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It read like a story. And it was fucking fantastic.

I have a hell of a lot of Player's Guides from the N64/Gameboy days, and even some from the Gamecube days. <3
 
Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale both had AWESOME manuals bound like fancy spiral notebooks. Shame I can't find any pictures of the actual manual online.
 
As a Krautgaffer I dearly love the Secret of Mana/Terranigma/Super Metroid/...-Manuals. See, we Germans (probably Europeans) got these games in a huge-ass box with a full-color and fully-featured game guide insteade of a manual. They were hideously expensive, but then again, so were most games in the SNES era, so it didn't hurt THAT much.

The artwork and hints contained in these "easymode-manuals" was awesome to me - I had the discipline to not read ahead and spoil myself the game. Double-edged sword, that.

Just a quick shot of some of those beauties, the CDR is for size comparison purposes.
1T8k


I couldn't find my Monkey Island Codewheel on short notice, or it would have made an appearance too. I loved and hated it at the same time.
 
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I read this book front to cover multiple times before I got it for Christmas...a month span:lol :lol
 
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I think it even had movesets for each pokemon and what level they learned them at. Back then we didn't have internet so it was invaluable. Validated the existence of school book fairs that year.
 
The manual for the Homeworld series, especially the original and Cataclysm.

They contained a lot of back story and ship profiles. I think the one from Homeworld 1 is available online.
 
To me the pinacle of strategy guides is the Zelda:OOT official Nintendo Power Guide. The cool thing about it is that it reads like a storybood as opposed to a guide. For instance while other manuals say stuff like To defeat the boss you must slash his chest when he's growling, this manual says "Link galantly slashed the bosses chest when he was growling". I picked up the guid. even though I already had an unofficial one just for the novelty alone.

I also remember the Nintedo guide for Starfox including an interview with Myamoto in the back. That was a nice touch...
 
The stand out manual for me was the Wing Commander manual, complete with blueprints of all the fighters and capital ships. I wish I had pics.

The strategy guide that came with the System Shock Enhanced Edition puts most to shame.
 
Frontier: Elite 2's manual stands out for me because of the pseudo spaceship manual nicely interweaving with lore from game world and insane technical precision of it's "Fly by wire" section.

I also thought NOM UK's guide for Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow were really well made, nicely formatted and insightful.
 
borghe said:
Versus Books had THE BEST guides ever. their OoT and FFVII guides were AMAZING.
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Pretty much every Versus Books Perfect Guide was the best guide for the game written. The FFVII guide made the game so much more enjoyable than it would have been without it, I would have missed a lot of content.

Casey Loe. :bow
 
CTLance said:
As a Krautgaffer I dearly love the Secret of Mana/Terranigma/Super Metroid/...-Manuals. See, we Germans (probably Europeans) got these games in a huge-ass box with a full-color and fully-featured game guide insteade of a manual. They were hideously expensive, but then again, so were most games in the SNES era, so it didn't hurt THAT much.

The artwork and hints contained in these "easymode-manuals" was awesome to me - I had the discipline to not read ahead and spoil myself the game. Double-edged sword, that.

Just a quick shot of some of those beauties, the CDR is for size comparison purposes.
1T8k


I couldn't find my Monkey Island Codewheel on short notice, or it would have made an appearance too. I loved and hated it at the same time.
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That's pretty awesome. I wouldn't mind have a look at the Mystic Quest one. :P
 
oracrest said:
The ultimate. Complete, with HAND DRAWN MAPS!

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Bought it about a year ago off of ebay! It was as amazing as I remembered it. A true classic book!
 
jett said:
That's pretty awesome. I wouldn't mind have a look at the Mystic Quest one. :P
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Some random pages: 1 2 3

New (and hellishly cheap) Digicam + late-nite snapping equals dubious quality. Sorry. I may be able to snap some better shots tomorrow if you want.
 
FFVII and FFVIII guides were my favorite books ever, didn't have internet so having all the ins and outs made me feel special
 
Strategy guides and manuals used to be fucking magical.

I remember reading them constantly and even taking them to school with me!

I actually did that in college with Oblivion's guide shortly after it came out :lol
It was a lecture hall class so nobody knew what I was reading.

It was a great strategy guide though.
 
I still have a bookshelf full of old game hint books (Die by the Sword, Ripper, Blade Runner, etc) from when I worked at CompUSA.

Anyways, I came here to post Infocom's extra content (pocket fluff, stones, etc) as well as the whole Invisiclues thing. I still use "This space intentionally left blank" whereever I can.

With luck, I can get that added under my username one day :D
 
Sunflower said:
Bought it about a year ago off of ebay! It was as amazing as I remembered it. A true classic book!
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I did the same. My original copy was all beaten up and cut apart.

This was always a favorite too. Lots of great original art.

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Space Quest 5. Its a freaking galactic inquirer.

Falcon 3.0 box was used to to keep all my other manuals from flying away from my desk.

I loved Mechwarrior 2's field manual. Love the little side notes and doodles in the manual.
 
The Versus Books guides were great, even if they got some little details wrong (half bonus for damage on dual typed Pokemon? lolwut). And I could've done something about it if it wasn't for their critical existence failure...

Though I'm glad to see the Ocarina of Time guide. That thing was a goddamn lifesaver.
 
oracrest said:
I did the same. My original copy was all beaten up and cut apart.

This was always a favorite too. Lots of great original art.

dWbook.jpg
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The images in that guide really helped me visualize the game. Very different image from the toriyama anime stuff.

Nintendo in the NES and SNES days had awesome manuals. that SMB3 one god used to death and read to death.

I also used the original Final Fantasy one a ton
http://countzeroor.files.wordpress....es-final-fantasy-v1-3-of-6-1990_10-page-1.jpg

And the Final Fantasy III (VI) one too

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I definitely picked up the corresponding guide to almost every game I played growing up and I used to own a good number of the ones being posted in this thread.

Somehow I kept them all in near-mint condition and forgot about them back at my parents' house for the good part of a decade. I came across all of my guides and, despite the good memories, decided to get rid of them just to simplify my life and cut back on a lot of things.

I almost just tossed them but decided to check online to see what they were worth, and I am way glad that I did. I really cleaned up selling these things to collectors on eBay and Amazon. I was actually shocked at how much people were willing to pay for some of these things...someone paid around $150 just for my Chrono Trigger Nintendo Power guide. That really adds up when you have dozens of these old things lying around.
 
My favorite is the C64 Pirates! manual. You got a fold-out map, and then the book had all this cool information about the different kind of ships in the game, the schedules for the Treasure Fleet and the Silver Train, and the tales of Cap'n Sydney were little stories related to each section of the instructions. Pretty neat.
 
blayne IV said:
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My favorite guide ever.
Still have my copy, even though its beat up pretty bad.
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I wish to all that is holy that I could find my copy of this guide. Well done with no glaring mistakes, plus a lot more personal opinion then you find in most guides. I bought this when a local mom and pop book store was going under and read it through time and again even after the rental store I got FF VI from lost the game and before I bought it off of a kid on my bus for $15.
 
I love the Starcraft manual, loads of info about all the units and buildings, and then a ton of backstory about different factions from the different races. And some pretty awesome concept art scattered throughout.
 
Astrolad or some other Wasteland fan reminded me of this in a post not too long ago.
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Fantastic stuff. Also love the manual for the old Origin 8-bit computer adaptation of OGRE (programmable behaviors!) and love the classic NES game guide...that, with the old Gameplayers mags that simply showed a game title, a single screenshot, and a blurb about the game were pretty awesome stuff for an 80s gamer.
 
Only guide I ever gave a damn about is the Vagrant Story Ultimania. I can't understand a damn word of it but I just know it's packed with Ultimania famed levels of information and one day hope to learn Japanese to be able to decipher it.
 
I love the FF6 manual for SNES.

I agree with the OP though. Today's manuals seem very lacking. I also don't get why they make them in black and white. I really wonder how money they're saving by not printing them in color. There are some nice ones though. Infinite Undiscovery got me really excited to play the game (said excitement sufficiently dropped once I actually played the game, lol) Lost Odyssey has a nice manual, and the Blue Dragon manual is really, really good.

Aside from that, I'm not too fond of the back of video game cases now-a-days. A lot usually tell such little info about the game and are just a pic or two.
 
Natetan said:
The images in that guide really helped me visualize the game. Very different image from the toriyama anime stuff.
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Yeah, I always imagined those more realistic illustrations when I was playing through the game.
 
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