Since somebody shared this nice comic about manuals in games in another community, I was thinking about them myself.
My most cherished game manual was the Diablo 2 one. The way they created a little story for each single ability was such an atmospheric wonder and probably started my fascination with lore instead of story. They were also probably the main reason why I took the necromancer and started to feel bored, when necromancer are automatically evil in a setting. Get creative!
My father had Falcon 4.0 and that was “just” a technical manual in itself. 5+ cm thick and full of schematics of the cockpit. I was in awe as a child about the complexity of that thing.
Not exactly a manual but I got stuck in Day of the Tentacle. Finally I caved and ordered the official hint book. Back then that meant sending them a letter. No idea how payment worked. My parents probably helped me with that.
It took an eternity to arrive. A few weeks at least. In the meantime I tried to progress the game. The day before the book arrived I managed to do it (use physics book with horse). And once I was past that I managed to beat the rest of the game.
But it wasn’t in vain. The book contained the story of the game written like an essay by Bernard (basically the game’s main character). It was pretty funny. So I didn’t regret ordering it.
Starflight was a formative game for me. It’s an open world space exploration game with ~800 planets in over 200 solar systems.
And it pretty much just drops you in the middle of it without any explanation. After a bit you get some news updates from your home base talking about a huge, imminent threat that’s destroying entire solar systems, but they don’t hold your hand, and the galaxy is massive, and it’s impractical to find the points of interest in such a large space.
I watched my dad play it as a kid. We spent hours exploring and gathering resources to upgrade the ship and explore further, but we never really scratched the surface of the main quest.
Then as a teenager I went back and finally read the fucking manual. The back half of it was a journal written by a space captain not unlike myself, which had been sent back in time from several months in the future. It gives tips, like how to communicate with the different alien species and the locations of some rare items. More importantly, it guides the player to the main quest, which is fucking amazing. All of this written like a captain’s log, so it’s a fun story in its own right.
Starflight manual:
expand
Second answer: Tunic. This one is cheating because the game is about nostalgia for manuals, but it’s so well done.
You find these beautifully illustrated manual pages throughout the game, and they become an essential part of figuring out the world. Part of it is written in a made up language, and every page you find gives you more context to translate it. Then there are abilities you have from the moment you start the game, but you won’t realize how to use them until the manual gives you simple button instructions.
Amazing game. If you love old school game manuals, you need to check it out.
They later released a version with a physical manual, but you shouldn’t look at the pages until you find them in the game.
I think my favorite single moment, a personal anecdote, relating to video game manuals is from Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego for Windows 95. Which came with a full copy of the 1995 World Almanac. I was about 8 or 9 at the time. One of the clues was “I heard he was leaving Lesotho by car.” I went, “Wait, is that the little nation in the middle of South Africa?” I looked it up in the book, it was, and I won that round of the game based on that clue.
I think my overall favorite video game manual has to be the one from A Link to the Past. A lot of manuals had maybe a prologue or backstory in the manual, A Link to the Past has like three, including the creation myth of the in-game religion. Go read ALttP’s manual and tell me it hasn’t been the design document of the entire series since.
One more: For some reason, Illusion of Gaia for the SNES includes a full walkthrough right in the manual. They just outright spoil the entire game in the manual. Not sure why they did that.
For me, Sim Earth has the coolest manual. The thing was huge, maybe 200 pages and the size of a trade paperback. It was basically a primer on planetary science and was absolutely fascinating for 12 year old me to read.
Honorable mentions to to the manuals for the Warcraft RTS games and StarCraft. Those had some great backstory and lore.
Not necessarily my favorite, but a nostalgic memory I have is my game manual from my Sega Genesis game “Mickey’s World of Illusuion”. Just like in the comic you mentioned, you couldn’t save your progress, but you could put codes in to jump to different levels. You got those codes by playing to the end of those levels. I was just a little kid, and played with my dad. My mom wrote all the level codes in the booklet for each level as we beat them together. I distinctly remember she wrote one of the later levels down wrong and we had to beat it from scratch, and from then on there was a patch of white out in the booklet where she corrected the code. I remember this SO vividly ! I remember her handwriting, and the texture of the white out spot, and the little pictures of Mickey and Donald that she doodled in the margins.
Hey thanks for the sweet memory, and for the space to share it :')
I bought Asheron’s Call (after a friend raved about it when I was in 7th grade) the day before we left on a family roadtrip. I brought the manual with me and fondly remember the discussions of different monster races, human networks and towns, weapons, and magic. Really set up for a great time that I might have missed if I had just installed the game and played. Those older games were pretty notorious for only showing those details in offline materials.
Two come immediately to mind, both PC games: Heroes of Might and Magic II and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
HoMM2 had a big, thick manual explaining all the game mechanics, but the really cool thing was a big inflatable, laminated chart/poster showing you every unit in the game with its stats so you could look stuff up during a battle and make intelligent decisions (I believe the GoG version comes with a PDF of it, but I still have my original physical one and it’s awesome).
Similarly, Morrowind came with a gorgeous, full color world map along with the manual. They reprinted it and included it with the anniversary anthology pack that came out in the 2010s that included Elder Scrolls 1 through 5, but they cheaped out and printed it in monochrome.
Bonus: Even the original Pokemon games fit this bill. The manual tells you about the type system and gives you a little rock paper scissors style diagram showing how the 3 starter types beat each other to get you going and hint that other types also interact that way.
That original Dragon Quest manual was a great read. But if I had to pick I’d say it was the Warcraft and Warcraft II manuals. Those were great. So much kick ass lore.
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The manual is basically copy protection, but it’s funny.
That said, breast manual by far: it’s SNES’ Earthbound. Scratch 'n Sniff ftw.
I used to take my Metroid II manual with me everywhere. I loved the drawings. I had the cover plastified at school too.
Not exactly a manual but I got stuck in Day of the Tentacle. Finally I caved and ordered the official hint book. Back then that meant sending them a letter. No idea how payment worked. My parents probably helped me with that.
It took an eternity to arrive. A few weeks at least. In the meantime I tried to progress the game. The day before the book arrived I managed to do it (use physics book with horse). And once I was past that I managed to beat the rest of the game.
But it wasn’t in vain. The book contained the story of the game written like an essay by Bernard (basically the game’s main character). It was pretty funny. So I didn’t regret ordering it.
I still have the manual for the original StarCraft. It has a full history for all the races and their different clans
Best thing about StarCraft is UMS maps.
I’ll die on this hill!
2nd best thing, the best thing is the thriving pro scene!
Pretty much all of the Uniracers manual. I even made a post about it.
Jesus I remember how hard that game got towards the end. The trick puzzles definitely never got finished.
Yeah I think I only got maybe halfway through but I don’t really remember.
Starflight on Sega Genesis.
Starflight was a formative game for me. It’s an open world space exploration game with ~800 planets in over 200 solar systems.
And it pretty much just drops you in the middle of it without any explanation. After a bit you get some news updates from your home base talking about a huge, imminent threat that’s destroying entire solar systems, but they don’t hold your hand, and the galaxy is massive, and it’s impractical to find the points of interest in such a large space.
I watched my dad play it as a kid. We spent hours exploring and gathering resources to upgrade the ship and explore further, but we never really scratched the surface of the main quest.
Then as a teenager I went back and finally read the fucking manual. The back half of it was a journal written by a space captain not unlike myself, which had been sent back in time from several months in the future. It gives tips, like how to communicate with the different alien species and the locations of some rare items. More importantly, it guides the player to the main quest, which is fucking amazing. All of this written like a captain’s log, so it’s a fun story in its own right.
Starflight manual:
expand
Second answer: Tunic. This one is cheating because the game is about nostalgia for manuals, but it’s so well done.
You find these beautifully illustrated manual pages throughout the game, and they become an essential part of figuring out the world. Part of it is written in a made up language, and every page you find gives you more context to translate it. Then there are abilities you have from the moment you start the game, but you won’t realize how to use them until the manual gives you simple button instructions.
Amazing game. If you love old school game manuals, you need to check it out.
They later released a version with a physical manual, but you shouldn’t look at the pages until you find them in the game.
Tunic manual:
expand
Ok yeah, Tunic is cheating! But it is simply awesome, I agree.
I think my favorite single moment, a personal anecdote, relating to video game manuals is from Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego for Windows 95. Which came with a full copy of the 1995 World Almanac. I was about 8 or 9 at the time. One of the clues was “I heard he was leaving Lesotho by car.” I went, “Wait, is that the little nation in the middle of South Africa?” I looked it up in the book, it was, and I won that round of the game based on that clue.
I think my overall favorite video game manual has to be the one from A Link to the Past. A lot of manuals had maybe a prologue or backstory in the manual, A Link to the Past has like three, including the creation myth of the in-game religion. Go read ALttP’s manual and tell me it hasn’t been the design document of the entire series since.
One more: For some reason, Illusion of Gaia for the SNES includes a full walkthrough right in the manual. They just outright spoil the entire game in the manual. Not sure why they did that.
As barely a teen back then, Breath of Fire 2’s stuck with me because of the scantily clad shamans on page 32.
I’d say vigilante 8. Reading all the bios and controls on the way home made me feel like I was already familiar with it by the time I got home.
For me, Sim Earth has the coolest manual. The thing was huge, maybe 200 pages and the size of a trade paperback. It was basically a primer on planetary science and was absolutely fascinating for 12 year old me to read.
Honorable mentions to to the manuals for the Warcraft RTS games and StarCraft. Those had some great backstory and lore.
Not necessarily my favorite, but a nostalgic memory I have is my game manual from my Sega Genesis game “Mickey’s World of Illusuion”. Just like in the comic you mentioned, you couldn’t save your progress, but you could put codes in to jump to different levels. You got those codes by playing to the end of those levels. I was just a little kid, and played with my dad. My mom wrote all the level codes in the booklet for each level as we beat them together. I distinctly remember she wrote one of the later levels down wrong and we had to beat it from scratch, and from then on there was a patch of white out in the booklet where she corrected the code. I remember this SO vividly ! I remember her handwriting, and the texture of the white out spot, and the little pictures of Mickey and Donald that she doodled in the margins.
Hey thanks for the sweet memory, and for the space to share it :')
I bought Asheron’s Call (after a friend raved about it when I was in 7th grade) the day before we left on a family roadtrip. I brought the manual with me and fondly remember the discussions of different monster races, human networks and towns, weapons, and magic. Really set up for a great time that I might have missed if I had just installed the game and played. Those older games were pretty notorious for only showing those details in offline materials.
Two come immediately to mind, both PC games: Heroes of Might and Magic II and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
HoMM2 had a big, thick manual explaining all the game mechanics, but the really cool thing was a big inflatable, laminated chart/poster showing you every unit in the game with its stats so you could look stuff up during a battle and make intelligent decisions (I believe the GoG version comes with a PDF of it, but I still have my original physical one and it’s awesome).
Similarly, Morrowind came with a gorgeous, full color world map along with the manual. They reprinted it and included it with the anniversary anthology pack that came out in the 2010s that included Elder Scrolls 1 through 5, but they cheaped out and printed it in monochrome.
Bonus: Even the original Pokemon games fit this bill. The manual tells you about the type system and gives you a little rock paper scissors style diagram showing how the 3 starter types beat each other to get you going and hint that other types also interact that way.
My favourite are the Zork Zero feelies e.g., blueprints and a piece of parchment that held clues to the in-game puzzles.
That original Dragon Quest manual was a great read. But if I had to pick I’d say it was the Warcraft and Warcraft II manuals. Those were great. So much kick ass lore.