Bad game manuals you've seen?

belgurdo

Banned
From any generation.

I wasn't too fond of La Pucelle's...no art, and not very descriptive explanations of how the game works.

I'm also not liking the instructions for recent Capcom fighters and the KOF double pack, since they don't give you movelists in them (not all of us are fans of printing 30 page FAQs or constantly cueing up a command list when I can't remember what follows up into what
 
Pretty much all console game manuals are lacking. On PC, however, there have been some fantastic stuff out of Blizzard and Bioware.
 
I second UNLIMITED Saga. SE may as well have included just a piece of paper saying, "Hell if we know what this thing's about, so.... enjoy the FFX-2 preview!"
 
fr4nz said:
who reads manuals ???
I used to read them a lot, but not anymore unless absolutely necessary. Too many of them have spoilers, especially those for RPG's.

Panzer Dragoon Saga has a bad manual if I remember correctly. All in black & white.

I demand my manuals in color.
 
I know about 3 of you own this game here on GAF, but Steel Battalion: Line of Contact has a fucking terrible manual. It's so bad that mechs are often referred to as "aircrafts."

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http://chespace.1up.com
 
Capcom takes the goddamn cake for bad manuals...............

Check out the manuals for Devil May Cry, DMC2, Capcom vs SNK 2, Marvel Vs Capcom 2, etc...................
 
Semjaza Azazel said:
As far as I know, everything Sega has ever put out has been in black and white to this day.

Not quite. The Sonic Adventure 2 manual is in full color and is relatively detailed.
 
Who actually reads manuals? I haven't even opened one in years.

Speaking of manuals though, here's a memory from childhood:
The manual for Jurassic Park on Genesis had a cheat code in it. It showed the password select screen with a password entered, so I tried it and it worked. fun times.
 
Grand Theft Auto on the GBC. It was 2 black and whites pages. No control or gameplay details. Just a one paragraph story and some saving info. Useless.
 
NES was mixed. most games had far less information than today and were badly formatted, but most RPGs had info that is now saved for strategy guides, such as the wonderful Dragon Warrior extras that came with each game.

SNES was the same. Final Fantasy VI had a manual with info on each character and a list of all the Espers and Relics in the game. It also had a great deal of Amano Art.

On the other hand, most non-Nintendo manual sin the 8-bit days were black and white and had almost no info. Much like many manuals today,
 
SNES was the same. Final Fantasy VI had a manual with info on each character and a list of all the Espers and Relics in the game. It also had a great deal of Amano Art.

Square's SNES titles all came with great manuals. FFIV, FFVI and Secret of Mana all had big ass 100 page manuals in colour packed with tons of information and first area playthroughs and things. Really good stuff. As well as world maps.
 
lochnesssnowman said:
Square's SNES titles all came with great manuals. FFIV, FFVI and Secret of Mana all had big ass 100 page manuals in colour packed with tons of information and first area playthroughs and things. Really good stuff. As well as world maps.


Makes one wonder why Nintendo never pushed to help bring out the entire FF or DQ series in their entirety here if they were willing to help these companies go all out with small things like that
 
chespace said:
I know about 3 of you own this game here on GAF, but Steel Battalion: Line of Contact has a fucking terrible manual. It's so bad that mechs are often referred to as "aircrafts."

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http://chespace.1up.com

Truth. I spent a lot of time looking at that manual - waiting for people to join my games so I could get dropped when it started.
 
Jak & Daxter...only because it wasn't a manual, it was a big fold-out poster type thing. When I want to double-check what button does what, I don't want to have to open a buried treasure map in my lap.
 
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