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[Grug]

Quality game manuals seem to be a dying art these days.

Back in the late 80's, early 90's, alot of PC games had bloody magnificent manuals.

The Microprose range of PC flight simulators (F117A Stealth Fighter, Falcon, F15 Strike Eagle etc)particularly stand out for me, those things were bloody tomes that were basically technical manuals for the planes.

They also had chapters on military rules of engagement etc, flight log books etc... they made the game such a rewarding package all round.

These days you are lucky to get a PDF manual on the disc. And I frigging hate those things.

 

[Azure Dream]

Maybe for PCs it's gotten worse, but console games?

It was a common practice to rewrite backstory, or just cut it completely, things were badly translated and often referred to items that didn't exist in the final English build of the game, and Sega's insistance on those ugly black and white books to save money...

 

[Red Scarlet]

Some NES games had neat manuals/extra stuff. The cloth maps in Ultimas ruled too.

 

[cvxfreak]

Japanese manuals are still high quality as far as I can observe. In the US, Capcom comes to mind for having bad PS2 instruction booklets. =/

 

[chaosyn]

Capcom and EA are the worst when it comes to manuals, at least here in the states. They're almost always in black & white, and contain little information or anything of interest.

 

[VOOK]

Starcraft, Age of Empires II, Perfect Dark come to mind...

 

[Naked Snake]

Nintendo still makes nice full-color manuals.

I hate cheapo black and white manuals

 

[Wafflecopter]

PC still has fantastic manuals They vary though, mainly in genre. The manual's for Baldur's Gate 2 and WoW are completely sexual. WoW is essentially a miniature book.

 

[BudokaiMR2]

Yeah I sat down and read almost all of the WoW manual while my game was installing and patching.

I also remember one of the Mechwarrior games having a manual that I read thoroughly. I think it was 2 because that was the one I played the most anyway.

Console game manuals usually aren't that great. Working Designs always had good ones, plus cool extras.

<sob>

 

[n-off]

Maniac Mansion on the C64 came with a huge poster of a blackboard. There were tons of hints written on it. Very cool.

 

[Hyoushi]

Awesome.

edit: Also this one:

Has great military info. Hehe.

 

[biggreenmachine]

Maniac Mansion on the C64 came with a huge poster of a blackboard. There were tons of hints written on it. Very cool.

A DS sequal to MM would slay. It has always been one of my favorite games from back in hte 8 bit days.

Worst manual ever? Half Life 2 for PC, It actually comes with a card with the keyboard controls and install instructs, but it has no pages.

 

[BobTheFork]

^^^ DOTT would rock on DS, but i'd rather see them make a 3rd MM game.

 

[Excelion]

The Vault Dweller's Survival Guide with awesome backstory and PipBoy illustrations is still the best

 

[biggreenmachine]

^^^ DOTT would rock on DS, but i'd rather see them make a 3rd MM game.

Sorry, I know there was a second game but I never played it. I meant a new sequal.

 

[Tiktaalik]

Computer game manuals have always been awesome, console ones have always been meh, except for maybe good art.

The best game manuals are probably the Blizzard ones, and the manual for Homeword.

 

[Zensetsu]

You've gotta love it when you see a decent amount of effort put in.....TA:Kingdoms had a great manual with a bunch of cool stories in it that introduced you to the different lands. Sacrifice had a cool one too, and Neverwinter Nights. Similarly the Arcanum manual is nice.

 

[Bartman3010]

I miss the comic book stories that would be on some game manuals. Like Jazz Jackrabbit or Bubsy Bobcat.

I also miss the quick reference cards that were included in some Nintendo 64 games.

Plus, Capcom needs new instruction booklet designers, because they pick the worst font, have the worst page layout, however, Viewtiful Joe DS' booklet was a step in the right direction, though I dont approve of some of these font choices, but hey, its got a nice layout, and looks cool, riddled with art instead of dodgy screen shots. I hate those who take pictures in-game of items instead of using the artwork, when even some of the time, the item is off center or, well, not there at all.

 

[Ulthwe]

Manuals and Boxart are one of the main reasons my DS collection consists of only 1 EU game (Mario Kart) and the other 8 are from Japan.

 

[elektrotal]

Dude, old wargames used to come with manuals that were pretty much giant primers on the history of war and tactics. The old panzer games, for instance. You could kill a nazi with a swift slam to the head from one of those =)

Or the awesome manual for SimLife, or any of the early sim games. Good times.

 

[Lord Error]

Anyone have the manual for the Japanese release of SCEJ pinball game "Flipnic"? That was completely crazy.

I've heard that the manual for the last Indy game was very neat too. I never saw what it looks like though.

Packaging/manual for the LE of European Ico was really nice too.

 

[nataku]

The manual for Guild Wars is really great. Almost 150 full color pages long printed on high quality paper and full of great artwork and info on the game. It's probably the only manual I've been impressed with in a while.

 

[Atari2600]

EA doesn't even remember manuals that give you basic game information. It's disgusting what they call a manual now.

 

[worldrunover]

I remember NEEDING the Zelda I book to actually complete the game (it gave hints as to where otherwise completely random entrances were).

 

[shuri]

Awesome.

edit: Also this one:

Has great military info. Hehe.

The re-print had blue buttons instead of green ones and the manual isnt even in color! That's the one I have

 

[OmniAvenger]

Grug, you are SO right! The "manuals" EA produced for their first string of Xbox 360 games were completely laughable. The days of creative/funny/informative manuals are dead.

My favorite from way back is manual for Leisure Suit Larry 3 -- that was good stuff.

 

[sammy]

the last great great manual was the Wario Ware GBA ---- stickers man, stickers!

electroplankton did have a great manual, that fucker was thick

 

[ToxicAdam]

It's definitely something that is done less and less these days.

I can still remember the old manual/map that came with Pirates! Gold (on the C-64). It was about 40 pages (w/ spiral binding) and had about 6 pages on the history of piracy and ship types. Very awesome.

 

[ghibli99]

Quality game manuals seem to be a dying art these days.

...

These days you are lucky to get a PDF manual on the disc. And I frigging hate those things.

Most game manuals these days (at least in the US) are put together by a Creative Services department, not by anyone who is intimately close to the title, like the development team. Its accuracy is generally cross-checked by the Producer(s) and QA Department, and hopefully, the developer.

I think that most of Nintendo's manuals are done pretty well. Almost always full-color with lots of nice artwork throughout, and some semblance of spark/energy in the writing.

The manual for FIFA 06 (X360) was like a 6-page black & white pamphlet... about as thin as the "Famous Jewish Sports Legends" leaflet from the movie Airplane.

Most manuals these days are so bad that I don't even bother taking them out anymore. Back in the day, reading the manual over and over was an integral part of my enjoyment of a game. Not anymore.

Same with most hintbooks/guides... look at the excellent quality of the Planescape: Torment guide or the original Bard's Tale hintbook, which was written like a journal. Really cool stuff.

 

[Beowvlf]

Shadow of the Colossus' manual was fucking gorgeous. It was landscaped so as to show off the amazing widescreen game shots within. Beautiful to look through.

 

[Version 3.0]

Quality game manuals still exist. It's just that now, they're called "Strategy Guides" and are sold separately.

 

[Coin Return]

Maybe they should bring back the days of needing a manual to complete the game, like in Day of the Tentacle.

 

[impirius]

Uniracers!

Each UniWorld, numbered 0 through 3 is essentially the same world but
with a different label applied. The difference comes from the four
worlds existing in parallel tracts of spacetime. The four-dimensional
“world-line” of a literal world (described by physics) is called a
Themed World, for example pyrokinetic themes exist for all four
instances of a single world through the aforementioned dimensional
space.
The overall theory of the Uniracers’ Universe is that of a layered
reality where tracks and worlds, themes and Unicycles exist as a
separate abstraction layer overlaid on top of normal three-dimensional
curved spacetime.
The manifestation of such a layer into our perceived Universe is
made possible by cutting a slice out of this abstraction layer,
converting it to digital bit-slices and rendering it on a display
device such as a television set or monitor. This is the function
performed by the SNES. It resonates in a similar manner to a radio
tuner and can pick up the emitted “reality waves”
And I bet you thought we only wrote games!

Zelda: OOT had a good manual, too. The best one I've seen recently is Shadow of the Colossus.

 

[inthegray]

Crusader: No Remorse had a good manual, but also came with a patriotic/corporate newsletter as well as a terrorist's handbook.

 

[syllogism]

Falcon 4.0 manual is 579 pages (+ like 200 pages of diagrams), but PDF only if I recall correctly. Mind boggles.

edit: Falcon 3.0 manual was over 300 pages and printed

 

[Drey1082]

My favorite manual when I was young was the Simcity2000 manual. That thing was like a novel.

EA manuals are the worst for sure, followed by the recent capcom manuals.

 

[atomsk]

in recent memory...

good: bumpy trot (something like 47 full color pages)

bad: burnout revenge (8 pages black and white, fuck you EA)

atlus is pretty good about manuals thankfully

 

[junkwaffle]

Uniracers!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

(37) MEMO

Oh yeah? So when was the last time you actually used a “memo” section
at the back of an instruction booklet? Are you going to start now?
That’s pretty doubtful, but just for tradition’s sake, here’s a memo
section. (Albeit a small one, have fun!)

Psst! Hey guys;
There’s something I’m not supposed to tell you. Uniracers has
another kind of stunt! It’s something called a “tabletop” and you can
do it by...erm...heck, it’s some buttons or other....
Whoops! I’ve been rumbled, gotta go!
Yours,
The Writer.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[human5892]

Another vote for the SotC manual. That's actually the first one that I've ever encountered that is layed out horizontally, and it works really well.

Another recent manual that I really appreciate is the one for We <3 Katamari. Instead of taking screenshots directly from the game, they had an illustrator draw the screenshots -- they included all of the HUD elements as if the screenshots were real, but they were all actually just illustrations. It was a very unique approach.

 

[xsarien]

Rockstar puts genuine effort into their manuals, and it shows.

 

[TheDuce22]

I prefer ingame tutorials.

 

[hahahax]

What about the DVD-cases? It feels very cheap to me.
Especially GCN-games. All that empty darkness surrounding the tiny disc.
The cases take up too much space compared to the jewel-cases of last gen.
Also, you never get to see beautiful art behind transparent plastic these days. Only the
Metal Gear Solids and a few special edition games have this.

On the front of the case you now have all these logos and icons that used to be relegated to the back. On Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow I count 4 ugly logos cluttering up the artwork. I'm not including the Konami, DS and Nintendo logos. The back is a total mess with double the amount.

When you start a game you have to go through several screens of useless information not relating to the actual game.

When publishers expect people to pay more for games this gen, I say go to hell.
Start providing actual content to go along with the game-experience. I'm never going to pay for just virtual data ever.
I want an actual item with some real value that I can clean, shine, sort and build forts with. Geez I wonder why people pirate games..

 

[Matlock]

Best manual ever.

 

[Bartman3010]

You gotta be kidding, thats how big the manual was?

 

[FlyinJ]

The best game manual of all time was Darklands from Microprose.

Amazing amount of backstory and history of medieval Germany. The game was so much better after reading through the entire thing.

 

[MrPing1000]

Microprose seem good at them, Civ2's manual was epic as well

 

[Jack Mehoffer]

EA's current manuals are a complete disgrace. Black and while, never more than 10 pages and they totally omit a ton of important gameplay related info. Don't know how to do something in the game, you ain't finding it in there. They might as well just include a link to GameFAQS instead of this drivel.

 

[ocelittle]

Best manual ever.

Was that the only page?
If so, :lol

 

[Stinkles]

Manuals are expensive to make and a real drag on resources. That said, some dev teams still make their own. And really care about them.

 

[Wollan]

Best manual ever.

:lol :lol :lol