Best Video Game Manuals

[TheEagleXIII]

I know there’s the Fine Literature icon, but I’ve always kinda assumed it meant the manual was well-written, explanatory or just tome-like in size. Plus with limited space for the review, it understandably isn’t always mentioned what’s so special about some of the manuals.

But I’m gearing up to play the original Zelda on NES for the first time and thought I’d give the manual a glance. And I gotta say, this thing is amazing for its time.

There’s a section a few pages in full of art depicting aspects of the game - but they all look like high quality stills from a cartoon.




I could just imagine being a kid in the 80s and this 8bit pixelated world coming to life even more so thanks to these images in the manual. The rest of the manual is still very high quality and has occasional cartoons here and there mixed with stills from the game. But that beginning section alone is worthy of a mention.

So it got me thinking. In a world where manuals barely even exist any more, what other great or unique game manuals were out there?

Could even be a potential article for the site if there’s enough examples?

[VideoGameCritic]

Great post and good idea about the special!

Off the top of my head I recall the Donkey Kong Country manual made me laugh out loud!
There were a lot of really good Atari 2600 manuals that got me totally stoked to play the game.
Just the other day while playing Phantom Menace (PS1) I was in all of the full-color booklet featuring many still from the movie.

It used to be publishers took pride in what they were selling. Now you can't even get a complete game!
Instead you get a half-baked game in a recycle-friendly box. Joy.

[Zack Burner]

Great post and good idea about the special!

Off the top of my head I recall the Donkey Kong Country manual made me laugh out loud!
There were a lot of really good Atari 2600 manuals that got me totally stoked to play the game.
Just the other day while playing Phantom Menace (PS1) I was in all of the full-color booklet featuring many still from the movie.

It used to be publishers took pride in what they were selling. Now you can't even get a complete game!
Instead you get a half-baked game in a recycle-friendly box. Joy.

I loved Donkey Kong Country's manual, so polished even today. Super Metroid's another great one as well with the sci-fi edge to it. Yes, I loved the original Legend of Zelda Manual as well for those cartoon images. I can say the same of Link to the Past's manual too. If anyone has played the original Sly Cooper games, the progressing games are the Thievius Racoonus looking more torn up as you progress along the series, plus I like the police file look of the pages as well. I'm sure there's more I could discuss if I could bring them up.

[Luigi & Peach]

I had forgotten about that Zelda manual. Along with the map it was some good stuff. I still kick myself over losing my Toejam & Earl for the Genesis manual. I really loved the Earthling description section in it as a kid.

[strat]

The manual for LTTP was written and illustrated by Yoshiaki Koizumi who's now in charge of the Mario series. It was his first job at Nintendo.

[ActRaiser]

I used to love reading the manual while riding in the back seat of the car on the way home after purchasing the game. It was usually a 45 minute car ride so that gave me lots of time to pour over the manual to try to learn as much about the game as possible before getting to play it when I got home.

Good times.

[icepeople]

Two unusual contenders that included mini-novels from my very retro and often obscure platform/gaming experciences:

· A Mind Forever Voyaging: Since "1984" is my favorite book I'm a big fan of this dystopian text-only Infocom adventure. Initially I just played after skimming the basic instructions. But sitting down with the novella, while not really essential to the game, was a whole different mind-bender.

The text can be found at: https://archive.org/stream/A_Mind_Forever_Voyaging/A_Mind_Forever_Voyaging_djvu.txt

· Lords of Midnight: This ZX Spectrum classic RPG/strategy hack-and-slash, like many of its era, is short on persona within the game. But it makes up for it with a far better than normal back story that turn those small blobs of pixels into Sim/virtual pet charcters whose sterile on-screen moves suddenly acquire meaningful life.

Link to manual: https://archive.org/details/c64man_lords-midnight/page/n3/mode/2up