Remember when games had manuals too?

Once I got Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for my birthday, I just so happened to do something (don't remember what) to get grounded from TV/Nintendo for a month. I read that manual so many times over the next month. Not sure I ever actually beat that game.

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Don’t worry, no one beat that game.

(Obviously now sixteen people will come in and tell me they beat the game but I will take this chance to mention that the PC port was literally unbeatable without cheating or modifying the game due to a mapping bug.)

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- Never beat the og NES. Always died at the technodrone and them damn pink bugs.
  
  I got so good at the swimming section i could do it without touching the seaweed once tho beat that
  
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- If we're talking Turtles in Time? Hell no. Same goes for getting the proper ending in Streets of Rage 2 on hard mode. Still my favorite soundtrack of that era.
  
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Bitch

Buying a game during a trip to another town, being away from your computer for a week, and spending the entire week just fondling the game box, reading it, reading the papers that came inside, doing game foreplay.

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I only did that once. It was R-Type.

I got it back home and it wouldn't load. My parents were not in the mood to drive all the way back for the sake of £2.99 of my pocket money.

I eventually palmed it off on Toys R Us when I noticed their receipts just said "Game". I got another copy. That wouldn't load either.

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I was a young adult when I bought falcon 3.0. I was two days from home and spent the car ride reading that book that came with it. It quickly ended up on the shelf above the toilet and I spent a many evacuations looking through it. I have never before or since bought a game with a larger manual.

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A week... My family took 4 week vacations every summer. Of course I had to buy a game the first week. Those manuals and gaming magazines during summer got a lot of attention.

Sweet memories.

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I remember doing that for HoMM3. I brought it with me from home when I stayed with my grandparents for a few weeks one summer. It wouldn't install on their PC so I just read the manual cover to cover forever.

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I still have some of my game booklets from NES, Genesis/Master System, and N64. I always kept them in bags as a kid so they’re nice and crisp.

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So hot.

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All of these comments and not a single shout-out to the original StarCraft manual. Back stories and histories of the three races that culminated in their eventual discovery of each other.

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Old blizzard games had full sized books as manuals that had story & art! Starcraft, warcraft 2 & 3 (never owned a legit copy of 1 so I assume), Diablo 1, 2, & 3! Glory days.

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I remember when games had swag. I still have a cloth map from one of my games.

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Some do, they just charge you like $300 for that version now.

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Lunar silver star story?

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- One of the Ultima series of games.
  
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Remember when games had a cool box, with a manual and full color booklet with the story and basics of the game, etc. Now they bring nothing, just a disc. Same with movies, a dvd used to have all these features, documentaries, Easter eggs, interactive menus and commentaries. Now you pay for a Blu ray and it brings nothing but the movie

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Nowadays you don't usually even get to own the game after purchase.

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You should play Tunic if you miss old school game pamphlets. All of the tutorials are given in the form of artwork that looks exactly like what you'd find in an NES game. The entire game is a love letter to that era of gaming.

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Such a great game. I’m actually being really indecisive about games to play, and now I want to play that.

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- I need to finish it some day! It does such a great job of capturing the feeling of starting a new adventure. It's one of the few games where I don't feel the need to look up a guide when I get stuck, because the game makes me want to learn how to progress through each area. An absolute masterclass in game design, IMO.
  
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As a child with motion sickness brought on by reading in a moving vehicle. I still did this but then got too nauseous and had to lay down.

Also the car filled with cigarette smoke with the windows up didn't help.

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The PEGI16 when you were 12 was the most thrilling part

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I grew up in a fun American Christian household so I wasn't allowed to play games beyond my mandated age range until my dad became too much of an alcoholic to give a shit.

Goldeneye? Had to play it over at a friend's house.

Starcraft? I made sure to never play as or against Zerg if there was any chance my parents were awake, as they died far too bloody deaths.

My dad gave me G Police on PC, he found it at a garage sale or something, apparently did not check the rating schema, and took it away when curse words were used in the intro cinematic.

He did not hide it well, I found the CD and played the game a week later with headphones and I just told him it was different game, which worked.

But uh, Passion of the Christ? That was fine, despite basically being a gratuitous snuff film.

Oh well, could have been worse: Our neighbors were even more extreme, leading me to getting chewed out by their mom for introducing them to Pokemon cards. Pokemon evolve, you see, therefore they are of Satan.

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- Pokemon evolve, you see
  
  Hear that, Mindy? Stupid bitch.
  
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Read the Guild Wars Factions manual over and over, because I got it before the official release and couldn't play. 2 years later I could easily solve a lore puzzle in-game with the knowledge I got from reading the manual. Totally worth it.

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It was Guild Wars Eye of the North for me. I got it just before going in family holidays.

I spent two weeks looking at it.

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Back in the day we'd buy games based on the vaguest idea of what they actually are. My parents would take me to the store and we'd get anything that looks cool enough. Best we can do is read a little bit about it in a magazine.

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Mom made me pick a game from the bargain bin. Deus ex? Weird cover. Eh I'll try it

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The box:

The game:

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- At least this one had screenshots on the back!
  
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- So immersive! Look at that spaceship!
  
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That's how I got "Rise of the robots", never got more disappointed by a game ever! 😞

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When games had manuals... Now I'm sad :(

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Probably my most-memorable manual of all time. This era was next-level with the manuals. With Police Quest 2 (pictured), you couldn't access the game without the manual, as it'd show you a mugshot and you had to match the picture to the name in the manual:

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Back when DRM was fun

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- I dunno, it could be annoying. I played an indy 500 game that asked history questions from the manual and was a pain to find the page with the answer.
  
  And I remember a Mickey game where you needed to find a specific pose in black ink on a dark brown paper. Poor contrast was meant to defeat photocopiers but also made it a pain for human eyes.
  
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fuck, some of those games had gorgeous manuals.

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Skyrim. Not too old though

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- It released in 2011.
  
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- I remember drooling over Might and Magic VI. That is clearly a manual born out of love for the thing you are doing...
  
  ps: it is available online
  
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I miss when games were physical and I actually owned them.

I miss being able to hold them in my hands, to examine the cover, to read the back.

I miss being able to crack it open and smell that plasti-ink-chemical smell that had been sealed inside from the factory with the shrinkwrap.

and yes, I absolutely miss having manuals to read.

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I still have the guide that came with Earthbound. I read that thing through so many times as a kid. I think my parents bought it new on clearance because it didn't sell and I was having a rough year.

Still remember the night I got it. It was a nice summer night, there was a block party on our street. My parents wanted to stay later than usual but let me go home to play. The adults were only one house over, but it felt like growing up getting to be home alone.

That opening sequence felt like it could have been my life in a different reality. It took a few years for me to finally beat it , but it felt like growing up with the characters in a way.

I feel the guidebook had a lot to do with my memories. It was so cool how it was presented as newspapers from towns along the way and it being a tangible object added to the immersion. Seriously a great gaming experience I can't ever replicate.

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Yesterday I came across my old Icewind Dale box. The manual is 130 pages with tiny print.

I had also put the Forgotten Realms Archive manual in there, which is 368 pages - but to be fair that’s for all 12 games.

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The manual for Diablo was awesome. Wing Commander III had two in that gorgeous box, a technical manual and a game manual.

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Best memory of this is reading through the Morrowind manual while my mom did her shit.

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Came here for the Morrowind crowd. Love that game so much

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- I read the crazy thick guide at work before the game even came out. All of the different things you could do were amazing to me.
  
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And some nice props. The original Sid Meier's Pirates had an amazing map of the Caribbean

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Fucking loved that game!

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Shout-out to the original homeworld manual

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Aw man... this gets me... on a trip to Colorado I picked up Final Fantasy Tactics in a random game store (had never seen it at home) read that manual probably 10 times during that trip.

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...get home play the game, take a bathroom break... bring the box and manual to the bathroom to read it more.

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That box art and the art in the booklet included in the case (and the art behind the discs) for FFVII is so good

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Fallout was the last great game manual. Fallout 2 was great compared to everything else but Fallout the original was something unique and epic.

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Fallout was the last great game manual.

Nah man. MechCommander came in 1998 and that game manual was a friggin book, with full color pictures of each mech.

Star Wars Rebellion’s manual was also a book. Amazingly detailed.

Morrowind’s wasn’t a book, but it was still pretty great. Gave enough information that I was able to make a TI calculator program to generate accurate stats based on character creation choices.

Not saying there aren’t others, but these are great examples that came after Fallout. And maybe they aren’t at the same level as Fallout, but still great.

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- Morrowind's physical map was amazingly fun, since you needed it to plot a fast travel course.
  
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“Meryl…”

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I can remember saving my allowance for however long I had to, to be able to get the game I wanted, and then riding my bike to Walmart, or the used game store, or wherever it was, and then riding home with a stupid grin on face. I feel bad for kids who will grow up to be adults who won't have memories like that.

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In fairness, kids these days will have all sorts of formative memories unfathomable to previous generations

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- Yes, good and/or bad and/or otherwise. It's gonna get weird.
  
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I have a distinct memory of this with Pokemon black then soul silver (in that order)

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I know I did this for damn near every game i got as a kid, but I distinctly remember in middle school doing this in the back of my step-fathers pickup truck with a copy of Skyrim on PC. It had just come out the night before and I was shocked Walmart still had any copies.

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I remember getting Call of Duty Finest Hour at the store.

It ultimately was a major contribution that led to my sister transitioning roughly a decade later. She spent a lot of time playing the female soldier levels.

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That was me reading the manual for the PS2 version of Sonic Zero Gravity my friend gave me

I didn't have a ps2 lmao

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Those were the days

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Use the frequency on the CD Jewel Case

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I remember not reading them probably a waste of paper.

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