R.I.P game manuals

[Docpepper]

I was reading the editor's not in the latest Game Informer magazine. Ubisoft is getting rid of game manuals and getting new game cases in an effort to go green.Most manuals these days are only a few pages anyway but when i get a new guy I love reading through the manual while the game is loading.Gamers will be able to read the manual while in the game but i just doesn't seem right to me.

If they wanted to go green get rid of the strategy guides,but no they want do that because they can make money off the strategy guides. I hope this new case won't mean an increase in the game price.

Ubisoft to get rid of game manuals.

[Plubby]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

I love Game Manuals I miss manuals the size of Diablo 2 that I could read on the train ride home

[brenchill]

It's been coming for awhile, I guess. I really miss those big chunky "books" that use to come with games in the 90's. I miss the boxes that PC Games came in, too.

[SeanDMan]

I prefer PDF manuals anywoot.

[DJ Ice]

So long as Sports Interactive don't cut game manuals I won't mind to much, Regardless I hope other companies don't follow suit

[SRN]

I still have my own Arcanum manual that was almost the size and length of a short novel. Aww, game manuals.

[EddieRuckus]

I'm guessing they are trimming a lot of stuff due to sequels using the same controls and levels that show you the basics. Still sucks though.

E: In addition to wanting to be green and all that jazz.

[Skummy]

I miss the boxes that PC Games came in, too.

Seconded.

[SRN]

I miss the boxes that PC Games came in, too.

Seconded.

Thirded. I still think I have my Icewind Dale box laying around somewhere.

[Skummy]

There's a PC shop near me that's had copies of Blood II and Microsoft Flight Simulator on display in the window for at least the ten years I've lived here, faded to fuck, but still given pride of place in the shop, in their enormous old boxes. Love it.

[SeanDMan]

Don't buy any of this "going green" crap. They're cutting manuals and making smaller boxes so they can save money. They'd gladly shit nuclear waste directly on the world's last tree if someone paid them enough money. Videogame companies are just as greedy and profit oriented as movie and music producers so don't buy that "save the whales" bullshit for a second. This is a dollars and cents decision.

[Noah]

My favourite ever manual was for the early 90's Sega Megadrive game "Buck Rodgers"

I remember reading that beauty on my 16th birthday.

[DJ Ice]

One type of my favourite Manuals were one's that always gave you a backstory to what has happened, eg. Battlefield Bad Company did it and so did a few others, But again my all-time favorite manuals were the ones included with Football Manager, They usually had 100+ pages and actually really helped you in-game

Edited June 3, 2010 by DJ Ice

[stokeriño]

I think the only manuels I really look at these days are the ones that are like frikkin bricks, such as Civilization, but that's largely from a reaction of "What the hell is IN this thing?".

Beyond that, the only ones I hold any love/nostalgia for are those for the Mega Drive. They only had about 5 relevant sentences per page since the same thin column of text was repeated across them in several different languages, but damn it, it's not like they needed to say much anyway.

[New Damage]

And the Mega Drive ones left pages in the back blank for notes. In other words, cheat codes.

I remember writing the sound test sequence in the back of the Sonic 2 manual for the level select cheat.

[King Ellis]

I think manuals are becoming a little redundant when you can get in depth tutorials in game as well as explanations of controls and stuff. Plus access to information online.

It's been coming though. EA manuals seem to have been about 5 pages for years now.

Did anyone ever use the notes section that you'd sometimes get at the back of some manuals?

Edit: Clearly TMW did. >_<

[stokeriño]

I played Sonic 2 so much more than any other game for at least a year, so I always had it memorised.

19-65-09-17.

[Schlitzbrille]

This was inevitable, but at the same time, it's sad to see the gaming institution of large paper game manuals disappearing.

As mentioned earlier by another poster, the Diablo 2 manual was several different varieties of amazing.

[Kaney]

Eh. I used to like reading them back on the PSX days but nowadays they barely get a cursory glance, due to as someone mentioned, a combination of ingame tutorials being all over the place, and the internet. I probably won't notice when they go, but I did like things like the MGS manual, that had a little bio for the characters, and a timeline, stuff like that.

[Skummy]

I miss instruction manuals giving a description/biography of each enemy, none of which was ever relevant to the game itself.