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What's your #1 game manual?


Nintegageo

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Final Fantasy II was the first RPG I owned and the first time I ever saw a manual so big. I always appreciated when manuals were in full color and had nice artwork and real screenshots, but this one was also loaded with tons of info about all the weapons, armor, magic spells, etc. and even had a walkthrough for a good portion of the game, which helped me a bunch since I was new to RPGs. I thought that was so cool.

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I love the manual for Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite! on GBC. I’ve had it since childhood and it has seen better days. I used to look through it all the time. It no longer has the front and back covers, but I love looking through the manual to this day. I am more careful with it nowadays, haha.

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27 minutes ago, cj_robot said:

Final Fantasy II was the first RPG I owned and the first time I ever saw a manual so big. I always appreciated when manuals were in full color and had nice artwork and real screenshots, but this one was also loaded with tons of info about all the weapons, armor, magic spells, etc. and even had a walkthrough for a good portion of the game, which helped me a bunch since I was new to RPGs. I thought that was so cool.

Yeah, Square use to really knock it out of the park back in the day. My favorite was Final Fantasy Adventure which came with a thick square manual and a double-sided poster. The poster had screenshots of every screen on the overworld stitched together, and the back had lists and stats for everything. I'd never seen anything close to that before that game and I wore both out referencing them.

I also can't quite recall which game, but I think the manual for Mercenary Force for the Game Boy is quite interesting. Each page is high gloss and has a metallic tone to it. It's one thing to add the expense for the cover, but they took it to a whole new level by using super-high quality paper for an otherwise standard manual. I have no clue why they did that. It definitely doesn't help market the game since it's on the inside of the box and I had never heard of it until I went for my complete set. Still, if you're rummaging through stacks of old manuals at some point and find one for that game, it's worth thumbing through and appreciating.

 

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Console-wise? It's gotta be SimCity for SNES. Talk about a thick manual. It really does deep into detail about the entire game. There was always something special about the early "Sim-" games and I've always loved their excellent tutorials whether in manual or in game. I believe SimCity 2000 and/or 3000 on PC had excellent thick manuals too and I remember I could not read those enough. I really miss the Sim series. But anyway SimCity on SNES is easily my favorite iteration of the original SimCity but overall I loved the hell out of SimCity 2000 and 3000 too.

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During the NES era, any manual that included pictures, names and descriptions of the enemies was number 1 in my book.  I loved reading about the enemies and knowing their names (which is why I didn't really have any made up names to add to the other thread).    

As we moved into later generations and as games started getting bigger, I noticed that many companies didn't put all of the enemies in the manuals, or often times left the enemies out all together.  That was disappointing for me.  

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I don’t remember any manual specifically, but I do remember enjoying reading them back when they were in the 90s. There was a certain charm and excitement when buying a new game back then, and the manuals  were the ones that usually got me in the mood of the new adventures that was about to be embarked upon. 

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