The seven best video game manuals of all time

**Flare** · 01-07-2010, 11:19 AM

The seven best video game manuals of all time

**Sleepyeyed** · 01-07-2010, 09:59 PM

Nice. Being a graphic designer I can appreciate this completely. Links to the manuals don't seem to be working though

**darkknight** · 01-09-2010, 07:10 AM

There's a lot of good ones in there. I miss the days of a manual that was designed well enough you actually wanted to read it. I must have read the Link to the Past manual 50 times just for the introduction story.

**hiphopcr** · 01-09-2010, 02:41 PM

Nowadays tutorials are built into games. I think MW2 had about a 2 page manual, black and white, and it pretty much just, "you bought Modern Warfare 2."

**Shane R. Monroe** · 01-09-2010, 03:02 PM

"Of all time"? What a bunch of bullsh*t.

NOTHING tops the Midwinter manual.

**Turbo2Xs** · 01-09-2010, 05:35 PM

Damn Shane, I thought MY manual was long...! Never played that on the Amiga but that prose has me intrigued...

To wit

I still find it very sad that players of the recent times just might never really know and therefore appreciated the value and memories that physical media such as manuals, boxes and pack-ins bestow. While I don't agree with the guys choices, I know what he's saying.

**Shane R. Monroe** · 01-09-2010, 07:53 PM

The game was out on various platforms ... It ran VERY slow ... but ... that manual ... it was awesome stuff. Made me want to create an ice age

**rolisme** · 01-09-2010, 09:35 PM

I was always a fan of the Falcon 4.0 manual (the version that came in the binder). That manual was huge and if I remember correctly, it was written by a real F-16 instructor. To a layman like me, it felt like it was a real F-16 flight manual. I still have it around somewhere, I doubt I will ever throw that out. It is probably still good for learning techniques in other flight games.

**Yodaporn** · 01-10-2010, 06:32 PM

I thought all the manuals for GTAs 3 though EFLC were great. First thing I did when I get these is to flip though the manual and see what kind of witty ads and tourist notes they've come up with that go round. I may no plans to try to play san andreas for pc again, but I want to keep it because of the sweet hard-back version of the manual.

**entexman** · 01-11-2010, 02:41 AM

My favorite manuals came with strategy games like Civilization or Age of Empires. These manuals were like encyclopedias for the game and always had tons of useful information. Nowadays though newer games have such well designed in game information about how to play or learn about the game that manuals are just not as useful as they once were for me anyway. Civilization 4's civlopedia, which had been somewhat lacking in previous Civ iterations, was like a full on webpage built into the game!