Lost Art in a Digital World: My Five Favourite Classic Game Manuals

It's a nostalgic childhood memory - heading down to the local Kmart and finding my way to the entertainment section. Back in those days, amongst the aisles of CDs, cassette and VHS tapes there were long aisles of video games.

I manage to convince Mum and Dad to buy the game I've been asking for for weeks. After impatiently holding myself together through the grocery shop, it's finally time to hop into the car for the journey home. And that means I get to tear open the new game's cardboard packaging, grab out the manual and entertain myself reading about the controls, the characters and the story.

It was a well worn path for those growing up in the nineties - reading the manual on the way home from the shops. Back then you got a large, well thought out manual full of background stories and character biographies.

Later on, manuals became smaller and mores standardised - giving you just the basics you needed to play the game.

Then, it was just a disc or cartridge in the case. Now, you're lucky if you even get physical media at all.

For me, video game manuals are a lost art. So I thought I'd reach back into the past and talk about my five favourite manuals.

Pokemon Red & Blue

Gotta Catch 'em All!

One of those truly classic manual experiences, the Pokemon Red & Blue Trainer's Guide mixed the functional with the fictional. Players get the basics of how to play the game, but also a wealth of information that one could see a brand new trainer being given before they set off to catch their first Pokemon or battle their first gym leader.

Also within the 64 page guidebook is a description of the first few routes and cities the players will visit, a type chart to study on what elemental type is effective against which and a description of every item available to find or purchase within the game, what they're used for and the effects they have.

There's also space for players to tick off every Pokemon they've caught as they make their way to being the ultimate Pokemon Master!

Star Wars: X-Wing & Star Wars: TIE Fighter

I've Got a Bad Feeling About This

In a time where movie tie-ins were known for at times being a little questionable, Star Wars: X-Wing and its sequel Star Wars: Tie Fighter were stand out examples of how to do things right. And I think why they did so well was that they forged their own path with a unique Expanded Universe story - it's the same reason why Dark Forces is such a great game.

Okay, I'm not talking about the actual manuals. The manuals themselves were clean well put together. But what makes these two games so special is that they pack-in a pretty fantastic backstory novelette. With X-Wing you got The Farlander Papers, and with TIE Fighter you received The Stele Chronicles

Each tells the backstory of the protagonist of the game (Keyan Farlander of X-Wing and Maarek Stele of TIE Fighter), while blending the basics of how to play the games and the stats of the different ships available to use. While the content of these stories was later added to strategy guides for the games and distributed more widely, it was heavily edited to maintain the uniqueness and collector value of the original release.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Sorry to Keep You Waiting

I could talk endlessly about how much I love Metal Gear Solid 2. The gameplay! The story! I could go on for days. But that's not what this article's about.

We're talking about instruction manuals. And Metal Gear Solid 2 doesn't just give you an instruction manual - you get a whole instruction manga! Along with a very detailed description of how to play the game, the different weapons and items available to use, and character bios for the main characters, you also get a little mini-manga explaining the basic gameplay loop

It's a nice little touch, and fairly representative of the effort that tended to go into MGS support materials. After all, this is coming from the franchise that put together a 93 page in-universe expose of what went down during the Shadow Moses Incident from the perspective of support term member Natasha Romanenko.

Guild Wars: Factions

The Sacred Texts!

Guild Wars was probably the first MMO I played growing up, with Factions being the version I picked up. And golly, the manuals for all three of the Guild Wars campaigns are really something else.

Calling themselves The Guild Wars Manuscripts, each edition provides a detailed view of the setting of the campaign, the factions, allies and enemies. Within the pages is all sorts of different art, from in-game models to hand-drawn and painted style depictions of locations and items from the games. In the Guild Wars Factions manual, this section clocks in an impressive 47 pages, and not only that, it's the first section of the manual rather than being chucked into the back!

Even once you're past the lore section into the actual instructional details, it remains highly detailed, with plenty of pictures and in-universe style information.

Pharaoh

Build a Kingdom. Rule the Nile. Live Forever.

Pharaoh held the title of my favourite city building game for 15 years until Cities: Skylines finally rose up to take the title in 2015. When I told the story in the intro of this article, I was very much thinking of my experience and excitement reading the Pharaoh manual.

And the Pharaoh manual is certainly a doozy - the whole thing is 270 pages long. The first 200 pages is filled with extremely in-depth explanations of all the game's systems, including how to level up housing, gather and refine resources, wage war and build monuments. Throughout these pages is a smattering of fluff, taking the form of an Egyptian citizen's diary as they visit different places and speak to the people close to them. There's also a 30-odd page crash course on Egyptian history, culture, geography and politics.

Time and time again I came back to this manual, not just to help me play the game, but just because it was a great read!

A Time Long Passed

As I said above, sadly the time of the fun, long, colourful manual has come and gone, like so many things in this world. Perhaps it's looking at the times with slightly rose-tinted glasses. Sure there was the thrill of beautiful, long, colour game manuals. But there was also the anxiety of not knowing whether the local game shop would even have the game you wanted in stock. Perhaps that's just me and my ADHD-driven need for instant gratification though.

What were your favourite video game manuals?