Since somebody shared this nice comic about manuals in games in another community, I was thinking about them myself.

My most cherished game manual was the Diablo 2 one. The way they created a little story for each single ability was such an atmospheric wonder and probably started my fascination with lore instead of story. They were also probably the main reason why I took the necromancer and started to feel bored, when necromancer are automatically evil in a setting. Get creative!

My father had Falcon 4.0 and that was “just” a technical manual in itself. 5+ cm thick and full of schematics of the cockpit. I was in awe as a child about the complexity of that thing.

  • mister_newbie@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    27 days ago

    Freddy Pharkas, frontier pharmacist

    The manual is basically copy protection, but it’s funny.

    That said, breast manual by far: it’s SNES’ Earthbound. Scratch 'n Sniff ftw.

  • nafzib@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    28 days ago

    Two come immediately to mind, both PC games: Heroes of Might and Magic II and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

    HoMM2 had a big, thick manual explaining all the game mechanics, but the really cool thing was a big inflatable, laminated chart/poster showing you every unit in the game with its stats so you could look stuff up during a battle and make intelligent decisions (I believe the GoG version comes with a PDF of it, but I still have my original physical one and it’s awesome).

    Similarly, Morrowind came with a gorgeous, full color world map along with the manual. They reprinted it and included it with the anniversary anthology pack that came out in the 2010s that included Elder Scrolls 1 through 5, but they cheaped out and printed it in monochrome.

    Bonus: Even the original Pokemon games fit this bill. The manual tells you about the type system and gives you a little rock paper scissors style diagram showing how the 3 starter types beat each other to get you going and hint that other types also interact that way.

  • MarcomachtKuchen@feddit.org
    1·
    30 days ago

    You guys should check out Tunic!

    It’s a cute zeldaish adventure where a manual a a core part of the Gameplay loop. Basicly you find pages of the manual ingame as you progress and learn about it this way. And the manual looks freaking georgous. A pure love letter to exactly that time. But be beware that Tunic is a knowledge based game. So any information might spoil something for you. Please inform yourself with caution.

    If you enjoyed the game you can even order the manual as a physical prop as official march.