Let me spin you a yarn. Times were, you’d open that brand-new cardboard (or plastic) box and there, nestled right next to your cartridge (or disc), would be a booklet. Yes, a booklet – paper pages stapled together that told you how to play the game (and sometimes more). Remember those?
Now the left (or right) side of your game case sits bare or thinly veiled with tie-in ads or DLC codes. Those clippies that once held your booklet are all but obsolete. Booklets might not be completely extinct, but they are on the way out. Here are ten of our favorites in no particular order.
Fallout
Even if it’s not the longest manual on this list, The Vault Dweller’s Guide is one of the most detailed. It has the character biographies and UI explanation, but it’s buffered by abstruse explanations of nuclear blasts and their effects, overviews of the game’s character progression, and even notes from The Overseer “taped” to the page. It’s a manual that informs and engrosses readers, offering a peek at what something like the Vault Dweller’s Guide would look like if (and when) we ever need one in the real world.
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
Ni No Kuni’s visual appeal extended beyond its watercolor Ghibli palette – its instruction manual was a charmer, too. It’s the last gen’s example of how an instruction manual should be put together in an attractive, visually appealing way that doesn’t get away from itself. It features full-color, clear explanations of the game’s many systems and a bit of lore to top it all off, including an unnecessary (but worthwhile) translation of the Nazcaän script used in the game.
Grand Theft Auto IV
Like Vice City before it, Grand Theft Auto IV’s manual is presented as a tourist guide to the city in which the game is set (Liberty City). This manual, however, was much cleaner and featured more contextual elements, like the city’s hotspots, dating tips, and a full song list for the game’s stations. The instruction manual became almost part of the game, and it was a shame to find one like it missing from Grand Theft Auto V’s box.
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
The instruction booklet for the newest Super Smash Bros. game clocks in at just under ten pages (the other ten are the French translation of the first ten), but all of those are packed with hi-res, full-color diagrams of almost every fighter’s moveset. There are a lot of different ways to play Smash Wii U, and its manual does exactly what an instruction manual needs to do – tell the player how to play the game – with aplomb.
Super Mario Bros.
There’s a bit of a dark past hidden in Super Mario Bros.’ booklet. The story, as described in the manual’s first few pages, involves the Koopa tribe turning the Mushroom Kingdom’s residents into bricks, stones, and “field horsehair plants” (commonly considered the game’s Fire Flower power-up). This would mean that Mario is actually shattering bricks with human souls when he grabs coins and ingesting people to throw fireballs. The sordid implications were eventually ret-conned, but the original manual stands as a sort of morbid tome to the Mushroom Kingdom’s sordid past.
[Source: OldGames.sk]
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