I miss manuals.

Completely the wrong thread lol - I was trying to post in two threads at the same time and failed.
 
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I think the thickest manual I've ever read was way back on my Amiga 1200 days. There was a space shuttle simulation game, so detailed that if you decided to start the experience in the hanger it would take SEVEN hours of real game time to crawl the shuttle out to the pad.

You also had an A1 or A2 poster for the wall with all the controls on. It was like reading War & Piece.

I made it in to space once, but I was 12-ish at the time :D

Used to love reading manuals on the way back from the shop...I do miss them!
 
Glad i'm not alone...

Thing is some people have said they never read the manuals. Like I said earlier, I don't seem to any more. I believe this is because I never needed the manuals to learn how to use a game exactly, just they were great things to read and get excited about the next time you could play the game.. Because I know for sure I don't really read manuals now.

Games do have tutorials a lot and I believe a lot did back then, or eased you in slowly.

I also remember being a lot more excited, i'd get up early in the morning just to play a new game for quite a few days.. Sounds odd now.
 
Yeah I was going to mention the Falcon 4 manual too. Splendid tome. Even F4:Allied Force came with a 700-odd page PDF manual. I printed it all out at work. :D

David_VI said:
Games do have tutorials a lot and I believe a lot did back then, or eased you in slowly.
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Yeah I think tutorials have become a much more major part of games to compensate for dwindling/disappearing manuals. You don't really need manuals any more, except for the most hardcore of games.

Funnily enough, MMORPGs still tend to have decent manuals to this day, which is ironic considering it's the most useless genre to have them since they quickly get outdated!
 
Think this may be my age but i miss them as well , was going to post that Falcon 4.0 example , also remember the F117 A manual was epic.
 
Ahhh, I used to love big manuals. Something to do while the game installs, or emergency reading material when you've been sat there for three hours without moving and have to make a mad dash for the bog :D

Sadly, I don't think games are complicated enough to warrant a textbook these days :(
 
I used to read them in the bath, lol.

Once borrowed a game from a mate, and I dropped it in there. I felt really bad and since the game was decent, there was an easy fix, I bought it myself and swapped manuals.
 
In terms of manuals which just had background world information like species/monster/weapon info then yes, I miss those somewhat, some games still have them though most usually do this in game now, however the idea of going back to having to read through the manual to actually be able play the game? No thanks.

If a game is too complicated for someone of moderate gaming experience to be able to pick it up and play it without first reading through it's literature, it's either badly designed or complicated for the sake of being complicated.


Naturally the above doesn't extend to games like Flight Sims.
 
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I remember when i was younger playing a game called Quarantine and you got a peice of paper that had these numbers on it, Then when you went into the game it would ask you for some of these numbers to continue playing, Without it you couldnt play afaik, I lost this peice of paper and never played it again :mad:
 
Used to love having a manual to read. I remember many years ago every time I went into town to buy a new game (yep long before download services) I'd rush to get the bus home after I'd bought whatever game it was so I could sit and read the manual on the way home.

These days most games don't even have a PDF manual, of course most don't need one they are that simple, but even those games that should have some sort of manual seem to rely on websites/forums.

Even flight sims (my personal favourite) have gone over to PDF manauls, which with sims like DCS:A-10C having a 600+ page manual is understandable due to the cost.
 
Certainly would have been usefully for Fallout NV, but then playing FO3 helped.

I bought Mass Effect 1 and 2 over Steam.. It was quite a job picking the game up with no manuals.

TF2 has a great practise tutorial :)
 
I really miss the manuals also! Used to spend ages reading them for the atmosphere, style of play etc... I get frustrated when I find something in a game, such as a mode/button I just can't figure out what it does!

Last game I got that has a large-ish manual was Civ 4. And that was nothing compared to the old Civ 2 :O
 
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