I always get angry when there is no manual added to the games I buy. it looks so empty.
that's why I don't like the cheap versions of games which usually appear on the market after some time.
they lack a decent manual.
most of the time there's only an advertisement sheet which is even worse than nothing.
besides it's great to look at the pictures in the manual and read the additional information about characters and story.
for rpgs I often put the manual next to me so that I can get a overview of the skills, spells and rules in general.
for example when playing neverwinter nights I was glad to have the manual next to me.
plus: I love reading manuals on the drive home from the shopping center because I'm too curious to wait until I'm back before I get to know more about the games.
...but reading virtual manuals is somehow awful, nevertheless I read them all so that I won't miss anything.

Back in the olden days a manual was VERY necessary. Most genres were still getting invented so they had to explain in alot of detail how the game worked. It also described the story and backstory since this was WAY before cutscenes and little sprites are hard to tell a story with. It also had copy protection, things you could only find in the book, to try and fight piracy. Some pages would be fade if copied for instance to further help stop it.


Now? Ya manuals really have no use.

The PDF manuals can be very useful from GOG, since you can usually do a word search inside of it. This is especially useful for finding specific key bindings in the manual for an older game.

Yes, it is purely nostalgia. As a kid I lived in rather huge city. The way home from my favorite games shop took me 45 minutes with tram and bus. Back then I loved to read the manuals. But this was a time where manuals started like this: Back then this was an important part of immersion. But the useless PDFs we have now? I can't even remember the last time I've read one of those "manuals" (I really can't!). They aren't worth the effort to search them on the disc or in the game's folder. They don't give you information about the game and they don't give you the "Hey, I'm a pilot" feeling. I just open the control options in-game to have a look at key bindings (what happened to reference cards?). That's enough for most games. Most of them wil have tutorials and tooltips anyway...

Manuals I am glad I have:

All the infinity engine game manuals (BG1, BG2, IW1, IW2, etc). Just a lot of tables and stuff dealing with AD&D. Yeah, you could search online for that stuff, but if you are in the game, it's a lot easier to whip out the manual and look at that stuff than ALT-TABbing which sometimes doesn't work very well.

Civilization IV. Another great manual that shows the pros and cons of different leaders/civs. Again you could look online for that stuff, but a lot easier to whip out the manual.

None of the other manuals I own, which are close to 100, do I even look at ever again.

The thing I did use from just about every retail package is a keyboard map for all your controls, which I like to have handy because I do not have the memory to remember all of the little commands that are rarely used...especially for flight sims.

And breaks immersion every single time.

It depends on the UI. If Windows 8/Metro is "intuitive" to you, I'll embark on a journey toward your house to burn it down :-P

I'm going to make a wild guess that that area is immediately after the tutorial area haha.

That actually says nothing to me. The Legend of Zelda is a simple NES game, but its manual was fantastic.

I love it when manuals are not just instruction guides, but used to further flesh out a game's world/lore/characters/monsters. The manuals from the Wario series are technically unneccessary, because the games are very easy to learn. Still, reading the manual can be very entertaining as we have Wario himself going into some deeper detail regarding the game.

They wouldn't exist if they didn't serve any purpose now, would they? Pretty obvious, don't you think? It's better that there are manuals around. Better than nothing, I suppose. For troubleshooting? Whatever.

Also I just want to say, yes you could look things up online quicker, but that's just asking for spoilers, in my opinion.