I freakin love manuals. They told the story and character bios and weapon info on nice colorful sheets with usually great artwork. Then they got rid of color and printed them in black in white. Now these companies decide to get rid of manuals entirely.

I recently opened up the remastered FFX/X2 and there is no manual, wtf?? its a final fantasy game. Then I checked my Fable anniversary game and nothing except a damn voucher for some DLC items. So yeah on the console side there pretty much gone and would expect that from the PC side too with the exception of few companies like Blizz that still produce manuals for their games for their physical copies.

So whether you like manuals or not they seem to be on the way out like code wheels and decoders of old =(

I won all the goldbox games without journals (the booklets that contain most of the plot text which the game references as you play through, as in, "Starmaker replies to your post and you record it as journal entry 117"). You'll do fine.

Heh, well my point was that most of the time, well-designed UI should be self-explainatory and you should not need a manual to understand it. I mean, look at the original Civilization for instance - not a perfect example by far, but most of the game could be understood quite easily (further installations of Civ series improving upon that.) Or Age of Wonders for that matter, a lot of info incorporated into that game that you could get by just a couple of clicks - and I don't think most people would say either Civ games or AoW are particulary simplistic.

I really love manuals that are written as a part of the lore of the game. In old games this was a necessity - think SSI Gold Box games, where all the area/situation descriptions were in an extra book and the game told you what page/paragraph to read next. They even had a lot of fake paragraphs written (as to discourage spoiling the game by reading the book). I loved games with extra background, like the short story collection that came with Frontier - Elite 2, the Zak McKracken newspaper, the Mercenary magazine of Strike Commander and all that historical and technical background that came with the MicroProse and LucasFilm (Battle of Britain, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe) sims. From these manuals you could actually learn the basics of flight including aerodynamics.

I really miss these extensive manuals. I used to read them commuting from/to school, university and work and liked how they got me in the mood for gaming in the evening. I probably should get some cheap tablet that can handle pdf files to continue this tradition.

That said, I find it an important progress that most games today have usable tutorials. The first game where I was really impressed by the tutorial was Half-Life (1998). It had a seperate training course for getting the controls and the beginning of the game marvelously introduced the environment. But of course the tradition of the "Starter Dungeon" in RPGs is much older.
I also like how today's games like TES incorporate the lore with their literally hundred of in-game books - though I certainly often wish I could read them offline.

Agreed, in nowadays games manuals are superfluous most of the (or all the) time, but in the old days, a manual was very often needed for survival. And of course they often were some form of DRM. Usually it was something like "Type in word 2 in line 3 of page 12", but often it was something more creative and immersive. Like when Pirates! asked you when the treasure fleet arrived in Puerto Bello or when the Silver Train was in Carracas.

But the most important thing was that manuals added a huge deal to immersion and came with all sorts of information about the game world or with interesting background information. "Burntime" for instance had an interesting manual that not only provided necessary basics about the game, but also a lot of info about environment or the greenhouse effect. Often you could see how much effort and enthusiasm went into those things, something I often miss today.

And to be honest, I don´t miss only the manuals, I miss all the cool things that often came with the game. Today you buy a special adition and all you get are some worthless digital extras which you buy as DLC sooner or later anyway. Games like Fallout 3/NV, Borderlands or The Witcher make me downright enthusiastic with their bread boxes, art books and bobble heads. Damn "Leather Godesses of Phobos" came with one of those "scratch´n´sniff" cards that provided the right smell for every situation in the game and "Plan 9 from Outer Space" for the Amiga even contained a VHS tape with the movie. I really miss those things.

You can also say that some games are more friendly to manuals than others.

For example, many modern flight/space sim will say "when you hear the missile alarm, press tab to launch a decoy and make a turn".
F19 stealth fighter (another great manual that I read quite often at the time) explained to you the difference between the different radar modes and what plane profiles where harder to target for them, the cone of attack of an infrared missile, the performances of the different ammunitions, the detection zone of the different launchers... It then explained on several pages what dodge maneuver to engage in, when to do it, and which decoy/flare/chaff to drop, according to the type of ammo you're facing and what lauched it.

Basically, you learned not what key to press when it beeps, but how to best recognise and counter a real life missile. You had to understand not only what to do, but also how to do it and why you do it. And if you tried do dodge a doppler radar SAM missile by using a maneuver used against IR plane lauched ammo, you were toast and could see a russian newspaper depicting your arrest. If you were lucky.

Now, that was a manual. Loved to read it when my parents took me on a road trip. :)

they are only necessary if you are not a trial and error type person! ,) my opinion!

If by "trial and error", you mean "trying several dozen times to simply take off on an older flight sim, and then trowing the game away in frustration a few month later", or "not knowing how to cast a spell at wizardry since you had to type the complete name of each spell, and they are not referenced ingame", then I agree ^^

Tutorial? I vaguely remember the game giving me some basic movement control information and then saying 'good luck!' :p

ahaha!
Remember that moment "press X to enter stealth"?
The game tells you about this mode 10 minutes before you can actually use it...
I kept checking if there was something worng with the game...XD

Agreed, though i wish it not so.
i wish for an efficiently searched data base and link depository, ++.


It need be in up-datable electronic format, otherwise post-release patches obsolete it - that is the problem with manuals nowadays.

Not just older flightsims.See the games of those people.

I want manuals so I don't have to look through 30 craps links to find what I want every time I want to know something. Sometimes its not intuitive to know you should press z to do use an item when you usually use e or f in other games.

Brutal Legend could have done with one. I spent ages trying to work out what to do with those bloody serpents.