the mash of competing registers in a videogame manual (neutral technical instruction, map of the territory, emotional prompt) sometimes results in text that can be casually beautiful, mysterious or strange. examples include
haphazardly characterised lists of the fake animals that you must put to death
been playing this and just so you know, they never say “Mappemon” in game to my knowledge. They do however call them Magical Puppets and occasionally Magical Pappets.
I sure threw out loads of manuals; I mean, you can only go so long with stacks of 'em flopping around, right? Eh ahem. For a while I kept the fighting games ones, thinking they’d be useful for the move lists, but never really actually bothered.
Did manuals die, or are they still around? Like, 2011, Virtua Tennis 4, all Sega felt like giving you was a tiny little slip of a thing with a printed URL to download the “full” manual and of course that URL is now dead.
the Fallout 1 manual aka the Vault Dweller’s Survival Guide was essential to me getting into the game. it has the length and detail of like a Dungeon Master’s Guide, and its full of in-universe bits that just try to entice you with some of the flavor of the setting. My all-time favorite game manual probably
i wish i had a fresh copy of the Pokemon Trainers Guide so i could fill in the back of the book with my own Pokemon drawings. That was also a really memorable manual yeah
i like that older RPG manuals tended to have a walkthrough for the first couple areas just to get you comfortable. I remember Final Fantasy Legend 3’s manuals advised you to grind to level 5 right away, and the tips section was provided by “the wizards at SQUARE”
I love the MULE manual because it gives a lot of ideas about how to think about winning the game. There’s even a section at the end where the designers individually describe their go-to strategies. I want to play MULE https://www.mocagh.org/ea/mule-manual.pdf
Arcanum has a nearly two hundred page manual, much of which is written as in-universe documents and manuscripts. It ends with a quite good recipe for banana bread (tim cain’s own recipe!)
there’s an older manuals thread although this one seems headed in a different direction. anyway i love the character descriptions in the manual for Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (NES)
