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A Short History of Game Manuals
By Edge Staff
September 19, 2008
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"This time they’ve managed to come up with a decent storyline that doesn’t involve the usual golden bananas. Only joking, kids! Wait till you hear this..."
We’ve come a long way since Pong. The first ever commercial game instructions were characterised by brevity and utility, necessary thanks to the unfamiliarity of the concept. And, to be fair, ‘Avoid missing ball for high score’ still stands up as a masterpiece of economy. But they blossomed into what might be gaming’s greatest support act: a library of manuals that, despite their ostensibly functional nature, gave context and colour to, and ultimately justification for, their games.
There are two ways to consider manuals. You could say that they are simply functional, introducing a player to the control methods and combinations that dictate the experience. Seen like this, they’re little more than glorified reference materials and possibly the most boring aspect of a game. But manuals can be, and often are, something else: they’re your window into a new world. They can be treasure maps. They can be your first vicarious thrills at your new purchase, sucking in all of the controls and the story and imagining how everything slots together before the game goes near a TV. Best of all, they can be a part of the world, a piece of arcana ripped from a virtual realm and placed in your hands, a secret guide or journal or diary from one of the game’s characters to you, the outsider, that establishes a game’s world before a single button has been pressed.
Most of the games mentioned in this article are 5 plus years old. And the fact is that the further you go back, the more manuals were written with flair. And as to 'making the 20-30 page manuals more interesting' most manuals in the past were more likely to be 80+ pages! Explain how you go back to 80+ page manuals with DVD cases currently getting shorter in UK supermarkets, for example.
I would say that big boxes going to DVD cases and manuals (and games) become blander each year is one of the main reasons for PC gaming's decline. PC games have now the feeling of the grey suits now in charge of creating them! Is it any wonder retro is making a comeback and DOSBox, a free utility to play PC DOS games of the 80's/90's has now had over FIVE MILLION downloads!
What Raff said about reading the manual on the way back from the game shop when he was a kid, I still do this on the bus (I don't drive) and I'm 33!
I find it works as the perfect appetizer before the main course.
Excellent article. An unsung hero indeed.
I enjoyed the encyclopedic manuals that came with old war games from SSI and Talonsoft. I just pulled out my Operational Art of War II manual and it's 180 pages long - love it! ;)
I love game manuals for some reason. Nintendo usually has really good ones, and the GTA manuals are awesome as well. I'm always really dissappointed by black and white manuals. I always read my game manuals, partially for the actaul information, but also because I appreciate them as a little extension of the game. The best ones have nice artwork, clever text, and of course, describe the game's compnents in a useful way.
I can understand why many people feel that manuals are useless and perhaps even detrimental. After all, designers have few limits in explaining the story or setup for their game within the game itself. I also understand the value of having the game teach the player how to play simply by playing the game itself and gradually revealing various elements to the player. However, I still love game manuals for some reason.
When I recall my favorite old games from memory i almost always remember the manuals of the classics before the cover art or cartridge etc.
The F-Zero pic really brought me back to my 12 yr old self imaginatively creating a whole melodrama with complex character relationships based on a two page comic book spread at the front of the manual.
As a kid the manual was the only thing that kept me sane while traveling the distance between the game store and my console.
An often overlooked necessity.
Interesting article. I am an avid manual reader and always took the manuals f my new games to school for everyone else to read. Good times...
Back in the SNES days and thereabout, the story of so many games wasn't even conceivable unless you read the manual first. For example, the -entire- story of Doom was in that one page of the manual. That one page then went on to be the basis for a series of four novels! Even Gears of War, without reading the novel (or watching the trailer during the Main Menu), you have no idea what the story is.
Much like manhunt, the city guides for vice city, san andreas, and liberty city were very good manuals.