Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Another favourite trick with properties as well-known as Nintendo’s is to simply write as an in-game character. These personae give the opportunity for a running commentary on a game that can afford to be a little more irreverent than something straight-faced: Donkey Kong 64’s manual was ‘written’ by Cranky Kong, the original Donkey Kong. It’s old Rare at its best. Simply because there’s so much truth in the jokes, it excuses the conventional aspects of the game’s design even as it outlines them: ‘So let’s see what nonsense they’ve made up for this game, shall we? Hmm… well, I have to hand it to them. This time they’ve managed to come up with a decent storyline that doesn’t involve the usual golden bananas. Only joking, kids! This one’s worse than all the previous efforts put together! I know you probably aren’t expecting a best seller, but wait till you hear this load of rubbish’. Even the ‘How to Start’ section wasn’t free of his touch: ‘Now then, just drop your quarter into the slot and… er, sorry, wrong game’. But by far the most cutting comment, said with the benefit of hindsight on Rare’s collectable platformer phase, has to be Cranky on the very same: ‘Trinkets and baubles, every last one! You’ll be so busy collecting this tatty lot, you’ll not notice the lack of gameplay. I never had to collect anything in my day, no siree, and my games were all the better for it!’ Of course, Donkey Kong did have collectables – but we can excuse an old ape the odd slip.

For sheer lunacy, however, it would be hard to beat the few productions of the French developer Exxos. Its first title, Captain Blood, came with a novella that seemed to be (unintentionally) written by monkeys with multiple personality disorder and a cursory knowledge of popular culture, featuring memorable ideas such as reproducing Pac-Men threatening the world and a recurring Charles\ Darwin who isn’t dead, but ‘living incognito’. Even this paled into normality next to Purple Saturn Day, however, a sports game with a manual that promised ‘on this day, they come to vanquish you, friend’. It was an Official Participants’ Guide and began: ‘OH EXXOS it is once more the new year on Saturn, the day of purple dawning, Wonder of Wonders. ATA ATA. OH EXXOS YOU ARE GOOD FOR US’. It is important to note at this point that Exxos is Phillip Ulrich and Didier Bouchon referring to themselves, and at the foot of every page they included: ‘I can feel Exxos doing me good’. It featured a recipe book with instructions for the likes of a ‘pain transmuter’ and was, to say the least, irregularly spaced throughout.


Purple Saturn Day


Their final production as Exxos, Kult: The Temple Of The Flying Saucers (known outside of Europe as Chamber Of The Sci-Mutant Priestess), came with perhaps their finest work yet: ‘Step into KULT, Exxos demands it!’ It reached a fine pitch with the offer to win a cervical cord: ‘NEW AND EXCITING !! WIN A CUSTOMISED CERVIKAL CORD !! Yes, it’s for real! Faithful Servants of Exxos Inc. have come up with a lulu. A megamarv holog simulation of you know who’s cervikal cord! Wowee! All-star SCIENTIFIC MINDS have tried their darndest to tell the difference, and failed 300%! Your (ex-) friends will grovel satisfyingly. Your NEW acquaintances will ask your advice about MILLIONS of highly intimate problems!’ Who could resist? All you had to do was scratch and sniff a small rectangle with a particular body part.

There is one thing nearly all of these manuals share, however: they’re accompaniments to games that are labours of love for their developers, desperate for players to be pulled into their worlds. Unfortunately, it’s far too obvious that manuals are considered by many developers as little more than an indulgence and possibly an irritant – after all, they’ve just slaved over the game itself for years, and if the player’s already paid, why waste time and resources on frills? But as Blizzard, Nintendo, Rockstar and countless other companies prove, letting your customer know just how much thought goes into these virtual worlds has many more benefits than just stoking the odd internet discussion. Those 20 or 30 pages of cheap, stapled paper can educate players about the potential of their new purchase, bring them into a game gently, and act as a constant companion throughout the experience. If, in the future, all games are delivered digitally, we will rue the loss of these artefacts.