Remember the times when you’d buy a brand new game and with it came a hefty game manual? Not only did they have the usual controls and warnings etc. They sometimes contained information and lore for the games they were bundled with. Nowadays these manuals are no longer included with most games, with modern games shipping with no manual or at best one piece of paper with the control scheme and various copyright information.
Some deluxe editions may contain a more in-depth manual as part of the package but back in earlier generations, a manual was included in every release. Sure some of them were very lightweight and resemble what we have today but some were meaty and contained quite a bit of interesting material, RPG’s especially. I still occasionally flick through the weighty Oblivion manual as well as a couple of others.
Take the Super Smash Bros. Brawl manual for example, it lists all the information about the games mechanics, items and information on each fighter, unlockables characters excluded, and today, we receive none of this.
Nowadays all the information can be found online and no longer including a manual does cut down on paper usage, so there are some positives to this but it’s still something that the community misses. It makes the game appear as a whole package instead of just a disc or cartridge although I doubt we will ever return to the glory days of old.
Everyday of the Geek 