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I forgot how annoying things were before steam. Manually patching and update games, making sure the disc you bought had a key that wasn't already used.

That being said, I do miss the little game guides that would come with your game. Starcraft 1 comes to mind. It told you what every unit did and it was a handy little reference companion that was wedged between the frontpanel of the CD cassette

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Steam actually has a built-in feature for games to upload manuals, where they get a dedicated link[1]. Hardly any games bother though.

[1]In the current version of Steam, if there is a manual, it's at: Right click the game->Properties->General tab.

I also (even though it was a form of DRM) miss some of the cd keys that existed. My first, favorite game was Hillsfar on windows 3.1 or DOS, I don't remember which.

To play you had to have the little spinner 'secret decoder'. It seemed part of the game, but was obviously just to keep people from playing pirated copies.

But I miss that kind of neat little gee-gaw that used to come with games.

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