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Comment by 21asdffdsa12 | Hacker News Reader

Anyone else remember the superb manuals that used to come with games? The starcrat and warcraft manuals. Drawings and lore. Diablo. Those old games came with books.

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Nothing was worse however than getting a game used and not getting the manual included, when the manual contained very necessary information to progress through the game, and in an era where 'The Web' still wasn't really a thing....

I'm looking at you, 1993's Journeyman Project....

Journeyman Project... that brought back a deep rooted memory. Its still not clear to me if my Packard Bell came with a full version or a demo, because I remember being stuck about an hour in and could not figure out how to progress. I also was mildly interested in the game, but had better ones to play- Myst, X-Wing, etc.

Actually, yes, this was the experience I was recalling... it was 1995, not 1993, and it was the 'Turbo' version of Journeyman Project, which came in a CD pack bundled with Windows 95 by Packard Bell (a surprisingly large compilation of software to bundle with such a computer at the time. Man, it was a golden age of progress in the PC world back then). Since it wasn't the retail version of the game, it did not come with the original instructions; instead they buried the door access code and some other numerical codes you needed during the game in a bundled instruction book for the CD box set. [0](the little teal booklet in this photo) No one ever knew to look in there, because it doesn't appear to be branded to have anything to do with the game.

There are entire sects of people on the internet that share this incredibly frustrating memory from their childhood. [1]

[0] https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1995-packard-bell-sof...

[1] https://steamcommunity.com/app/359420/discussions/0/13550947...

That's really interesting- I wish I could go back 30 years and verify that- I am a bit skeptical to be honest, as a young sponge with my first computer I was reading everything available to me- which wasn't much, a book on windows, and the manuals that it came with. But maybe I missed it.

That booklet doesn't appear to be available online anywhere :(.

The Civ III manual was 242 pages long: https://archive.org/details/Civilization_3_-_Manual/mode/2up

I remember the smell of a freshly opened game, damn still gives me shivers of excitement

Yeah. I remember going to the store to buy Starcraft 2 physically, specifically because Blizzard had always had such good manuals. Then there was nothing in there. It was such a letdown.

The Infocom games always had fun stuff in the box.

https://gallery.guetech.org/hhgttg/hhgttg.html

I remember fondly spending countless hours looking through the Icewind Dale manual.

Unfortunately, I purchased Baldur’s Gate 1/2 many years later with no manual. I’m sure it had an awesome manual as well.

Those came with spiral bound manuals, as they were that tjick, attempting to explain at least some of D&D 2nd edition, even when the full rules were out pf scope

Can confirm the Baldur's Gate 2 manual was an endlessly fascinating tome.

TIE Fighter even had a novella that worked in-came commands in to the story.

I recall SimEarth having a multi-hundred page spiral-bound manual (though my memory is hazy)

I pored over them obsessively.

https://archive.org/search?query=SimEarth+manual&tab=all

Lemmings 2 came with a short story describing the journey of Jimmy McLemming around the Lemmings world. It was great.

Even if those books were to come back now, they would be AI-generated slop. I am sad for the future of creative works.

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