Okay, I know I've posted about this before (and it's been brought up in other threads) but damn I miss game manuals.

Anyway, what brings this up...?

I got the four NES Ninja Turtles games for my friend Christmas (yes, I "shelled" out for Tournament Fighters) and I went an extra mile and got custom cases for them along with the manuals for the first three since there's a pouch in the cases for the manuals. I couldn't find a manual for Tournament Fighters... but that really doesn't matter as I couldn't pay that much for a small booklet given how rare the game is itself.

Anyway, I was looking through these things and krang... er... dang... they are intentionally and unintentionally hilarious. Pop culture references that are extremely dated and story elements it seems Ultra (Konami) were pulling out of their asses.

The manual for the first game talks about the Turtles tracking down Shredder for his "Life Transformer Gun" so they can turn Splinter back into a human...? I've never beaten the game but is this even referenced in the game at the end...?

Anyway, I know they are for my friend but these things put a smile on my face. I hope he gets a hoot out of these when I give them to him during the holidays.

Konami was notorious for that kind of shit back then. I recall the manual for Metal Gear 2 (I think) saying about the villain being one "Higharolla Cockamamie" or something. A play on Ayatollah Khomeini, apparently. The manual also references "General CaTaffy" (an obvious play on Muammar al-Gaddafi). Interestingly, neither of these gentlemen actually appear in-game.

I'd like to further echo the sentiment that games with actual manuals are missed dearly as well.

There is actually an episode of the first TMNT that featured the gun that would turn Splinter human, so that is at least somewhat relevant. It was episode 5 of the first TMNT (the same episode where Donatello throws the Technodrome into Dimension X).

The manuals on some of the newer Wii U games are pathetic. We're talking front page, back page and two pages on the inside. Mario Kart has no breakdown of the characters or anything. 3D World is literally "Mario is average, Luigi jumps high, Toad runs fastest, Princess floats...Now go play!"

I was wondering if they did anything with this when it came to the cartoon. Thanks for that tidbit.

Exactly. I remember when I bought Luigi's Mansion: New Moon and saw the "manual."

They might as well not have put anything in there.

And then there was Mirror of Fate which I passed on for a while because I thought the copies I was finding used were missing the manual when in fact there was no manual to begin with.

This whole manual thing really makes me think of Wal Mart's trade in program where the game has to be "complete" to trade in... but given the situation today do the employees know what constitutes complete for each title?

Sly 4 doesn't have a manual, but the disc has a downloadable digital manual (with super tiny writing). I miss the good ol' days. (Surprise, surprise.)

It seems like these days the only way to get a manual is through indy kickstarter games. Everything else is a digital manual, which I personally think is lame. Even if you purchase "Limited/Collector's/Deluxe" editions, they typically seem to lack a manual which is ridiculous.

I absolutely HATE this. It gives me a headache. And what's worse is no one cares. There was a case where a game came with a NICE manuel but I had to look throuh GFAQs message board to be sure that, yes, my supposedly NEW but 'gutted' copy of the was in fact missing a book.

Give it a couple more years and people may even start calling paper manuals "retro". Manuals now appear in-game which creates an anti-artistic effect. Imagine the first stage of Super Mario Bros with text box signs and button prompts. Yuck.

I'm sure collector's edition copies of game will be the only form of a physical release three console generations from now. The price of owning a physical copy of a game, just like with a physical format in music, will skyrocket.

Thats the absolute worst. I remember as a kid, before I would start playing the game I used to pour over the manual for at least half an hour. Just seeing the artwork, controls, and story became so fascinating for me. When I used to rent games from Jabberwocky they photocopied their manuals so you would have a big packet of papers to bring home.

Anyone here actually use the notes sections?

I think the only manual I have that has a notes section is Mega Man X... but Killer Instinct might might have a "Memo" area. I never ended up using them however. I usually wrote my passwords on scratch paper I had lying around, not that I was trying to "maintain" the manual back then as I lost most of them over the years.

I like the manual for Final Fantasy II (IV) though. It has a pretty beefy walk-through that wasn't copy and pasted from Brady's guide like FFVII.

The manuals I have left for cart based games are:

(NES) Mega Man II
(NES) Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos
(GB) Mega Man in Dr. Wily's Revenge
(GB) Metroid II: The Return of Samus ***
(SNES) Killer Instinct
(SNES) Final Fantasy II
(SNES) Mega Man X ***
(SNES) Super Mario All Stars + Super Mario World ***
(SNES) Super Metroid ***
(GBC) Mega Man Xtreme
(GBC) Mega Man Xtreme 2
(GBA) Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

*** = had since I was a kid.

I just wish that, when it came to publishers re-releasing their games in digital form, that they'd also provide a digital PDF copy of the original manual, as well, especially when it comes to retro games from NES, SNES, Genesis, etc.

Otherwise, when it comes to current/last gen (PS3/360) I've sold games that never had a manual in the first place, and people accused me of leaving out the manual. DmC: Devil May Cry is just one such example.

There's really no need to include manuals with games, though, anymore. Everything from the plot to how to play the game is explained in-game. Isn't that what we used to read manuals for? When you couldn't fit that info on the cartridge, you put it in the manual. You used to have to read the manual to gain a context of what was going on in game, as well as controls, especially combination button presses.

That's a good idea. 3D printers are coming soon so game developers could at least give us something to print out in 2D...