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Pakistani Brad Pitt posted:I have an original 1999 Everquest manual and its hilarious -- they tried to include game world maps and specific information for an MMO that were out of date by the time the game launched, let alone two or (20!) years later It was the same with World of Warcraft, the manual was woefully out of date.
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Apr 4, 2019 22:22
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Pakistani Brad Pitt posted:I have an original 1999 Everquest manual and its hilarious -- they tried to include game world maps and specific information for an MMO that were out of date by the time the game launched, let alone two or (20!) years later I had the guide for Kunark, the game's first expansion, and it was outdated about 60 days after it was released. EQ is one of those games that I enjoyed at the time, but it legitimately hated the player and was full of obnoxious grind and bad class balance.
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Apr 4, 2019 22:26
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I am super nostalgic for manuals, but they mostly were always terrible. A ton of them had cool art and lore and stuff and made rad physical artifacts but they were almost universally terrible at teaching how to play a game. Even if games still came with 400 page manuals people would be watching youtube and reading wikis instead of figuring out the dumb diagrams they put on the first two pages of a manual before going through 70 pages of naming every single enemy in a way that was super fun but did nothing for actually helping you play. Yeah, I rember just using youtube and the wiki that I got on via Compuserv in the 90's when playing games with big manuals like sim life.
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Apr 4, 2019 22:27
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JustJeff88 posted:I had the guide for Kunark, the game's first expansion, and it was outdated about 60 days after it was released. EQ is one of those games that I enjoyed at the time, but it legitimately hated the player and was full of obnoxious grind and bad class balance. I cut my teeth on the PvP servers there, which at various times allowed looting of items (and there were valuable non-bound items) as well as money. I didn't even play a good or balanced PvP class and occasional you'd just gank some mule with hundreds of real world dollars worth of ingame money on them. Oh man the death threats and drama were amazing. These days I don't play anything more competitive than Stardew Valley.
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Apr 4, 2019 23:28
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Pakistani Brad Pitt posted:I have an original 1999 Everquest manual and its hilarious -- they tried to include game world maps and specific information for an MMO that were out of date by the time the game launched, let alone two or (20!) years later I remember a lot of that information being completely false, particularly in regard to the character stats. The real story on what each stat did only came out after players parsed many hours worth of combat logs, who then discovered that most stats had only a very small effect, and that the things they did often weren't what the game said they did. Still, the game was amazing at the time, even with all the bullshit.
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Apr 4, 2019 23:44
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ponzicar posted:I remember a lot of that information being completely false, particularly in regard to the character stats. The real story on what each stat did only came out after players parsed many hours worth of combat logs, who then discovered that most stats had only a very small effect, and that the things they did often weren't what the game said they did. It was indeed amazing at the time, but as time passed I can easily see why people flocked to WoW; it was so much less hateful. Early EQ had only three classes that really mattered (cleric, enchanter, warrior; everyone else could suck it) and had an incredibly slow level grind to compensate for a lack of content. I realise that a lack of instancing was largely due to technical limitations of the era, but it only made things worse. I had a flutter with it a few years ago and, while much has improved, the game still requires a ludicrous grind. Level progression is faster, but now there are literally thousands of alternate advancement points that have to be earned to maintain the power curve. Fake Edit: I realise that this is somewhat outside of the spirit of the thread; apologies.
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Apr 4, 2019 23:57
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JustJeff88 posted:I realise that a lack of instancing was largely due to technical limitations of the era, but it only made things worse. This is what made for all of the best Everquest PvP drama with competing guilds all trying to race for some monster that only spawns every 3 weeks or whatever, usually ending in hilarious wipes and fighting. WoW was better in almost every regard but coming from that world I could never adjust to compartmentalized instanced content. It completely lost the sense of wonder of playing in a big contiguous world for me. I get why its the 'better' choice though business wise. Pakistani Brad Pitt fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Apr 5, 2019 |
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Apr 5, 2019 00:10
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Proud Christian Mom posted:im sorry but you're wrong old manuals were great and informative Lots of them are great, but go back to one and look at it, they are mostly nonsense and garbage. Like the FF3 manual is an amazing art book and I love it, but it's also a bunch of muddled unhelpful hints, weird pointless spoilers (showing every esper but not any stats) and weird nonsense like claiming the black belt is one of the three best relics (then listing nearly every but not every relic that exists). It's cool the manual looks so good but it was not a good manual (and would never have told you that magic defence was not a real stat in that game and was just a fake thing due to a bug)
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Apr 5, 2019 01:42
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Pakistani Brad Pitt posted:I have an original 1999 Everquest manual and its hilarious -- they tried to include game world maps and specific information for an MMO that were out of date by the time the game launched, let alone two or (20!) years later This, but also Ultima Online.
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Apr 5, 2019 07:39
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Freakazoid_ posted:This, but also Ultima Online. Was there ever an era game manuals were correct? NES days they were weird sloppy translations and had stuff like people being made into horse hair or like the brother of giligan's island characters, then later games got complex and the manual writing team just could poorly convey systems written by another team in another building, then patches and internet messed them up once game companies got big and corporate enough that they have real design docs someone could base a manual on.
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Apr 5, 2019 14:38
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At least 90s PC game manuals used to be packed full of background information. I remember the Age of Empires II manual had a lot of fun info on medieval warfare.
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Apr 5, 2019 14:46
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When I bought Frontier Elite 2 I got a small book of short science-fiction stories along with the disk. I still remember one about a cyborg bartender with no legs, just a robot column that fit into a track that took him around the bar. Civ 2's manual was a hefty tome.
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Apr 5, 2019 14:55
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Was there ever an era game manuals were correct? NES days they were weird sloppy translations and had stuff like people being made into horse hair or like the brother of giligan's island characters, then later games got complex and the manual writing team just could poorly convey systems written by another team in another building, then patches and internet messed them up once game companies got big and corporate enough that they have real design docs someone could base a manual on. Without manuals, how will today's generation learn of the likes of Paula Abghoul, Fred Ascare, and Ingrid Birdman?
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Apr 5, 2019 15:01
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Some game manuals also formed a primitive DRM system, where the game would ask for a particular word in a paragraph in the manual to continue after loading. Of course, eventually you got word lists circulating on the BBSes to circumvent that. My son received quite a few Gamestop gift cards for his birthday this year. It's actually been hard to spend them, since the pricing in the store always gets undercut by the XBox store with Game Pass and Gold and whatever else. Honestly discs only function as a license key anymore, since you immediately have to download hundreds of patches and content anyway. It's also a PITA to go load a different disc for each game compared to the DLC versions, just select and go. The Thinkgeek merch is fine, whatever, but the market is fundamentally moving away and I think Gamestop is borked.
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Apr 5, 2019 15:03
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Was there ever an era game manuals were correct? NES days they were weird sloppy translations and had stuff like people being made into horse hair or like the brother of giligan's island characters, then later games got complex and the manual writing team just could poorly convey systems written by another team in another building, then patches and internet messed them up once game companies got big and corporate enough that they have real design docs someone could base a manual on. Pre-internet domestic games. The manual for Zork 1 is a treasure and I still have my physical copy.
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Apr 5, 2019 15:07
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Maxis had some lovely manuals. Michael Bremer and Tom Bentley are two of my heroes.
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Apr 5, 2019 15:26
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Thinking about old games just makes me badly want sequels to Alpha Centauri and Master of Magic.
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Apr 5, 2019 15:27
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Let's also not forget that, for computer games, a lot of these old manuals were required to even get past the copy protection. Kids these days will never know the *joy* of searching for word 15 on page 27.
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Apr 5, 2019 15:52
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My favorite was identify the glassware from Bar Games
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Apr 5, 2019 15:57
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I still have a manual from a game called Gary Grigsby's World at War - A World Divided that actually did a good job of explaining mechanics and was full of interesting anecdotes about WWII, including the German u-boat captain who was sent to raid the east coast of the US and tipped off the American authorities, getting himself sent to prison in the process. My concern about digital games is the fact that, after a fairly short span of years, servers come down and it becomes impossible to download the software that one rightly owns again. I realise that it all can be stored on internal drives, but those fail and the data is lost forever. For console games, I've started defaulting to physical media whenever possible so that I can at least play the unpatched version of those games in the distant future should that ever happen. I'm the type of person who often breaks out game from 8-10 or more years ago, so this really concerns me.
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Apr 5, 2019 16:29
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Paul.Power posted:Maxis had some lovely manuals. Michael Bremer and Tom Bentley are two of my heroes. I don't think I have the disk anymore but I still have the manual for SimAnt, it's fun and educational in addition to explaining how the game works really well.  Starsiege was insanely good manual wise. Hey remember Starsiege anyone? It had a smaller scale spinoff called Starsiege: Tribes but Starsiege was the main franchise it was a fuckawesome mech game and you could even put custom decals and cutscenes into the game for when you beat people online and 
Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Apr 5, 2019 |
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Apr 5, 2019 16:51
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JustJeff88 posted:My concern about digital games is the fact that, after a fairly short span of years, servers come down and it becomes impossible to download the software that one rightly owns again. I realise that it all can be stored on internal drives, but those fail and the data is lost forever. For console games, I've started defaulting to physical media whenever possible so that I can at least play the unpatched version of those games in the distant future should that ever happen. I'm the type of person who often breaks out game from 8-10 or more years ago, so this really concerns me. I wanted to play Diablo 2, and decided to actually purchase it from Blizzard since it was only ~$10. One hour later, I gave up trying to install it through Battle.net's clusterfucked broken user cloud download system and grabbed a cracked version from a torrent. Why the goddamn hell they just didn't give me the game files directly I will never know; even with all the cutscene videos it couldn't be more than a GB or two.  it makes total sense to force people to rely on a broken torrent-style "server" just to download an old game.
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Apr 5, 2019 16:52
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I’m just slowly coming to grips that we won’t ever really own any media anymore and dwelling on it just isn’t worth it. Sucks for historical archiving and stuff though.
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Apr 5, 2019 16:59
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Pre-internet domestic games. The manual for Zork 1 is a treasure and I still have my physical copy. Good point, we need videogamevet in the thread for this.
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Apr 5, 2019 17:03
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For what it's worth a ton of modern games do in fact have manuals beyond tutorials or whatever. Usually still some kind of PDF in the files for a PC game, or a buried option/set of screens for console and PC titles. And though we often remember the games that had really comprehensive manuals, it's easy to forget that many others didn't give you much beyond "here's how to play. here's the things you can do at new game. for everything else our partners have big ol strategy guides for you to buy."
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Apr 5, 2019 17:58
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ryonguy posted:I wanted to play Diablo 2, and decided to actually purchase it from Blizzard since it was only ~$10. One hour later, I gave up trying to install it through Battle.net's clusterfucked broken user cloud download system and grabbed a cracked version from a torrent. Diablo 2 isn't on the Battle.net Launcher, you download the installer separately. Go to Account Settings -> Games & Subscription on the battle.net website.
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Apr 5, 2019 18:04
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A few years ago, I spent way too much on a Near Mint copy of Might and Magic II for the Genesis. My overspending aside, it did come with a nearly flawless manual that was the size of a small novel; I'm not entirely sure how they made it fit into one of those plastic Genesis clamshells.Lambert posted:Diablo 2 isn't on the Battle.net Launcher, you download the installer separately. Go to Account Settings -> Games & Subscription on the battle.net website. I'll second this. Just last week I was trying to legit play Warcraft III legit off of Blizzard and I had essentially go around my arse to get to my wrist and do what Lambert says above. This also included loading my B-Net account to get my activation numbers for both WC3 and Frozen Throne, so be warned. Is it any wonder that people pirate this poo poo? JustJeff88 fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Apr 5, 2019 |
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Apr 5, 2019 19:02
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That’s why they are remastering them so they put them directly into the launcher and charge full price.
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Apr 5, 2019 20:20
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We had a full page of game-manual chat and no one brought up flight sim manuals? They used to be massive I remember the one for Janes WWII Fighters was basically a book on the Battle of the Buldge, every aircraft involved, combat-flight maneuvers, ect. The manual for Falcon 4.0 was legendary for how ridiculous it was.  PDFs tucked away in the game's directory just don't compare. Then again, I'm also the nerd who misses the art-work that used to be included with LPs and CDs.
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Apr 5, 2019 23:02
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I remember European Air War having a great (and massive) manual as well, with tons of interesting information on combat maneuvers.
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Apr 5, 2019 23:09
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Lambert posted:Diablo 2 isn't on the Battle.net Launcher, you download the installer separately. Go to Account Settings -> Games & Subscription on the battle.net website. Cool, you try that and tell us how it goes.
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Apr 6, 2019 00:01
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pseudanonymous posted:Thinking about old games just makes me badly want sequels to Alpha Centauri and Master of Magic. I feel like the industry is slowly getting the message as young adults from the early oughts are now nearing middle age. In combination with the current middle aged, there's a lot of demand for old games to see a sequel.
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Apr 6, 2019 02:34
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Freakazoid_ posted:I feel like the industry is slowly getting the message as young adults from the early oughts are now nearing middle age. In combination with the current middle aged, there's a lot of demand for old games to see a sequel. I think the problem is none of the teams are even remotely together anymore, many of the principals have retired, and the rights are scattered or owned by Atari, which ended up with lots of IP and is stupid about making deals.
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Apr 6, 2019 02:41
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I mean the games industry has just gotten bigger. You can participate in the creation of a massively successful game and be laid off a few weeks after launch. It's a garbage fire, like everything else in capitalism
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Apr 6, 2019 02:45
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I remember Baldur's Gate 2 had most of the AD&D player's handbook reprinted in a 4 inch by 5 inch tiny notebook
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Apr 6, 2019 02:54
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:I mean the games industry has just gotten bigger. You can participate in the creation of a massively successful game and be laid off a few weeks after launch. It's a garbage fire, like everything else in capitalism True. Plus, since the system cares more about so-called ownership rights than both human decency or common sense, it's drat near impossible to preserve older games. Companies want people to forget about their older work so as not to hurt future sales, and it's perfectly legal for people who own an IP to ignore it, not sell it and let it rot, often without knowing that it belongs to them, but good loving luck to you if you have the nerve to distribute that game that they don't give a toss about, even if you don't make a penny out of it. One of the worst tire fires right now is the beloved No One Lives Forever games... GOG tried for months to find out who owns them legally and make a deal, but the disparate parties don't care enough to find out. Not only can GOG not legally sell it, it's also against the law to download and use that software even though we live in the post physical media age where such things can be duplicated and sent around at essentially no cost - all because of some company or law firm or other scum of the earth somewhere that couldn't give the slightest gently caress about the IP unless someone has the nerve to enjoy it for free. I refuse to name it out of respect and for the sake of security, but there's a project right now that is essentially another version of Mario Maker, but better, that's holding a very secretive closed beta. The reason for the tight control is that MM for the Switch is due out soon and they are trying to avoid a C&D from Nintendo despite not violating Fair Use rules in any way. I don't blame them in the slightest, but I find a dark irony in that Nintendo would try to stop a fan-made, non-profit passion project because it makes their "port with minor upgrades" look bad. In any sane universe, they'd be told to just make a better product. If you're a multinational company worth nearly 38 billion loving dollars, which is more than the individual GDP of at least 100 sovereign nations, and you can't do better than a fan game, you're not being taken advantage of - you're just poo poo.
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Apr 6, 2019 03:08
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pseudanonymous posted:Thinking about old games just makes me badly want sequels to Alpha Centauri That was supposed to be Beyond Earth but a dimensional portal opened and sucked us all into the darkest timeline
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Apr 6, 2019 06:44
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I am nostalgic about manuals too. It was a good day when my mom would let me rent a Nintendo game from Wegmans. I'd spend the whole car ride home reading the manual.
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Apr 6, 2019 12:04
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Alterian posted:I am nostalgic about manuals too. It was a good day when my mom would let me rent a Nintendo game from Wegmans. I'd spend the whole car ride home reading the manual. Holy poo poo, I had no idea Wegmans did rentals.
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Apr 6, 2019 12:21
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I'm mad that things like Homeworld have permanently lost original assets that were good, and now the remake sucks and is missing a good bit of mechanics from the original. How could this happen in today's marketplace 
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Apr 7, 2019 13:19
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