Quote Originally Posted by Bolivar View Post
Co-sign 110%!!! It's super disappointing that most games give you a couple black and white pages to pass for a manual! I love manuals with awesome artwork from the game and cool character portraits like Metal Gear Solid. Even though MGS4 was black and white, I still loved the comics they packed in, especially the Metal Gear Online one at the end. It was funny! Back in the NES days games used to come with entire strategy guides for them! I know some passionate publishers make an effort to do this, but I'd really like to see it more, especially for a big AAA title.
Comics in MGS4's manual? Funny story: I've been so conditioned by games coming with troutty manuals for the better part of at least 10 years that I haven't read one in at least as long. I've never even looked at MGS4's manual.

But I agree that it's sad manuals have gone to black and white with minimal information past the bare bones gameplay stuff and screen caps that are so hard to see you wonder why they bothered. I remember when I got a Sega Genesis a few years after I got a SNES and seeing Sonic 2's black and white manual while asking myself what the hell this trout was after years of glorious full colour SNES manuals. I used to read the manual for FFVI cover to cover like it was the greatest book ever written. I'd sit their just looking at Amano's art for half an hour some days. I got to see games like Illusion of Gaia have their entire strategy guide in the manual like you mentioned.

It was glorious. And that's without getting into the number of fold out maps and full sized posters I got out of these things too. The only company that really does anything remotely comparable these days is Atlus.

Which actually gives me a side line into something I want to mention: companies complain about piracy and used sales hurting their bottom line. They come up with intrusive DRM that forces paying customers to put up with a worse copy of the game than the pirates get once it's inevitably cracked. But you know what I honestly believe would be more effective (aside from making better games)? Give us more in the damn case. Instead of some low quality manual, make it as much a full colour art book as a guide to learning how to play the game. Give me a soundtrack disc that costs you a few extra cents to print and package in the case. I don't have the disposable income I used to, and I will wait a few months or a year or buy used to get your game cheaper if it's not at the top of my must play list or I don't have the time. But I will go out of my way to buy Atlus games brand new, simply because I don't know if I'll be able to get the packaged art book and soundtrack in a few months or a year, and I'm damn sure it will not be in the used copy Gamestop is selling. I don't care if I have to put off buying comics for a few weeks, skip a meal out with the wife (I'm a terrible husband), or whatever else, I will get the Atlus games I want on day 1, even if I cold otherwise wait for the game itself.