Have you kept the manuals to your games?

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

I feel that this has become an "oh, shit" problem only in retrospective, but it's a big one.

For the longest time it wasn't all that rare for players to consider manuals as part of the packaging to a game and many got thrown away as a result. We didn't really care about back stories or troubleshooting at the time, trusting the product itself to provide the answer and let us tame it with a little bit of virtual elbow grease.

Boy, what a mistake that was.

Now, console gamers got largely spared of the need of manuals because there truly wasn't much to the vast majority of them (complexity-wise), but losing these has proven downright suicidal for PC gamers, specially for those who owned rather obscure games with little-to-no hope of ever seeing a scanned copy uploaded somewhere.

I can't even tell you how many horror stories I have heard in recent years about people being unable to figure out parts of their ancient games because that info was nowhere on the software itself, but relegated to the manual.

Myself? I have kept most of them, but mostly because kid-me thought they looked cool and enjoyed flipping through the illustrations.

What about you?

 

[BrawlMan]

Yes. Mainly from PS1/PS2 era to now.

 

[Isegrim]

I kept my manuals...I think it's somewhere here.

But I haven't looked for them because I can usually find PDF's of them with a quick search. Even played some PC games with manual vital information and found them in the internet.

Most of my manuals are from console games though.

 

[Grumpy_Old_Man]

Some survived most don't: A few N64 ones( Deadly arts and Ocarina of time ), PS2( Sakura Wars so long my love and I think Summoner too ), GB( the survival kids and Harvest Moon gbc ) Mario World is the only one that survived my 16 bits days... My console eight bits are a complete wasteland.
And a few big box pc games, Flight Simulator 95 and System Shock 1.

 

[ZEGA ZONIC]

I keep some of them around.
But they are stored away somewhere in my house.

 

[MasterEn]

i have a few of them. most of them are gone or i got the game second hand, so i didn't get the manual.
fortunately, the internet archive has a bunch of manuals uploaded over there, so i can get digital copies of the ones that i no longer have.

 

[GundamJehutyKai]

I kept all my games from PS1 onwards basically complete. so assuming they were bought new (most were), I have manuals, cases and everything else that came with it for all my PS1, PS2, Saturn, Dreamcast, Xbox, etc. pretty sure I kept my N64 ones too but not my SNES ones. Very young me got rid of the boxes for those, thinking they weren't needed to protect the carts. Some manuals *sorta* survived by virtue of me putting passwords into the notes pages at the end.

 

[nsign1]

I kept every single one of them, From the Mega drive and beyond, i only ever threw out the single piece of instructions paper that was in every box or case - i miss how some of the manuals enemy description and extra story Like the original toejam and earl, and the sonic manuals

 

[Wesmess]

There's this site I found called videogamemanual.com that's got everything for PS1, PS2, SNES, and N64 but the archive for the Game Boy series and Xbox aren't complete and going off the look of the look of the site, I'd say it's been YEARS since it's been touched.

 

[Kovlak]

I always keep my games intact. The only ones I didn't weren't NES and SNES games back in the day.

 

[MrProcastinator]

I also liked to skim through my PC game manuals when I was a kid, in fact I got rid of some game boxes but I still keep the manuals somewhere

 

[VampireLord1024VampireLord1024's icon]

Yes.

 

[Sir Auriel of Lionel]

I have a few, most of the time now the cases end up trashed but I try to save manuals now if they come into my lap. I really miss the ones this second hand shop had in a bin. You could take 4 of them for $1, now I guess they either hold onto them if they get a disc or they all got dumped which is a bigger shame. If I get the time I'll look into scanning and upload them for that online game manual project.

 

[TechBlisSTer]

When I was trading in trashbags of scratched videogames to gamestop for store credit I kept all the case artwork and manuals in different trashbags that I threw into my parents attic. There are bags and bags of case artwork and manuals.

Now when I was a kid. I had one of those wooden boxes with artwork on the sides that latches closed, mine's TMNT. Luckily I was smart enough to throw most of my game boxes and manuals in there. So my CIB NES collection is pretty large thanks to that. Still need a manual and comic for that Werewolf The Last Warrior game.

 

[Frickinfrik]

Yes, not that I don’t know how to play the game, but to preserve history. I also like it when the manual is in full color and has such attention to detail.

 

[Advil Lavs]

I only have a few switch game physically so, no manuals

 

[Scotty Scotty]

Yes. In fact, I can't seem to recall discarding any manuals for the games I own.

 

[What's His Face]

If it came with a manual, I saved it.

 

[GaleComprehends]

Outside of a few I stupidly threw out as a kid, I have the manual for almost every physical game I own.

 

[GectorKazuma]

I've managed to keep just about most of them. For some games all I have left is the manuals funnily enough.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

BTW: I love seeing so many new faces in the replies -- glad to have you, guys ^^!

 

[Retro Doomer]

There are people who throw away there gaming manuals ????

Anyhow I kept every gaming Manual I owned Ps2/Ps1 and even the once from Ps3 I just loved the manuals it was always nice having something to read and it was a nice addition.

I hated it when they stopped providing them around late Ps3 to ps4 Era where there was nothing or only a piece of paper.

For me personally a gaming manual always has some nostalgic value and had some personality,like a door into a time where everything seemed em less shitty.

I can't keep Important notes I lost them all the time but I keep my gaming manuals safe.

 

[yourdemise]

I've never gotten rid of any manuals, console or pc. The idea of doing that always felt "wrong" to me even when I was really young.

Fun fact: The manual for the first Vampire the Masquerade game (the Diabllo-esque one which came before Bloodlines) had an over 100 page manual. It's a freakin book. Skimmed it some but never went through the whole thing. I still have it somewhere.

 

[ThatOneLum ThatOneLum]

I've kept any manuals for games that haver proper cases. So any manuals for GB or GBA games are loooong gone.

Those cardboard cases are a nightmare for cover art preservation lmao

When it comes to PC games it depends on whether I was lucky enough to get a copy with a manual. By the time I Was buying PC games it was mostly digital anyway, and a lot of the cheaper software just chucked a PDF onto the CD-ROM and called it a day.

I've got a big-box copy of Ripper on PC and that sadly came without its manual. I'm tempted to try and find a replacement since I'm planning on burning the patches onto a CD so I can always have access to them when WW3 knocks the internet out.

 

[TinRattler]

85-90% of my games collection have their manuals