I miss video game strategy guides

[Scarlett Johansson]

I found the Banjo Tooie book in a box in the attic. It was in bad shape but ugh the memories...the ad for the soundtrack and the Nintendo Power subscription at the end.....

I miss how most guides were themed like the game, from the headers to character designs on the pages and whatnot.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

While you had the appendix section at the back of the manual when you wanted cut-and-dry details, the tutorial and explanations of how the game worked was wittily written, well-designed to suck you into actually reading the damn thing.

The manuals of other games in the Sim series are like that too. Game info and IRL stuff. The SimLife manual also has silly comics.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

With games costing $60+ nowadays (piracy is based) just for the fucking "base game", I'm sure as shit not forking over $30+ for a book on top of it when some smelly nerds will inevitably make playthrough videos I can just reference for free if I get stuck somewhere. They really only had a place in a world where a fraction of the population had the Internet, and an even smaller fraction had Internet faster than fucking 56k. A relic of times passed.

Most guides, even accounting for inflation, weren't and aren't $30+, unless you were going for some hardback "collector's edition". These are all junk. I got my SimCity 4 guide at GameStop in 2004 for like $10 new, and the Nintendo ones were around $15 around that same time. Inflation means that they'd still be probably closer to $20-25 today but not "over 30 dollars".

 

[Back me up!]

The price wasn't the fucking point it was to have something to read while on the bus dreaming about reaching the next area.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

well the video game strategy guides exist. you can still buy them. but why would you do that when there's tons of free shit online that's just as helpful? i mean theyre good bathroom reads, but then again, we have the phone

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

FUCK YOU OAK! FUCK YOU!!

 

[BallsMcLongDong]

Strategy guides are the fucking shit. I'd even buy them for games I didn't have yet, just to get immersed in the world of the game. I also really miss gaming magazines (that weren't shit.) Being a poorfag and having dial up till I was older, I'd read articles or blurbs, or see the wicked artwork of something and just imagine how the story played out, how cool it was. I'll never forget the first time I saw an ad for RE3 coming out and saw Nemesis, scariest motherfucker ever. I had so many stories in my head about what RE3 was gonna be and what nemesis was.
the internet has killed that. Even if YOU are not looking for info on something coming out, someone somewhere is gonna spoil shit about the game for you. There's no mystery. It's all right at your fingertits.
Edit: check out this video for a fun experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LU77t-Hop0

Russian dad who didn't know anything about pokemon writes a strategy guide/pokedex for his child, ends up crafting a world where dugtrio are pimps who get drunk, Hypno is a member of the IRA, Blastoise murders people in Taiwanese riots, etc... It was all canon for Russian kids since none of the Pokemedia made it's way over officially yet.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

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FUCK YOU OAK! FUCK YOU!!

That gets posted a lot on /v/ but I can never figure out what it's from. It's not in the official guidebooks (from USA), not from "Pokémon Power" (the insert in Nintendo Power), not from Prima...it's possible that Brady or some even more obscure had it.

 

[TheHarbinger]

Gaming today has no exploration and little challenge. There is no point of having a guide when games are made so even people like DSP could finish them with 100% completion.

The big giant compass and cursor literally pointing you exactly where to go has ruined more than just strategy guides. As now the maps of these game worlds make zero sense. Things are arranged like a carnival where you just walk from ride to the next ride and nothing can possibly be missed. The quests are all designed to be as simple as possible so that the players cannot possibly lose. The worlds feel so artificial and there is no immersion.

They want game content not locked behind things like exploration, player skill, experience, problem solving, or puzzles. They want game content locked behind such barriers as paywalls, seasonal content, battle pass, premium outfits, credit card information, and micro-transactions.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

I also miss when actual game guides from video game console magazines were a cool edition to the game itself. This used to be my favorite thing to read in the bookstores when one wants to relax and kill time.

Now in these days, it’s largely either irrelevant or strictly online through the form of YouTubers or influencers.

 

[Mayor Cody Travers]

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FUCK YOU OAK! FUCK YOU!!

Now to be fair, a Master Ball does kinda go with a Tentacruel in terms of style when you think about it.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Final fantasy trying to get you to...not actually read the guide.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

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I also miss when actual game guides from video game console magazine were also a cool edition to the game itself. This used to be my favorite thing to read in the bookstores when one wants to relax and kill time.

Now in these days, it’s largely either irrelevant or strictly online through the form of YouTubers or influencers.

I don't know, by GTA V, video game magazines weren't what they used to be. Nintendo Power had already shut down, part of a long decline. Already by 2005 they have jettisoned almost all of the strategy portions, then in 2007 they sold out to Future US which did two things:
1) Magazine quality went down a lot, most of the 2005 features basically vanished as it got more and more mainstreamed. Lots more ads.
2) It killed the Player's Guide series, something that they had since they started. It was a little weird to see them teaming up with Prima after suing them 10 years prior...but none of that talent went over with them, it just shifted over to make Prima's "more official" even though they had been licensed by them for the last decade.

I should mention I discovered the existence of a memoir written by a former strategy guide writer but I haven't heard anyone talk about it, good or bad.

 

[Asian tech support]

I don't really miss strategy guides as I only ever had a few although I can see why they would be cherished. What I really miss is an era where mystery could surround games for years; where everything wasn't subject to metagaming, where games weren't datamined on day one.
It's been mentioned already but I do miss the little novel sized manuals some games used to have, especially if they had neat art. The one for The Witcher 1 was practically a strategy guide. It had breakdowns for every quest.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

If I'm not mistaken....

Sonic 06, Battle Network, and Bloodbourne official guides were all full of useless unhelpful crap. The Order 1666 or whatever only listed the quick te events.

 

[Asian tech support]

Bloodbourne

That one got written by the ENB fag right? It's no wonder.

 

[X Prime]

The good strategy guides back in the day were the ones that were effectively novelizations.

 

[Air support]

I think art books are far more interesting as it shows the development history of the game what ideas got scraped instead of how to get an extra 1-up or whatever.

 

[WonderWino]

I also miss when games used to come with a novel that was the instruction manual.

Reminds me of the printed manual for the original baldurs gate. They did a surprisingly good job on that. But then there was the strategy guide that was badly edited, had multiple spelling and grammar mistakes, got a large amount of quest information wrong and fucked up the map for the city of baldurs gate by replacing it with pictures of the friendly arm inn

The sim city 3000 strategy guide was pretty well made though. The size of a fucking phone book and cost more than the game itself but it was decent

 

[Doctor Neo Cortex]

Yup. As @Gravityqueen4life stated, it would be impossible to have a good World of Warcraft strategy guide. Anything published in 2004 was a lot less useful by the end of 2005, and completely useless now.

I had a strategy guide for an MMO called Lego Uinverse, and 1 year later the guide was out of date as they completely redid the entire games story and quests in a lot of area's. Even though it became useless for the most part, I still liked having it as it gave me nostalgia for the game when I played it the first time (sort of like a relic of a bygone time). I also liked to look at it as a lot of the images were taken from the game, were taken pre-release, so some of the models and textures in images were different to the final game which I found interesting.