Prima Games shutting down - Where will boomers get their Zelda strategy guides now?

[Done]

lol DSP was still buying these up until a few years ago.

I had an old boss who used to collect game guides.

 

[ES 148]

I never used a strategy guide for a game I owned. I just read them for fun.

 

[BScCollateral]

Back in the day, I bought [NOUN] until the day I found people made better [NOUN] for free on the Internet.

I have the feeling that the values of [NOUN] will be going up dramatically as time passes.

 

[Medicated]

Because of all the errors in their guides, nothing of value was lost.

Yeah, some people would like to have physical copies of game guides, but Prima was notorious for missing things, including things that were cut from the final release, having items in different locations. Characters names being different.

This was probably their final release. The most piss poor game edition since ME3

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Umm, did you mean gamefaqs.com ?

 

[MysticMisty]

I didn't even know printed guides were still a thing. When I was young my parents weren't interested in buying guides for me because they felt it was a waste of money that could go to regular books. I did receive a few, mostly from my sister and she'd get me the Nintendo Power guides. I do have at least one, maybe two, Prima guides though. They came from a guy who was briefly my friend and I guess felt obligated to get me something for Christmas/my birthday but didn't actually care enough to not get me the cheapest product. And yeah, they definitely have a lot less personality than the Nintendo Power guides.

 

[Picnic_Boy]

I didn't even know printed guides were still a thing. When I was young my parents weren't interested in buying guides for me because they felt it was a waste of money that could go to regular books. I did receive a few, mostly from my sister and she'd get me the Nintendo Power guides. I do have at least one, maybe two, Prima guides though. They came from a guy who was briefly my friend and I guess felt obligated to get me something for Christmas/my birthday but didn't actually care enough to not get me the cheapest product. And yeah, they definitely have a lot less personality than the Nintendo Power guides.

When I was a kid, I used to carry around the old Mario Bros. 3 and Mario Mania guides everywhere, like Jehovah's Witness literature. Come to think of it, that must've given my folks many a sleepless night.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

Heh. Prima Games. I remember thumbing through their FF7 guide and being dumbfounded at the errors.

Surprised they lasted this long.

 

[Lucky Wildcard]

I only owned one of their guides. Body Harvest. It helped me through the game, but there were so many inaccuracies.

I never used a guide to beat Kirby 64, but I did look through it. Man, was it ever half-assed.

I just remembered that someone wrote a guide to Ogre Battle 64 on GameFAQs and going through the trouble of labeling every error they made.

 

[Nazi vegeta]

Games and gamers are so dumbed down that they wouldnt know what to do with a guide anyway.

 

[Fagnacious D]

Games and gamers are so dumbed down that they wouldnt know what to do with a guide anyway.

 

[Someone in a Tree]

Heh. Prima Games. I remember thumbing through their FF7 guide and being dumbfounded at the errors.

Surprised they lasted this long.

To say nothing of the dramatic number of spoilers.

 

[John Titor]

The only strategy guides worth buying are the ones that double as art books.

 

[Aladdin_Insane]

I had prima's starcraft and warcraft which came with the battle chests but they were black and white and dry as hell. It didn't help that these were released just as Youtube started to get super popular. There were also video game magazines that were doing guides for really popular games too. They had character and were better written.

The only strategy guides worth buying are the ones that double as art books.

The only strategy guide I ever really used was Piggyback's wind waker strategy guide. That was beautiful, fully coloured and it had tons of art that I hadn't seen before. That was a cool book and I used it loads to help me beat the island challenges and travel around the great sea.

When a guide is done right it's really lovely to have. Not just to use as a reference.

Although the last time I remember actively seeing one was when I bought the original release of Skyrim. The girl behind the counter tried to upsell me one. It was 2012.

 

[Jaimas]

Prima's been fucking irrelevant since 1997. I can't goddamn believe it took this long for them to go under. They've always had the absolute shittiest guides on the market, often with major, glaring errors and omissions and terrible fucking editing.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

I actually thought they went out years ago.

Same, Haven't seen a strategy guide from them in probably a decade and they haven't been any good in nearly two decades. I remember getting the Star Ocean one and finding it to be worthless and that the old Tips and Tricks magazine was always a better purchase.

 

[ForgedBlades]

I unironically used to buy modern strategy guides. The trend towards hardcovers and bonus goodies made them cool to look at on a shelf and they were still fun to flip through even if the information was useless more often than not.

I also like to collect vintage guides. It's really the only segment of the retro hobby that hasn't been tainted by the bubble market. You can find them for next to nothing at used book and game stores, and they are a trip to read with modern eyes.