furry_irl

They weren't trying to skin us for every dime we had.

Also mid-shelf games, though those have been making a comeback of sorts, mostly on account of half a dozen former-indie studios that are now too big to be truly 'indie' but haven't been vored by the AAA industry yet. (see, like, Supergiant Games, or Owlcat Games)

Just. -- Titles that aren't trying to be EVERYTHING UNDER THE FUCKING SUN because they aren't the biggest investment the studio has ever made ever, nor are they indie projects made by like 5 people. Just -- Games. With a decent budget.

When Midshelf games reigned, we had a lot more diversity in styles of game. And there were experimental titles that had like. A budget to be more than just a 2 hour title that makes your eyes water with how wonderful it plays but then is just over.

I kept my warcraft 2 manual because it's a beautiful fucking work of art.

Personally I don't consider "online play" a positive change

Man, I LOVED reading instruction booklets as a kid, whenever I wasn't allowed to game. I was obsessed with videogames back then.

One anecdote that comes to mind, is the german Instruction Booklet for Donkey Kong 64. Throughout the booklet, there were those little dialogues made by Cranky Kong (the old grumpy Kong), who would often insult the player, telling them games have gone "too easy" and that they're "too soft". But on one page that listed all levels of the game, Cranky was surprised - he appearently made a level himself called "colorful barrel fight" and couldn't find it listed on the page, however, if the player was looking enough, they might be able to find it ingame. Needless to say, my kid brain went wild, and I was always looking out for a secret door/wall or something in the game whenever I played. Had me searching for hours. Buuut I don't think anything like that secret level actually exists in DK64. Maybe it was a mistranslation, or maybe Cranky is just referring to the Barrel Minigame that can be accessed via DK's platform. By now, people have rummaged through the decompiled source code and speedran this game for decades while breaking it in every possible avenue via glitches. It would be next to impossible for an entire secret level not to be found.

The games came complete out-of-the-box. No day 1 patches that still didn’t fix all the game breaking bugs on release. No DLC, required online connectivity, or kernel-level anti-cheat. No worry that the game will stop working once the company that sold it decides to turn the servers off.

Not just manuals, either. Feelies in general. Getting a map to look at, or a little lore booklet, even things that were just "in-universe", like the coin and letter Witcher 2 came with.

Small things you didn't preorder to get, just included with the package. Things that you could keep as physical mementos of time spent.

For anyone nostalgic about video game manuals, I'd recommend the game Tunic and going into it as blind as possible.

The broken controller is missing...

I highly recommend the game tunic

I still remember reading the manual for the original Starcraft. That shit had some deep lore.

I'd get Gameboy color games and try to read the little booklets on the way home at night, reading by the light of the street lights.

All I did was make myself motion sick.

Games were so diverse. Studios had no idea what would work and they just tried different stuff. A lot sucked really bad, but some were incredible.