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Episode 409: Game Manuals (Patreon)

Published:
2021-10-08 14:00:00
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

Today's post is actually only part one of this episode. Part two will be coming next week, in the form of the visual companion promised in the episode. (I'd post it now, but I'm off for another recording weekend and ran out of time amidst all the prep work.) 

After all, this episode is about game manuals: The tactile physicality of them, the experience of reading them... basically, it's a highly visual topic being presented through audio. Which is challenging! But I think it is a fun conversation regardless, and once I have a chance to photograph and share the manuals we talk about, you'll be even more delightfully edified. Thanks again to patron Jeff Vlasek for instigating this discussion.

This week's conversationalists: Myself, Frank Cifaldi, Nadia Oxford, and Jason Wilson. Edits by Greg Leahy, and exceptional cover art by Step Sybydlo.

Music this episode: 

11:50 - Snafu (Intellivision) BGM

20:10 - Dragon Warrior III (NES): Menu Theme

28:16 - Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES): Overworld

41:17 - Metroid (NES): Ridley's Hideout

53:38 - StarTropics: Uncle Steve | Silent Service (NES): Title Theme

1:02:50 - Section Z (NES): Stage 1

1:15:39 - Kieta Princess Audio Cassette

1:26:26 - JJ & Jeff (TG-16): Field 6-2 

Closing - Kieta Princess Audio Cassette (continued)

Files

Comments

Zach Adams

Excited to look into this but I'm not sure I believe any human has ever reached 6-2 in JJ and Jeff to know what the music sounds like

Branwen Shoop

Okay, this is a pretty genius idea for an episode. So little is said about the tactile parts of gaming (which is why I loved the controller/media format episodes too).

Chad McDaniel

Looking forward to this. I'd be interested in a retrospective on feelies (maps, trinkets) that came with older games. I know that's primarily going to be PC games, though.

Chad McDaniel

We know it's Jeremy writing here, but I expect newcomers may be confused about who's writing this and which voice it matches in the podcast. Maybe add a byline?

Matthew Salisbury

Secret of Mana’s manual sticks out in my mind because the images of the main characters were represented as figurines.

SilverHairedMiddleAgedTuxedoMask

Who can forget the SNES manual for Home Improvement, which was a single page and said REAL MEN DON'T NEED INSTRUCTIONS. It was a pretty good meta joke for what it was.

CAMBOT

I miss the manual coming standard with all games. Switch game boxes seem incomplete and comically large without them. I also understand why they are less necessary considering most games have tutorial modes/stages and you can tell more story with cut scenes etc... but still....give me that booklet!

John Simon

Here's something wild: Metal Slader Glory, famously infamous visual novel on Famicom, included a multiple page manga in the manual by the character designer explaining the background story of the game. A new translation rom hack was released a few weeks ago and like the absolute legends they are, they translated the manual and included it as a pdf alongside the .ips patch file. https://www.romhacking.net/translations/6253/

Julian

I just love the artwork for this episode. It’s very sweet and really captures the spirit of the topic.

Alone

As a person who writes software manuals (and has the pleasure of seeing them printed sometimes) I loved this episode! Thanks all!

Diamond Feit

I can't believe I forgot about the NAZZ in the Bionic Commando manual until right now. My goodness. And I still had no idea who they really were until Hitler showed up!

J. Green

I miss reading game manuals. My favorites were the Working Designs manuals. Full color, peppered with Japanese artwork and American snark, and glossy. And at The end of every manual were notes about the making of the localization of the games. Sometimes they (Or rather Vic Ireland) gave you insight to their localization philosophies, and what the hell took them so long to complete. I still remember reading their Magic Knight Rayearth manual notes, mentioning that Sega of Japan had a HDD crash which destroyed a good chunk of the original game data, and sat back astonished that they completed such an arduous task and released it. I recently bought a few Switch games and cracking those empty objects open brought a wave of sadness to me. I know technically they're unnecessary but dammit I miss them!

CitizenMeh

Great episode! Even as a kid, I always admired the chutzpah of the Sonic 3 manual trying to handwave the game's rushed, bug-ridden code by pretending the frequent softlocks were particularly devious and intentional schemes by Dr Robotnik. I also spent months diligently searching for zones that appeared in the Wario Land manual that simply didn't exist in-game. Game manuals: grimoires of LIES.

Christopher Hughes

Remember the small black sealed manual for Zelda: A Link to the Past? "secrets revealed" type of thing? I just found mine a few months ago. It brought back some great memories because I didn't realize I even had that at all until I was way into The Dark World, and thoroughly lost, at age 12, back in 1994.

Craig

This episode brought me back to one of my family road trips from NJ down to South Carolina when I was a kid. My dad was cool enough to bring me to a Babbages since he knew these trips did little to interest me. It was there I bought Wild Arms, but my PS1 was at home. I spent the entire 12 hour trip home studying what amounts to a very basic game manual. Nevertheless, the prospect of a new RPG made the ride home memorable.

Cajun Baz

Not all modern games are without manuals. CD Projekt Red and Rockstar were pretty generous with their manuals and maps for the PS4 generation, if memory serves.

Dave Dalrymple

When I was a kid, I was a dedicated reader of game instruction manuals. When my brother and I would get a new single player game, we never fought over who got to play first. My brother would always dive right in, while I read the instruction book

John Learned

First, I remember loving the SMB manual because it had a crude illustration of the "overworld" above 1-2. It left me feeling that there was unexplored territory that I needed to find in-game. I was very weird about that kind of stuff as a kid. Second, what Jeremy describes as his vision for "manuals" now --companion pieces that annotate a game-- is the kind of stuff that I personally love and love making myself. Just imagine giving someone your favorite game and then heaping upon them all of the best supplementary material that you can find for it like interviews, in-game notations, artwork, music, whatever. You're not publishing "collector editions." You're producing shrines.

Kevin

This episode is one of the many reasons I enjoy Retronauts! Like many I used to enjoy pouring over the manuals and in my naive way questioned why I hadn't found a particular character or other item that turned out to have not been in the game after all. It was another way to enjoy a game when unable to play or when I was stuck or burnt out on the actual gameplay.

Jordan

Where is part two of this?