Worst Gaming Manuals

The most certain thing when buying a new game is that it will come with a manual. Sometime they come in full color, but most of the time they're in boring old B&W. Most of the time, they have cool artwork, but occasionally somebody will replace the anime stuff with something that was doodled by the janitor's five-year old son. And occasionally, manuals are just nothing more than boring text and are lucky enough to have screenshots. But there are some times in which a gaming manual is so bad, you have to wonder "who was the pothead that wrote this". Sometimes, a game's manual is so bad that it has contradicting information (whether it involves the game's storyline or something related to gameplay), bad artwork, barely helpful when you actually need help and feels the need to throw a really bad pun or joke once in awhile.

Konami/Ultra's American manuals during the late 80s/early 90s were pretty bad. I once found an online transcript of the Famicom Metal Gear manual and compared it to the NES version and Konami of America really messed things up big time. The Contra manual was bad too. In Lazer Invansion, the bad guy's name is given as Shiek Toxic Moron. And don't even get me started with Snake's Revenge. They even butchered the storyline in the Lone Ranger manual.

Domestic Capcom manuals... BLEH!

Complete lack of color (not a surprise), horrible for details... And most of the time- characters' move lists have errors. Utterly pathetic. I think I have actually YET to find a Capcom manual WITHOUT a move list error. Well, as of late (DC era)...

On the other hand, import manuals are lovely. Great artowrk, bright, everything is so... SHIT ON THE US VERSION-esque...

im dissapointed by black and white manuals
the manual for my Xmen Vs STreet Fighter saturn is sooo bright and vivid and on nice paper but then the US PSX version of my friends is bland and in black and white a lower grade paper its sad

i remember there being alot of Sega Genesis manuals i hated same with NES ones bad black and white art was sad really

only thing worse then a manual in black and white is when you look at some guides that cost 10 - 15 bucks or more and theyre in black and white *cough gunvalkyrie cough*

as much as i love capcom games they always give us black and white stripped down shitty versions of their Japanese manuals which sucks

I think all US manuals are lacking in comparison to their Japanese counterparts in general.


VO:OT... The US manual is crap. It's just completey lacking... everything.

Eh, I think you get the picture. US publishers just don't care most of the time. (Although the WD Silhouette Mirage US manual is amazing... interview, song lyrics... everything about it is great.)

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Originally posted by Johnpv

only thing worse then a manual in black and white is when you look at some guides that cost 10 - 15 bucks or more and theyre in black and white *cough gunvalkyrie cough*

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That pissed me off so much. $15 for a B&W guide with fuzzy, crappy pics? I think not.

I really hated the Genesis manuals towards the end of the system's run. Those Xerox-quality recycled manuals were the worse.

No, wait. The manuals at the end of the Saturn's life were worse. they'd sag inside the box and everything.

The Japanese VOOT manual is fat as hell. I really like the cover too. Generally I don't really read my manuals, unless an RPG requires it to figure out the spell system or something like that. Usually I flip through them once and tuck them away forever.

More recently the Commandos 2 european manual springs to mind. I played the original /alot/ and for the sequal they changed all the default hot-keys around. Okay, but then didn't include them in the manual. All it had were really quite vague outlines of all the actions/items/new characters.

This made the game very very difficult to play, despite the fact that is so damn hard anyway. I really hated Eidos during the first few hours play. :sweat:

Any B&W manual sucks major ass. It just wreaks of shite cheap ass corporate decision making. The crappiest color manual is ten times better than the best B&W manual (if there is such a thing).

NOTE TO PUBLISHERS: Hey, have some pride in your products and give them the care they deserve. It'll only cost you a few more dimes. Hell I'd be happy to pay a dollar more for a color manual, if need be. B&W is CHEAP ASS!

Stop penny pinching

Both Valkyrie Profile and Vagrant Story are excellent games (and have excellent in-game training modes), but both have terrible manuals.

I remember those early Konami/Ultra game manuals back in the NES days. Whoever wrote them had a really retarded sense of humor.

Recently, the manual for The Italian Job is pretty skimpy. There's not much else in there other than basic controls.

US manuals usually aren't that terrible (they get the job done), it's only once you've seen their Japanese counterparts that it appears so shoddy. SFIII:TS in Japanese has half a page dedicated to a full picture of each character next to their move list, in full color. The US one is b&w, with tiny pictures and smaller move lists. The DC CvSNK2 manual craps all over the DC one as well.

However, I'd just like to toss out that WD's Elemental Gearbolt is the highest quality manual I've ever seen. That thing is so awesome, on such nice paper, with great color, interviews, wonderful paintings, everything.

Worst manuals IMO...

Phantasy Star 4- Appalling cover image, poor paper/printing makes the images inside the booklet a pain to understand.

Mars Matrix- One of the nicest outer packages I've seen for a shooter in the US. However it's really vague on some gameplay details, I learned more about experience cubes on Mode's site than the manual.

Spriggan- 4 pages long, for a game with 20+ weapon combos. If you have 15 minutes the game cycles through the weapons at the title screen, still.... *-neo

Grand Theft Auto 3

Although it is very nice looking manual, it's use of pictures from the beta version of the game, the Maibatsu Monstrosity, Airplanes and Darkel have spawned a countless number of idiotic threads across several message boards.

What aggravates me the most about game manuals is the "notes" section in the back. What the hell for? Back in the day, when passwords were common, it was useful, but what purpose does it serve now? And they don't just give you one, many times there are several pages of empty space where valuable tips could've been provided by the developers. What do they expect me to write? "Tetris log, entry 14: Just discovered that the square blocks don't rotate." Most of them are printed on glossy paper that will smear anyway. Bleh...

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Originally posted by Kaneda
What aggravates me the most about game manuals is the "notes" section in the back. What the hell for? Back in the day, when passwords were common, it was useful, but what purpose does it serve now? And they don't just give you one, many times there are several pages of empty space where valuable tips could've been provided by the developers. What do they expect me to write? "Tetris log, entry 14: Just discovered that the square blocks don't rotate." Most of them are printed on glossy paper that will smear anyway. Bleh...

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Probably so that you will write down any secret codes or cheats that you'll find, but even most games are lacking in that category today.

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Originally posted by Johnny Undaunted


Probably so that you will write down any secret codes or cheats that you'll find, but even most games are lacking in that category today.

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Isn't that EXACTLY what Kaneda just said?