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1
StarTropics (1990)
8.7/10on IGDB
Released
The original NES package gave you a letter from Uncle Steve to hang on to. In Chapter 4, a request for a radio frequency sends you back to that paper to uncover a hidden message. Keep the letter or the official electronic manual handy and let the game tell you when to look.
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F-Zero (1990)
7.7/10on IGDB
Released
Read the comic at the back of the original Super NES booklet before starting a race. Takaya Imamura's Captain Falcon story ends just as a race is about to begin. It gives the driver and the futuristic circuit a life outside the cockpit, which is easy to miss when you go straight to the starting grid.
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1984)
6.9/10on IGDB
Released
Infocom teaches its text adventure with a sample exchange and a little map from an invented scene outside the game. Try reading it before typing your first command. You'll see how a short instruction and the game's response can suggest a next move, with Arthur Dent's own predicaments still waiting for you.
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Elite
The BBC Micro game's Space Trader's Flight Training Manual addresses you as the newly qualified pilot of a Cobra Mk III. Read the docking and trade sections before your first station visit, then browse the spacecraft pages for the wider world behind a few lines of wireframe. It is a manual you can use as a pilot and read as a piece of fiction.
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Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004)
8.2/10on IGDB
Released
MicroProse's manual puts the game rules beside the fictional memoirs of Captain Sydney. Read his account of taking a sun sight, then turn to the example that asks whether a captured merchant ship is worth keeping. The booklet also has separate sections on life in the West Indies and the six eras you can play.
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EarthBound (1995)
Released
The original American box included a Player's Guide that reads in places like a newspaper from the towns you visit. Open the Onett Times before heading into Onett, and save the town maps for when you want a nudge. The paper copy even included scratch-and-sniff cards, another way the package carried the game's joke into your hands.
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Super Metroid (1994)
9.2/10on IGDB
Released
Start with the Super NES booklet's opening pages on the Metroid menace if you want the history behind Samus's return to Zebes. The later pages introduce the planet's regions, giving places such as Brinstar and Norfair an identity before you have pieced their routes together. Skim the maps and equipment when you want context for the next place you enter.
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Marathon (1994)
8.0/10on IGDB
Released
Bungie's original Macintosh manual opens its story section with a shuttle approaching the colony ship and a voice on the radio interrupting the routine. Read that sequence before looking through the control pages. The booklet turns the moment before you take over into a short piece of fiction and makes the first in-game messages feel like a continuation.
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Gran Turismo 2 (1999)
8.2/10on IGDB
Released
The North American PlayStation edition's Reference Manual draws a traction circle to show why braking and turning put demands on the same tires. Read the diagram, then run the same corner twice and notice what happens when you change when you brake. The explanations of understeer and oversteer give you words for what the car does on the screen.
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Homeworld (1999)
8.4/10on IGDB
Released
Read the original Windows manual's Historical and Technical Briefing as if you were about to board the Mothership. Its account of the clans on Kharak and the archaeologist who finds the Guidestone gives the fleet's search a personal and political history. The illustrations and technical notes make the ship feel like a place people built to live in.
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Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999)
9.2/10on IGDB
Released
In the original Windows manual, the faction profiles turn a group's beliefs into decisions you can make in the game. Compare the Gaians, who cannot choose Free Market economics, with Morgan Industries, which favors it. Then read the Social Engineering chapter to see how a change in policy can bring an advantage in one area and a cost in another.
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TIS-100 (2015)
7.0/10on IGDB
Released
Print the reference manual and keep it beside the puzzle. It looks like a handbook for a machine you found secondhand, and it explains the instructions and how the machine's separate nodes communicate. Looking up one instruction when a program stalls is part of the satisfaction of figuring out what this peculiar computer can do.
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Tunic (2022)
8.5/10on IGDB
Released
The manual is something you find a page at a time. A newly discovered map or drawing can tell you what to try in a place you already visited, so it is worth leafing back through the pages as they accumulate. A later physical edition includes a complete printed booklet. Start by finding the pages in the game if you want to make the discoveries yourself.
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