Good game manuals have gone to hell.

[Excalibur Bane]

Well, I must say I'm very discouraged by this whole small package non-sense that publishers and retails have agreed with. I just don't care for a jewel case sized game package, not for computer games and especially sims of any kind.

The manuals are the worst. We get a CD, usually the mandatory cd key or serial number and an extremely useless Quick Start guide or something of the sort.

Gone are the days where we get good, quality printed manuals. We get lousy PDFs the majority of the time. I don't even have a printer right now, so I'm stuck browsing them outside of the game. Pretty annoying when you have to swap back and forth (if you even can!) between the game and Adobe to follow a tutorial that requires you have the manual.

I still have my coveted SWOTL manual and game box. That's the way it SHOULD be! A nice, bound manual with all kinds of juicy historical information that helps deliver a kind of background and premise for the game. Even better, it had copy protection that was as good as the stuff today: The codewheel!

I found that little thing entertaining. Just poking around with the various combinations. Course I was considering younger then, maybe I was more easily entertained. I'll have to go dig it out and see. :hmm:

Anyway, I know the whole cost and space savings but I really don't think it's going to help in the end. I'd rather pay more for a game with a good manual, then less for a game with no manual or a crappy one.