Nostalgia Moment

I miss the big-ass manuals for all of the Jane's flight sims. Falcon 4.0 was another one.

I miss manuals too, but maybe not THOSE manuals :p

of course, I liked lighter game/sim style air games like Strike Commander ;)
 

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In large part it has to do with age. The older you get, the less dazzled you'll be for things in general. Also after you've played dozens of games less will feel unique to you. How many new games do you buy thinking this will be a new and innovative experience? Not many. Doesn't mean new games are bad, but generally they are more iterative these days. Just like movies. Which is why the game industry is following Hollywood and doing lots of reboots and remakes.

Though of course having big boxes and manuals added a bit to it. Some games had some posters and the like. I think the main appeal was for flight simulators and similar as those would come with big manuals.
 
I never cared that much about the physical instruction manuals, boxes, cartridges/disks, but I do miss the assumption that you knew what you were doing when you started a game. Almost every modern game wastes a full level telling you how to play because there are no instruction manuals anymore. Even games for kids on the NES tossed you into a real level with the assumption you knew what the buttons did and what was happening. I get that games are more complicated now, but I think I'd like to see a return of eBook-style manuals instead of lame tutorial missions. A few games include well made PDF manuals that almost nobody accesses. I'd like that to be the norm and services like Steam, Epic, and the console menus could easily put more focus on it. It would save us all some time.
 
The last time I bought a physical copy of a game it was Mass Effect 3 Collector's Edition back in 2012.
 
I never cared that much about the physical instruction manuals, boxes, cartridges/disks, but I do miss the assumption that you knew what you were doing when you started a game. Almost every modern game wastes a full level telling you how to play because there are no instruction manuals anymore. Even games for kids on the NES tossed you into a real level with the assumption you knew what the buttons did and what was happening. I get that games are more complicated now, but I think I'd like to see a return of eBook-style manuals instead of lame tutorial missions. A few games include well made PDF manuals that almost nobody accesses. I'd like that to be the norm and services like Steam, Epic, and the console menus could easily put more focus on it. It would save us all some time.
I think a well designed game doesn't need an instruction manual or tutorials even for people that have never played the game before.

For example in Halo: Combat Evolved when you play on normal difficulty you wake up and part of the wake up process tells you to look at things to calibrate your suit. Sort of a tutorial built into the story/gameplay. Then it just tells you buttons as you go, the first time you need to jump over something it says press 'A' to jump, etc. You don't need to read a manual or play a full on tutorial.
And if you play the game on Legendary difficulty they skip all the explaining and say GTFO and kill some aliens because you already know how to play.
 
I think a well designed game doesn't need an instruction manual or tutorials even for people that have never played the game before.

For example in Halo: Combat Evolved when you play on normal difficulty you wake up and part of the wake up process tells you to look at things to calibrate your suit. Sort of a tutorial built into the story/gameplay. Then it just tells you buttons as you go, the first time you need to jump over something it says press 'A' to jump, etc. You don't need to read a manual or play a full on tutorial.
And if you play the game on Legendary difficulty they skip all the explaining and say GTFO and kill some aliens because you already know how to play.
Mass Effect 2 similarly does a good job guiding new players through playing the game. Mass Effect 3's tutorial was actually quite a bit worse than the previous installation.
 
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