cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13809164
Ignoring the lack of updates if the game is buggy, games back then were also more focused on quality and make gamers replay the game with unlockable features based on skills, not money. I can't count the number of times I played Metal Gear Solid games over and over to unlock new features playing the hardest difficulty and with handicap features, and also to find Easter eggs. Speaking of Easter eggs, you'd lose a number of hours exploring every nook and cranny finding them!
The books were often filled with cool art not found in the game, sometimes there were hints hidden in the margins, or some had a mini-walkthru of the first level or something in the back, along with lore, they added a lot to the game imo. It felt like a well put together package, not unlike album artwork, liner notes and whole albums which people are also now (re)discovering are pretty cool.
God on the PC end of things youd get like a literal book with some games. Keyboard overlays for controls, posters, all sorts of fun shit.
Some reissue of ‘Gran Turismo’ 1 or 2 for the PS1 had a hundred-page manual detailing how to drive a proper race line and how to set up the car for different behaviors.
Love the maps, I have an old photo of myself playing on the family 386sx with a Might and Magic Clouds of Xeen map in the background. I remember the Ultima games always came with a bunch of cool stuff too.
I loved the maps.
I've grown up in the land of pirate cartridges with no booklets, so never knew any lore about Mario games besides “the princess got kidnapped”. Didn't discover that the enemies had names until I was an adult.
Oh boy, you didn't even get the bad b&w photocopy manual? Those came with rentals a lot of times. There was a lot of pointless info too though, like grand descriptions of the starting equipment you ditch after the first half hour lol.
We had nothing outside the games back then, and no boxes for the carts either. But OTOH the pirate cartridges often had multiple games on them — up to like a dozen decent ones on a NES cart, or straight up a hundred variations of the same few base games, particularly old and smaller ones from the early 80s. I think the variations were made by modifying some variables before launching the base game: changing the speed, starting level or whatever.
I was occasionally reading magazines about games, and encountering names of enemy characters from a platformer that I've played a hundred times would make me go “what the hell are they talking about”. Apparently rich kids in the big city could afford genuine games with the manuals.