There was a time when people were expected to read because not all of the information could be stuffed into tiny floppy disks and some developers took it upon themselves to go the extra mile with their manuals, stretching their writing muscles, adding fancy art, and generally trying to fluff up what could have been a bunch boring crunch. One of my favorite examples includes the
Darklands Manual this rectangular monster didn't just dedicate a load of space to the game (which was complicated as hell for a 1992 title) but it had an entire section for educating the player on life in HRE, the church, and the various other aspects that had been incorporated into the game. It was fun and educational! It also had a nice dedication section for Arnold Hendrick for whom without the game wouldn't exist at all and Sandy Petersen whom without many games would also either not exist or would suck dongs (even if Downtown is a crappy Doom2 map). It also contained a reference section for those who had more than a passing interest in the subject material and on top of that all the illustrations are great to look at, most of them would end up in the game as watercolors for the menu backdrops.
My other favorite set of manuals has to be from the early Ultima games. More than one game and more than one manual. Ultima 3 had separate manuals for each spell school with fancy medieval looking illustrations, really classy stuff. Anyone who played Ultima IV should remember the book of history (no really, read the book of history!) as well as it's own
spellbook. Ultima VII came with the Fellowship handout, but I'm not going to try and link every single manual from the series. The point is you could sit down and have a good time reading these things by themselves before you ever stuck the disk in the drive.
But what about
YOU what are
YOUR favorite RPG game manuals?
