Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN MARCH 2024?

On 07/04/2024 14:45, Mike S. wrote:

On Sat, 06 Apr 2024 20:26:23 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
 

The best manuals, for me, were the ones that combined gameplay
explanations and world-building all in one. Origin Systems was a
master of this (with their best work being the "Book of Lore" in
Ultima 5). But I've fond memories of many other manuals of that era
too; "Kings Quest 6", or anything by Infocom. Flight sims of the era
always had very impressive manuals; "Falcon 3.0" weighed in at 350
pages, and not only detailed all its various game-modes and facts
about its planes, but also gave detailed lectures on everything from
how planes worked to advanced fighter tactics. Later games also are
memorable (I loved the manual for "Independence War" from '99, for
instance).

 I used to love reading game manuals for exactly the reasons you state
here. However, I have not read one for a long time now and I do not
think I want to anymore.

Yeh I get that, for me in the good old days part of the 'experience' was reading the game manual generally starting it when on the train or bus home to ramp up the anticipation of inserting that floppy disk*. Now I do read them but only if I think I have to so I look at it as more of a chore than anything else.
*I would have said tape but in the days of the Speccy 48k manuals where generally non-existence beyond some made-up blurb about the game pretending to be a plot and these are the keys to use.