Have you ever considered opening a Kofi? It's like Patreon except they take a very small flat rate monthly fee (it's like $5 or less) instead of a percentage no matter how much support you get on there Unrelated, but VPN's don't protect you from anything; their only use is making it appear like you're somewhere else for access to content. The people you don't want to see your activity (the ISP and thus the government) still see all of your activity regardless. I've got nothing against VPN's, but claiming they protect your data in some way is just blatantly false and extremely misleading to your audience (I know it's part of the script, but maybe you should reconsider having such a sponsor if you're required to falsely advertise their product to the people who put their trust in you). And to be clear, I 100% believe you have been misled about the benefits of using a VPN and that you're not intentionally misleading your audience)
Clearly, either you forgot what Nord did, or never knew in the first place. There's a (very good) reason all the big tech youtubers dropped their sponsorship deals with Nord. They can't be trusted.
Please consider trying to stop speaking in such a slow tempo and in such a monotone voice and maybe lighten up or cutting a bit down on the information dumps
As someone who considers the C64 a major part of their childhood this is blowing my mind, *today.* I can't imagine how it would have hit 35 years ago. Particularly the movie like presentation, which we didn't even see on the Amiga. Amazing.
@@Mankey619 It's always been the case that early-launch games tend to be weak compared to later games. This came out seven years after the C64, so the devs had the better part of a decade to learn tricks and optimizations. Like how on the NES, SMB3 makes SMB1 look like pong. That's why new games for old consoles are usually amazing and manage to do things the devs of the time could never dream of (like James Lambert porting _Portal_ to the N64).
It was amazing back in the day. Especially compared to the normal C64 games, you threw that in, and suddenly were like, “What?” And sans internet, you just kept replaying it to figure out the story. So good.
It was every bit mind blowing back then to my 14-year-old self. I remember seeing it on the new arrivals shelf at Babbage's in Southridge Mall and deciding that I wanted to spend the $29.99 in 1989 dollars for this really fantastic looking game. I was not disappointed, matter of fact I had no idea what I was getting into. Changing the script in the middle of the game by doing different actions? WTF!? I swear I stayed up until the wee hours of the night playing this one, and it's blaring jump scare music. This game was advanced in the context of the era, so much so that if you told me a time-traveler created that game, I wouldn't be surprised.
Right? I remember a couple of games that had a similar vibe around this time, games like Nexus or Survivor, but Project Firestart would have blown me away
100% in support of you making a video on game manuals! I was just playing King's Quest VI and remembered I needed a poem from the manual to solve a puzzle. I ended up getting sucked in because the manual was also this charming little Guidebook to the lands in the game written in the perspective of a traveler. Seeing that made me wonder what creative and cool things other PC/DOS games were doing with their manuals at the time.
The fact that there is only 6 years separating this game RE is mindblowing. At the time, game evolution felt fluid and natural, but looking at it now is astonishing
As a pre-teen and teen, between 1989 and 1997, a month felt like a very long time. As a SNES owner and reader of a Nintendo focused magazine, each new month (issue) showed me something that would blow my mind, from Mega Man X (wow, these graphics can't get any better) to Killer Instinct (wow, these graphics can't get any better) to the first Project Reality prototypes screenshots (wow, these graphics can't get any better) to the actual N64 games (wow, these games really look lame; I think I'll better get a Playstation). But I agree, the evolution felt natural, and it sure was, but only a few years were needed to make really big steps.
@rattenkonig6303 WRONG. While the game may be 6 years older than RE but the hardware was from 1982. If this game would have been released in 82, would you say it'rs mindblowing for a 14 years gap? cos again, the hardware didn't change since1982.
For another tech skip that we will never see again: Parasite Eve 2 came out one year before MGS2. And we will never see that kind of tech progress leap ever again.
As a kid, my parents strictly limited the amount of time I could play video games. Video game manuals were my way of interacting with the worlds I wanted to experience when I wasn't allowed to. I would read them cover to cover for hours and then build things with clay or Legos to recreate scenes from the game as best as I could. I miss game manuals and the nostalgia it triggers for me, and treasure the few games that include manuals in their physical release like Hollow Knight and Tunic.
Holy hell... Used to play this game religiously along side Nexus. Didn't really understand them as a child but something about them just captivated me. Thank you Ragnar for the unexpected nostalgia overload.
I read every. single. manual for a game I ever bought. They were great, not only was it nice for a quick reference of controls and even sometimes certain abilities, but it had some good lore. It's how I know all of the Covenant's races names. I think they should bring them back.
First thing I did, after going to Electronics Boutique and buying a game in the early 2000's, is going to the shopping mall's cafeteria courtyard and opening that game to pour through the instruction manual as I sipped on a nice, hot Tim Horton's double-double in the dead of a December winter snow flurry.
The recent appreciation for game manuals has been really fascinating to watch. Generally, it's kind of a low undercurrent through old game retrospectives like this one, but then you get games like Tunic. I haven't played it myself, but my understanding is that the idea of a game manuel is so integral to the game that pages of said manual are the primary in-game collectible. I personally am a constantly vibrating, ADHD-riddled mess, so much of my experience with game manuals is limited to frantically reading them in the backseat of my parents car, on the way home from buying the game. You make a great argument for them, though! I think that as long as the game makes direct reference to the fact that it expects you to be using the guide (or takes into account that you may not be), ancillary material like that can be a great addition.
I love that the set up is just Solaris. Important space facility goes dark, so one guy gets sent to check it out. Obviously original new ideas are king... But there is something to this era were so much of creativity could just come from taking the pieces of things you liked and smooshing them together. "Ok so the player is the guy from Solaris, except he's being sent to investigate the Nostromo..." Fun stuff. Also literally never heard of this game before. You're killing it sir.
"this era were so much of creativity could just come from taking the pieces of things you liked and smooshing them together." You just described any sort of creative process ever😊 It's not exclusive to that era.
Its exclusive to that era in that you could just mine 1979 movies and get something that hadn't been a game before. Or not since we've had near infinite Alien games, multiple Stalker, Escape From Alcatraz, Apocalypse Now, Mad Max and even a liscensed version of The Warriors but still no Quadrophenia the game or a second attempt at Kramer vs Kramer. Now unoriginal on purpose model kits like Warhammer which were created to be about personal artistic expression that wasn't available in competing historical wargames only survives by selling its decades old Dune meets LotR stolen IP, Lego sets that would have been been generic versions of archetypes thirty years ago are all properties owned by super conglomorates, games like Uncharted which was just Tomb Raider with a guy so its technically a new IP even though Tomb Raider was just Indiana Jones with a woman so it would be technically different has a pointless film version and everything with any budget is just a ripoff of a ripoff. Genre pastiches make great games and toys since genre conventions are basically just toys anyway but audiences that just want genre retreads and companies that just want to manage IP are a disaster. Art can't thrive without influence from outside of the arts. @@JC-kl3uc
As a fan of Flashback and og Alone in the Dark, this looks like ZE genuine hidden gem for me. So thanks man, I would never have heard of that game without your video and the passion that created it.
I miss the manuals, I have fond memories of reading Kotor s manual over and over again. I only started buying digital content when it was clear I couldn't collect and read the manuals any more. Now I fill the void left by this in my gaming experience by reading all the in game sources and watching lore videos, while theory crafting my own head canon. or consuming very well made retrospective content like what Ragnar and aesir aesthetics produce. I really love your content my friend. These retrospectives are better researched and narrated than most content you can find anywhere. Truly top notch.
When an old game gave you manuals featuring in-game documents and maps, it always gave me that feeling of when you play table-top RPG's, and the game master passes out detailed hand drawn maps and in-game documents/props for the players to look at and inspect. You can't help but to appreciate it. I liked doing stuff like that as a game master too. Like even to the point where I would rip, fray and age maps, notes and letters, and staining the paper with tea and coffee to make them look worn and authentic to the players. Everyone always loved that attention to detail.
I played an old Sierra game as a kid called Sorcerian, which had an in-depth enchantment/spell system which the manual covered. I cannot imagine how you could fit all that in the game and have it be intuitive. And yes, I would love a video about games with great manuals as you mentioned. Been loving those kinds of topics nowadays
@RagnaRoxShow You should also check out a curious little French game called 'Zombi' which was released back in the 80's, basically a re-enactment of the 1970s film Dawn of the Dead, where you had to secure a shopping mall and survive against zombie hordes and biker gangs, I had a lot of fun with it.
RE: Manuals I fondly remember the old Infocom packages that included little game-related items that sort of expanded the game world. Sometimes they had something that directly related tot he game mechanics, but most of the time, it was just fun stuff. I also remember some of the old copy protection which would refer to something in the game manual, but it wouldn't be a flat out code, it would be referring to something like the "Plants of The World" or "Gemstones and their Meanings". Those manuals often had nice sections expanding the world beyond the game itself and would be a fun read.
The legendary Jeff Tunnell- you had Project Firestart, ArcticFox, Stellar 7, The Incredible Machine, Rise Of The Dragon, Betrayal At Krondor, Tribes. The Sierra On-Line/Dynamix partrnership sure produced a ton of classics.
I'm not sure if you caught it but there's a small flub in the intro to the video. You said Konami was the developer behind Sweet Home, it's blink and you'll miss it I know. Just wanted to point it out in case you missed it in the edit.
Oh, boy, the nostalgia... My cousin and I played the hell out of Project Firestart back in the day! It certainly was different from the other C64 games but that was what we loved about it. I remember recording my playthrough on our VHS and watching it like a movie afterwards! So, yeah - I'm an 80s kid and I miss manuals. Sid Meier's Pirates (which you showed a short clip from) had this great map of the Caribbean I had over my tv. I always loved when a game manual gave you small little trinkets and in-universe stuff. Good old times.
Mark my words on this. Sometime in the next 5, perhaps 10 years there will be an extremely successful mainstream video game that brings back "feelies" as part of the game experience. Big manuals with lore, maps, diagrams, etc. and will incorporate these into the experience of the game and it will be hailed as "revolutionary" by the games media. I could easily see this happening with a VR game, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened on one of the big consoles, either.
I've been hoping for a detailed, professional-level review of old-school video games and all their wacky accoutrements since The Spoony Experiment went under. I'd really like to see you check some of those out.
I forgot how much i liked manuals untill recently. Ive been gaming PC for years but got an Xbox for christmas n ended up getting cyberpunk 2077 and rdr2. The nostalgia i experienced when cyberpunk came with a mini lore book was so fun! Ended up sitting on my floor n just reading the entire thing! Same with rdr2! It came with a full sized map and i ended up using it for most of my playthru instead of using the in game map, circled areas i wanted to check out, wrote where plot points happened, ect. Ended up turning into my own version of arthurs journal!
I'm reminded of my favorite manual from the alternate history dieselpunk flight sim, Crimson Skies. Set in a 1930s where the US broke apart from the Great Depression, the manual was designed to look like a magazine for aviation hobbyists - including interviews with main characters, reviews of new planes you get to fly, and full ads for fictional in-setting products. The whole things is available on Internet Archive, and it is still delightful to read through.
I often cite Alien Syndrome in 1987 as the first game you could classify as "horror" with a straight face, but it's still just a top-down arcade action shooter. This, this is where horror games truly got the ball rolling and laid down all the design standards central to the genre. It's like how there were "stealth" games before Metal Gear, but none of them had nailed it quite so perfectly yet.
Alien Breed is the first game I remember being scared by.. the aesthetic, the sounds, the colour palette, all of it.. granted, I was about 7 but yeah 😂
My best memory for manuals in games was that whenever I got a new game, my dad would make me read the whole manual before I could play it. It was super fun and really got me excited to actually play it
Kudos for the manual bit dude, there are manuals that I've kept and read to this day and I don't play the game at all. They were an intrinsic part of the gaming experience and I mourn the loss. A good manual added so much to the game, lore, depth, concept art... a well done manual arguably would inspire the imagination more than the game itself, and gaming as a whole, while it has grown and advanced in myriad ways, is worse for not including them anymore. Anyway, just my take as an older gamer who grew up on the classics, and is now trying to appreciate modern gaming on its own terms as well.
I am also saddened, that game manuals is a lost art. While now games can tutorial you, it's limited by the amount of information the game can reasonably present to you. Then you have to resort to online wikis to get more details, not covered by basic tutorials. On the other hand manuals were not limited by the amount of information, while at the same time if being done artfully and creatively could have enriched the overall experience from the game. There are many examples of great manuals, for example Fallout 1 and 2 come to mind.
i miss game manuals so much. every time i got a game as a kid, i'd scour through its manual until the moment i could actually play it. i loved the art, the lore, being able to easily reference controls and hints, the artistry of it all. it's why i fell in love with GOG as a platform, so many of the old games come with pdfs of all the feelies the physical game would come with, so you could still get a taste of that experience. i actually ended up printing out copies of the fallout 1 & 2 manuals to reference when i only had one monitor and i felt like a kid again (even if i hadn't actually played fallout as a kid). i love all your videos, but i'd love one on manuals especially. great vid! im gonna find firestart and give it a go.
I love manuals for old games. I remember having to look up stuff in the manual for the old Zork games. Like days of the week and stuff. Return to Zork had a lot of that. Also maps. Having a printed map was cool. Old games were so charming. Figuring stuff out instead of having in ruined in a UA-cam spoiler or just a quick Google search was so satisfying. I think that's part of why I can learn game mechanics so quick now tho b/c I always just had to pay attention to so many small things and learn as I went. Trying stuff to see what worked. As for you wanting to make different types of videos - make what you want. I love watching you break down old stuff and the interest you show in it. I haven't played any of the stuff you've talked about nor plan to but I still like watching the videos. I'm not really into horror but you make it cool to watch.
Love your take on manuals! The building anticipation and excitement reading them before starting the game, there was something almost ritualistic about it
amazing! I remember seeing this game in a magazine back in the day, at that time I was obsessed with all things 'alien' and desperately wanted to play it, unfortunately, I had a speccy.
A two year development cycle for a game pre-2000 is absolutely insane. Even during the PS1, many studios were pumping out games made in a year or less.
Tunic does a phenomenal job at integrating the manual as part of the game's story and puzzles, being an indy game the manual is virtual and within the game itself, but it teaches you an entire languages and is filled with secrets, including multiple endings, when done right manuals can enhance the experience just as much as a game teaching you through gameplay
I love old PC games. I love the feelies, the manuals. I liked how the books and manuals were used as a way not just to learn how the play, but to immerse yourself in the lore. Also I love how you're seeding us with that Bioforge box. There's a lot of overlap between us at the moment and Bioforge is definitely on my list. Can't wait to see how we both cover that one! 😊
Thanks for this great retrospective! In case anyone is interested, the C64 also hosts two seminal games for the cinematic action games genre: Forbidden Forest (1983) and Beyond Forbidden Forest (1985). They a similarity with Firestarter, in that their author (Paul Norman) was a complete outsider to the game development scene, and was free of many preconceptions: as such, the games are pioneers of many staples of the horror and cinematic genres, and they struggle against some of the platform limitations. They are well worth a try and some research if you're so inclined - I heavily recommend it!
I totally agree with you.. I miss manuals! I loved reading the storyline set up in the manuals and learning little things about the enemies, the characters, the setup. There was so much detail and story building in there most of the time! And I would love to see a video on the history of complex manuals being integrated with the game🙏👍✌️
I'd actually love to hear you talk about old manuals! I grew up during a time when manuals still had colour printing, but they were definitely shorter, less necessary, and on the way to being phased out. I know about some older titles having mandatory maps inside but I'd be really interested to hear more about other ways they integrated with the games they were for. I've also heard in passing about old floppy disk or cassette titles being packaged with not just manuals but also "feelies" - physical objects that tied into the game in some way. If you know of any horror/"spooky" games from that era that did that, I'd be very interested in hearing about them if you'd be so inclined to include that sort of thing in a manual video. Thanks so much for putting games like this on my radar! I don't have the skillset to play certain kinds of horror games but I find the history of them fascinating. I really appreciate you taking the time to break them down like this and put them in the context of titles that came out before and since.
I recently read through the Alpha Centauri manual, it's crazy how in-depth it is. It explains the details of game mechanics so well I don't even need to google for how things work.
It looks crazy epic this game. It seems so strange to see big detailed backgrounds and cut scenes on a C64 game. Trying to squeeze that on 2 disks must have taken a serious amount of effort. Great video. :)
I have been obsessed with this game over last couple years, due to it being an origin of survival horror, developed by dynamic which was acquired by Sierra 1 year after this and there aren't any good in depth YT videos on this title. This was such an amazing surprise to see a 40 min video dropped by you, it shocked me in a positive way
@RagnarRoxShow I find it mind boggling how this monumental masterpiece of the late 80s has basically gone unnoticed, yet sweet home has been addressed over and over for years now. Great content as always, thanks again for this treat
I had no idea about this game, mindblown! I hope you can continue with this series, if there's not enough material for a video on an individual game, you could talk about a couple, but if you bring on obscure gems like this one, it will be worth it. Love whatever videos you release anyway!
This was a Noble and deserving send up to a game I've jump up and down for years about nearly everything you just said. I think you covered nearly every single point I would bring up myself. One interesting Factoid: There are four ways to KILL the super creation. I'm amazed you actually completed the game with IT' chasing you the whole time. Kudos and Great job on this VERY important gospel on a game that needs to NEVER be forgotten
I've never heard of this game before. Thanks for putting a spotlight on such an interesting piece of gaming history. Also, to possible videos on both other, smaller survival horror progenitors, as well as game manuals, yes. I'd watch either in a heart beat. I use to love reading the manuals and back of box copy on the car ride home from the story, and can remember being actually saddened when game manuals started to decline, from great, full colour booklets containing store, controls, and illustrations to one staple, black and white pamphlets that basically told me how to void my warranty in seven different languages... As always, love your work. Cheers!
I still remember fondly how the manual of Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games explained the rules on how action points are calculated in the game very thoroughly.
I miss game manuals. I grew up playing a lot of JRPGs, so the thing I miss the most in the manuals is the art. Playing PS1 and PS2 games their assets were often limited in how detailed and stylized they could make the in game assets. And the limited disk space for these massive games meant concept art was often not really viable to include on the disks. So manuals were how deyailed art assets were presented and I ate them up. It helped the worlds feel more real, especially with how often the manuals were presented as beginner adventuring guides. It was just so charming
Playing "Empire of the Overmind", an old text adventure game(I played on a TRS-80), without the "Rhyme of the Overmind" would be impossible. You would never guess "Call Pyro" to call a fire salamander so you can see when you wake up in pitch black darkness. "Wish blanket" was obscure enough for me hahaha. It took 25mins to load from audio cassette, 5mins to load/save. Oh the memories...
This was fantastic, thanks. This series is great --- it's so good to see a bigger spread of "ancestors" than other Histories Of Horror Games I've seen. Well done.
Interesting. I enjoyed the recent System Shock reboot, Perhaps they could re do this one as well. I love the idea of the rogue agent running around sabotaging things while your trying to get through your mission. I actually enjoy slow pace games that let you explore freely, so I would not be bored playing it before the mutants start attacking. 😊
Yes! Please do a follow-up bits and bob's for the origins of horror series! Also, I loved manuals the best part of renting games was reading the manual on the ride home! I now have to hope special editions of games come with a manual and, though not often, I love it when they do!
Hey Ragnar, just wanted to leave you a few words in regards to your section on the importance of manuals. I was born in 2003, and it seems like I entered the world pretty much right on the cusp of manuals dying out. For me, manuals filled a very unique niche, less so as guides, and more as an extension of the game's world. I'd usually read them cover to cover when my Mom said I couldn't play that night, or on the car ride home after visiting my local game store. About a year ago, I had a conversation with a friend about manuals and box art, and she told me that she just threw those away after buying a game, because "the game was all that mattered. If I want to look at the boxart or read the manual, I'll just download it." Hearing that broke my heart and helped me to remember how important the physical component of video games is to me. The game Tunic puts a really interesting spin on the idea of manuals by feeding you individual pages of one throughout the game, acting as tutorials, maps, hints, and lore. If you do ever look at game manuals in a separate video, I'd recommend checking that out as a contemporary example of how developers are trying to keep the art from alive. Thanks for making cool videos. Cheers!
Yes, manuals is something I miss to this day. It was something I loved to read. Its such a shame that they have vanished. Hell, some were full books in their own right.
The goldbox games were ones that required the manuals (and journals) for any progress. Text seemed to take a lot of space and it seemed easier just to print it out, and it also kind of encouraged you to map the gameworld for events and such, even if you had a rudimentary map in-game.
I can understand how some people are attached to manuals but I never really had a moment where the manual was a real help it seems to be something really of the time especially in the C64 and even up to the N64 era of games. But I can also see what you mean when you talked about how showing the player in the game and not needing to use a manual or look thinks up in games and say that is “good game design” can be limiting, thankfully there are lots of indie horror games that have you mess with internal files to figure things out (even though they have to be modified if they get ported to consoles like Doki Doki literature plus) and I could see a big manual included with the souls games be beneficial it would help not needing to look things online but at the end of the day I feel manuals are definitely something of the time that most older gamers (probably 28 and above) have great fond memories and nothing wrong with missing those things. Great video thanks for showing so many games that need attention!
Many thanks Ragnar, I am always amazed of the work youy put into the videos that never cease to improve over time. PF was one of the very first games I played via VM, I certainly didn't know much of this information.
Fascinating ! Makes me wish that some dev team would make a remastered version of Project Firestart for a brand new audience that would give it the praises it deserves.
absolutely brilliantly done video as always. It's honestly saddening to see these relics not get the attention they deserve. beautiful game and I loved the in-depth look at it.
Seeing game manuals or guide books is something I found interesting growing up. My Dad didn't play many classic games around me, so the only guide books I saw were fairly big, fully colored and had lots of images. However, I always enjoyed reading through them, especially ones that gave info about the story and characters. Batman Arkham Asylum is one I have most memories of. I think seeing a video about game manual integration would be really interesting.
I think my favorite manual design from back in the day was Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance. The manual was diagetically a technical Battlemech manual, and it had entries for all of the Mechs you encountered in the game. The cool bit was that it had been handed down to the player character from their father, and so the Mech models that had been produced in the interim years were all represented as pen drawings--because obviously the player character had had to hand-add the models that weren't in the original printing. It was a little thing but it was really neat.
i so wish more games today included manuals that you could at least print out - i loved flipping through them so much, seeing all the illustrations and world-building, hints and sometimes easter eggs. also wish for manuals again because the in-game tutorializing, when not done well, is very........ annoying to me, LOL. i would absolutely LOVE to see a vid from you about video game manuals more specifically!! great vid as always :)
Dragon Warrior's Explorer's handbook was always in my lap when playing. I had rented StarTropics and we got to the point where you needed to wet the letter, since it was a rental the manual and letter was a photocopy. I'll never forget 747MHz.
I'd also think copyright might be a major reason it didn't get many ports. Not just for taking a lot from the Alien film, but the mutant is a sprite rehash of Tendril from the Inhumanoids from 1986.
Was looking for a comment to bring this up. I loved this game as a kid but the fact that the monsters were blatant copies of a toy on my shelf kinda undercut the fear factor (I hadn't seen Alien yet so the homages to that were lost on me at the time).
Thank you for all the (unfortunately) obscure games you cover! Personally, I'd never have known about this gem unless you did. It's fascinating how much this game created in terms of horror games and how well it stands as a game and experience, clearly a lot of passion and thought was put into it. It's a damn shame that it was ruined out of the gate by *certain publishers* Also I love how you use Silent Hill OST for bgm, it's a wonderful nostalgia hit
Hey Ragnar! Thanks for another great video about an underrated gem of a game that you gracefully undug for us. This little series was awesome, if you feel like expanding the "origins of survival horror" in the future, I'll definitely be watching! Thanks again for your work and dedication, take good care.
I do miss manuals, as a kid one of the best parts of getting a new game was unwrapping it in the car and reading the manual on the way home. It always felt like a wonderful way to slide into the mindset that each individual game was trying to inspire -- by the time I would get home I would be completely ready to dive into whatever digital world awaited. It makes me sad that nowadays this just doesn't really happen, or if it does, it's usually a digital pdf of a manual included with the game and while I appreciate it, it's not the same. Also, manuals had blank pages in the back for note taking!! One of the reasons I became so in love with Signalis as a game was that it encouraged me to take notes!
Yes I loved manuals, it used to be where you would get your lore, and character art, it’s what started me drawing. the gulf between detailed off-model art in the book and streamlined in-game art sparked my imagination
Going to Electronics Boutique with my mate, a tenner between us, digging through the trade-in/reduced bins and finding 2 or 3 *gems* - then excitedly reading the manuals on the bus home, drinking in _every_ single word and image, every enemy, every item.. I'm so SO happy I was a child when I was 1985 - 2001 RIP ❤🙏🏻
I know it isn't really an "origin" persay, but I'd love to hear something on how these very retro origin coalesced into famed titles like RE1 and Silent Hill- the games that get the credit that games like Sweet Home and Alone in the Dark pioneered. At the time of viewing, Resident Evil PS1 is 28 years old. That's a mere 4 years difference from Alone in the Dark. Anyway, these were a treat to listen to.
Manuals were awesome back in the day. To this day I still read my alone in the dark 2008, Zelda Wind Waker and Zelda Twilight Princess manuals just because they’re fun and pretty.
I grew up a lot of dos games, so I don't have a lot of personal nostalgia over manuals, but they are something I treasure now in my retro games collecting. ps1 and 2 are my eras of choice most often, and so many of those manuals are packed with general tips and it was the only place you could see some of the original character art. I do miss that, basically getting a free art book with every game
Regarding the player having to chart their own map: it opened up gameplay outside the digital realm. The game knowing players are actually drawing a map and doing its best to throw them a curve ball in changing the layout of the dungeons for example, forcing the player to somehow include this in their physically drawn maps. Really digging the series, lookint forward for the next part!
Game manuals from the great companies were amazing, the tsr gold box dungeons and dragons games, the jagged alliance games, the microprose games like Sid Meier’s pirates or airborne ranger or civilization or darklands (you showed in this video) - game manuals were then what dungeons and dragons players and monsters guides are today; namely FANTASTIC 👏🇨🇦. My friends and I would read the manuals in class, at recess, during lunch …, basically any time we weren’t playing the game (I read through the jagged alliance manual until the cover fell off, my other favourite was the sierra game ‘colonel’s bequest), it was great time to be young and into computer games!
I _just_ saw this game featured on another channel just a couple of weeks ago and now I've suddenly forgotten where it was. It wasn't a channel I was subbed to, just something from the recommended list.
1. I would love a video about game manuals and game manual design. I am a graphic designer, and I love tabletop games so that video would be highly entertaining, especially if you talked about the art/artists who illustrate those guides. (Highly suggest checking out VERMIS made by hollow point press. It's a game guide for a retro souls-like game that was never made. Honestly, just a video on that and the nostalgia for print media would make me happy. 2. Your insight into video game history is always so interesting and nuanced that I would be interested in anything you find important. 3. Your voice is amazing, + your editing is top-notch; I've been subbed to you since 2015ish and have rewatched your videos as my comfort channel.
I'd be SUPER interested in the best "games with unique manuals" video. I wasn't playing games in the golden era of the manuals, but newer, different games - like Black Watchmen, The Secret World - requires you to do real investigation / reasearch, as they are partially ARGs. If it fits the game's themes, investigation, and finding the answer yourself is an amazing feeling, and as you mentioned it with the "faxed" report and map, fundamentally changes how the game is experienced.
I think Maniac Mansion was an inspiration for this game. The adventure game elements, the graphics, the cut-scenes - it all just screams MM to me. Can anyone else see that?
Maybe not the type of manual you're talking about, but the manuals for the Sly Cooper PS2 games was the in game book, the Theivous Raccoonus, with it getting more worn out each game.
Get 4 months extra on a 2 year plan at nordvpn.com/ragnar. It's risk free with Nord's 30-day money back guarantee!
Have you ever considered opening a Kofi? It's like Patreon except they take a very small flat rate monthly fee (it's like $5 or less) instead of a percentage no matter how much support you get on there
Unrelated, but VPN's don't protect you from anything; their only use is making it appear like you're somewhere else for access to content. The people you don't want to see your activity (the ISP and thus the government) still see all of your activity regardless. I've got nothing against VPN's, but claiming they protect your data in some way is just blatantly false and extremely misleading to your audience (I know it's part of the script, but maybe you should reconsider having such a sponsor if you're required to falsely advertise their product to the people who put their trust in you). And to be clear, I 100% believe you have been misled about the benefits of using a VPN and that you're not intentionally misleading your audience)
I think this was the first video I ever watched where the add in the beginning was what made click the thumbs up.
Clearly, either you forgot what Nord did, or never knew in the first place. There's a (very good) reason all the big tech youtubers dropped their sponsorship deals with Nord. They can't be trusted.
Please consider trying to stop speaking in such a slow tempo and in such a monotone voice and maybe lighten up or cutting a bit down on the information dumps
@@HollowJacket please ignore this comment. Your tone and pace lend itself well to the dark and brooding theme.
I remember watching my dad play games and when he'd get stuck at a part he'd say, "Hey. Hand me the manual." 😂
As someone who considers the C64 a major part of their childhood this is blowing my mind, *today.* I can't imagine how it would have hit 35 years ago. Particularly the movie like presentation, which we didn't even see on the Amiga. Amazing.
It's is incredible that the C64 showing these amazing cutscenes here.
@@Mankey619 It's always been the case that early-launch games tend to be weak compared to later games. This came out seven years after the C64, so the devs had the better part of a decade to learn tricks and optimizations. Like how on the NES, SMB3 makes SMB1 look like pong. That's why new games for old consoles are usually amazing and manage to do things the devs of the time could never dream of (like James Lambert porting _Portal_ to the N64).
It was amazing back in the day. Especially compared to the normal C64 games, you threw that in, and suddenly were like, “What?”
And sans internet, you just kept replaying it to figure out the story. So good.
It was every bit mind blowing back then to my 14-year-old self. I remember seeing it on the new arrivals shelf at Babbage's in Southridge Mall and deciding that I wanted to spend the $29.99 in 1989 dollars for this really fantastic looking game. I was not disappointed, matter of fact I had no idea what I was getting into. Changing the script in the middle of the game by doing different actions? WTF!? I swear I stayed up until the wee hours of the night playing this one, and it's blaring jump scare music.
This game was advanced in the context of the era, so much so that if you told me a time-traveler created that game, I wouldn't be surprised.
Right? I remember a couple of games that had a similar vibe around this time, games like Nexus or Survivor, but Project Firestart would have blown me away
Manuals could be rather special-I loved when there was more art, concept art or bespoke manual art.
100% in support of you making a video on game manuals! I was just playing King's Quest VI and remembered I needed a poem from the manual to solve a puzzle. I ended up getting sucked in because the manual was also this charming little Guidebook to the lands in the game written in the perspective of a traveler. Seeing that made me wonder what creative and cool things other PC/DOS games were doing with their manuals at the time.
The fact that there is only 6 years separating this game RE is mindblowing. At the time, game evolution felt fluid and natural, but looking at it now is astonishing
As a pre-teen and teen, between 1989 and 1997, a month felt like a very long time. As a SNES owner and reader of a Nintendo focused magazine, each new month (issue) showed me something that would blow my mind, from Mega Man X (wow, these graphics can't get any better) to Killer Instinct (wow, these graphics can't get any better) to the first Project Reality prototypes screenshots (wow, these graphics can't get any better) to the actual N64 games (wow, these games really look lame; I think I'll better get a Playstation). But I agree, the evolution felt natural, and it sure was, but only a few years were needed to make really big steps.
Seems so short but I suppose the C64 had been around since 1982.
@rattenkonig6303 WRONG. While the game may be 6 years older than RE but the hardware was from 1982. If this game would have been released in 82, would you say it'rs mindblowing for a 14 years gap? cos again, the hardware didn't change since1982.
@@CharlesLeCharles The PS was released in 94. So 12 years, not 14. Not much difference but still.
For another tech skip that we will never see again: Parasite Eve 2 came out one year before MGS2.
And we will never see that kind of tech progress leap ever again.
As a kid, my parents strictly limited the amount of time I could play video games. Video game manuals were my way of interacting with the worlds I wanted to experience when I wasn't allowed to. I would read them cover to cover for hours and then build things with clay or Legos to recreate scenes from the game as best as I could. I miss game manuals and the nostalgia it triggers for me, and treasure the few games that include manuals in their physical release like Hollow Knight and Tunic.
Same here.
Yoooo! Same!
Absolutely. The same with video game magazines. I would read the solutions for games I didn't have back-to-back like stories!
@@Onomatopeizator yeees
Same here, i loved the jak and daxter manuals i remember one having a full fold out map. They were so charming I miss manuals 😮💨
Holy hell... Used to play this game religiously along side Nexus. Didn't really understand them as a child but something about them just captivated me. Thank you Ragnar for the unexpected nostalgia overload.
I read every. single. manual for a game I ever bought. They were great, not only was it nice for a quick reference of controls and even sometimes certain abilities, but it had some good lore. It's how I know all of the Covenant's races names.
I think they should bring them back.
I agree, but outside of digital I don't see it happening. Printing manuals is expensive, cuts into the publisher's bottom line.
They can be neat but they don't serve much of a point anymore with full on walthroughs online.
First thing I did, after going to Electronics Boutique and buying a game in the early 2000's, is going to the shopping mall's cafeteria courtyard and opening that game to pour through the instruction manual as I sipped on a nice, hot Tim Horton's double-double in the dead of a December winter snow flurry.
The recent appreciation for game manuals has been really fascinating to watch. Generally, it's kind of a low undercurrent through old game retrospectives like this one, but then you get games like Tunic. I haven't played it myself, but my understanding is that the idea of a game manuel is so integral to the game that pages of said manual are the primary in-game collectible.
I personally am a constantly vibrating, ADHD-riddled mess, so much of my experience with game manuals is limited to frantically reading them in the backseat of my parents car, on the way home from buying the game. You make a great argument for them, though! I think that as long as the game makes direct reference to the fact that it expects you to be using the guide (or takes into account that you may not be), ancillary material like that can be a great addition.
There was something magical about reading them on the way home
I love that the set up is just Solaris. Important space facility goes dark, so one guy gets sent to check it out.
Obviously original new ideas are king... But there is something to this era were so much of creativity could just come from taking the pieces of things you liked and smooshing them together.
"Ok so the player is the guy from Solaris, except he's being sent to investigate the Nostromo..."
Fun stuff. Also literally never heard of this game before. You're killing it sir.
"this era were so much of creativity could just come from taking the pieces of things you liked and smooshing them together."
You just described any sort of creative process ever😊 It's not exclusive to that era.
Its exclusive to that era in that you could just mine 1979 movies and get something that hadn't been a game before. Or not since we've had near infinite Alien games, multiple Stalker, Escape From Alcatraz, Apocalypse Now, Mad Max and even a liscensed version of The Warriors but still no Quadrophenia the game or a second attempt at Kramer vs Kramer.
Now unoriginal on purpose model kits like Warhammer which were created to be about personal artistic expression that wasn't available in competing historical wargames only survives by selling its decades old Dune meets LotR stolen IP, Lego sets that would have been been generic versions of archetypes thirty years ago are all properties owned by super conglomorates, games like Uncharted which was just Tomb Raider with a guy so its technically a new IP even though Tomb Raider was just Indiana Jones with a woman so it would be technically different has a pointless film version and everything with any budget is just a ripoff of a ripoff.
Genre pastiches make great games and toys since genre conventions are basically just toys anyway but audiences that just want genre retreads and companies that just want to manage IP are a disaster. Art can't thrive without influence from outside of the arts. @@JC-kl3uc
As a fan of Flashback and og Alone in the Dark, this looks like ZE genuine hidden gem for me.
So thanks man, I would never have heard of that game without your video and the passion that created it.
Try 7 days a stranger. 6 days a skeptic and 5 days
A damn good game series like this
I miss the manuals, I have fond memories of reading Kotor s manual over and over again. I only started buying digital content when it was clear I couldn't collect and read the manuals any more. Now I fill the void left by this in my gaming experience by reading all the in game sources and watching lore videos, while theory crafting my own head canon. or consuming very well made retrospective content like what Ragnar and aesir aesthetics produce. I really love your content my friend. These retrospectives are better researched and narrated than most content you can find anywhere. Truly top notch.
When an old game gave you manuals featuring in-game documents and maps, it always gave me that feeling of when you play table-top RPG's, and the game master passes out detailed hand drawn maps and in-game documents/props for the players to look at and inspect.
You can't help but to appreciate it.
I liked doing stuff like that as a game master too. Like even to the point where I would rip, fray and age maps, notes and letters, and staining the paper with tea and coffee to make them look worn and authentic to the players.
Everyone always loved that attention to detail.
I played an old Sierra game as a kid called Sorcerian, which had an in-depth enchantment/spell system which the manual covered. I cannot imagine how you could fit all that in the game and have it be intuitive.
And yes, I would love a video about games with great manuals as you mentioned. Been loving those kinds of topics nowadays
@RagnaRoxShow You should also check out a curious little French game called 'Zombi' which was released back in the 80's, basically a re-enactment of the 1970s film Dawn of the Dead, where you had to secure a shopping mall and survive against zombie hordes and biker gangs, I had a lot of fun with it.
Is that the game that was referenced on the ZombiU game on wii U?
Yes. And it was Ubisoft's very first game.
RE: Manuals
I fondly remember the old Infocom packages that included little game-related items that sort of expanded the game world. Sometimes they had something that directly related tot he game mechanics, but most of the time, it was just fun stuff.
I also remember some of the old copy protection which would refer to something in the game manual, but it wouldn't be a flat out code, it would be referring to something like the "Plants of The World" or "Gemstones and their Meanings". Those manuals often had nice sections expanding the world beyond the game itself and would be a fun read.
Those are called "feelies." Like the maps, ankhs, or moonstones in an Ultima game.
The legendary Jeff Tunnell- you had Project Firestart, ArcticFox, Stellar 7, The Incredible Machine, Rise Of The Dragon, Betrayal At Krondor, Tribes.
The Sierra On-Line/Dynamix partrnership sure produced a ton of classics.
I'm not sure if you caught it but there's a small flub in the intro to the video. You said Konami was the developer behind Sweet Home, it's blink and you'll miss it I know. Just wanted to point it out in case you missed it in the edit.
Oh yeah I never noticed this one despite watching it so many times while editing. Thanks for pointing it out!
Come now, clearly Ragna did that on purpose so we would watch Sweet Home. There's no way anyone could make an easy mistake like that.
That deserves a ban, Ragnar-sensei!
I almost took it as an ancient joke meme where people used to swap Konami with capcom on msg boards for the laughs
Oh, boy, the nostalgia...
My cousin and I played the hell out of Project Firestart back in the day! It certainly was different from the other C64 games but that was what we loved about it. I remember recording my playthrough on our VHS and watching it like a movie afterwards!
So, yeah - I'm an 80s kid and I miss manuals. Sid Meier's Pirates (which you showed a short clip from) had this great map of the Caribbean I had over my tv. I always loved when a game manual gave you small little trinkets and in-universe stuff.
Good old times.
Mark my words on this. Sometime in the next 5, perhaps 10 years there will be an extremely successful mainstream video game that brings back "feelies" as part of the game experience. Big manuals with lore, maps, diagrams, etc. and will incorporate these into the experience of the game and it will be hailed as "revolutionary" by the games media. I could easily see this happening with a VR game, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened on one of the big consoles, either.
Man, it would be crazy. Maps, manuals, spell guides, whoever would include crazy stuff like that? Madness, I say!
I've been hoping for a detailed, professional-level review of old-school video games and all their wacky accoutrements since The Spoony Experiment went under. I'd really like to see you check some of those out.
I forgot how much i liked manuals untill recently.
Ive been gaming PC for years but got an Xbox for christmas n ended up getting cyberpunk 2077 and rdr2.
The nostalgia i experienced when cyberpunk came with a mini lore book was so fun! Ended up sitting on my floor n just reading the entire thing!
Same with rdr2! It came with a full sized map and i ended up using it for most of my playthru instead of using the in game map, circled areas i wanted to check out, wrote where plot points happened, ect. Ended up turning into my own version of arthurs journal!
I'm reminded of my favorite manual from the alternate history dieselpunk flight sim, Crimson Skies. Set in a 1930s where the US broke apart from the Great Depression, the manual was designed to look like a magazine for aviation hobbyists - including interviews with main characters, reviews of new planes you get to fly, and full ads for fictional in-setting products. The whole things is available on Internet Archive, and it is still delightful to read through.
I often cite Alien Syndrome in 1987 as the first game you could classify as "horror" with a straight face, but it's still just a top-down arcade action shooter. This, this is where horror games truly got the ball rolling and laid down all the design standards central to the genre. It's like how there were "stealth" games before Metal Gear, but none of them had nailed it quite so perfectly yet.
Alien Breed is the first game I remember being scared by.. the aesthetic, the sounds, the colour palette, all of it.. granted, I was about 7 but yeah 😂
My best memory for manuals in games was that whenever I got a new game, my dad would make me read the whole manual before I could play it. It was super fun and really got me excited to actually play it
Kudos for the manual bit dude, there are manuals that I've kept and read to this day and I don't play the game at all. They were an intrinsic part of the gaming experience and I mourn the loss. A good manual added so much to the game, lore, depth, concept art... a well done manual arguably would inspire the imagination more than the game itself, and gaming as a whole, while it has grown and advanced in myriad ways, is worse for not including them anymore.
Anyway, just my take as an older gamer who grew up on the classics, and is now trying to appreciate modern gaming on its own terms as well.
I love the texture on the walls of the station. Excellent sci-fi hallways!
Noticed the doors are very similar to the Aliens Computer Game!
I am also saddened, that game manuals is a lost art. While now games can tutorial you, it's limited by the amount of information the game can reasonably present to you. Then you have to resort to online wikis to get more details, not covered by basic tutorials. On the other hand manuals were not limited by the amount of information, while at the same time if being done artfully and creatively could have enriched the overall experience from the game. There are many examples of great manuals, for example Fallout 1 and 2 come to mind.
I remember the one for Secret of Mana where they had the character art in the manual done in claymation style.
And no cookie recipes!
THE horror game that got me started on my journey through them. Thankyou for giving this some love and recognition.
i miss game manuals so much. every time i got a game as a kid, i'd scour through its manual until the moment i could actually play it. i loved the art, the lore, being able to easily reference controls and hints, the artistry of it all. it's why i fell in love with GOG as a platform, so many of the old games come with pdfs of all the feelies the physical game would come with, so you could still get a taste of that experience. i actually ended up printing out copies of the fallout 1 & 2 manuals to reference when i only had one monitor and i felt like a kid again (even if i hadn't actually played fallout as a kid). i love all your videos, but i'd love one on manuals especially. great vid! im gonna find firestart and give it a go.
I love manuals for old games. I remember having to look up stuff in the manual for the old Zork games. Like days of the week and stuff. Return to Zork had a lot of that. Also maps. Having a printed map was cool. Old games were so charming. Figuring stuff out instead of having in ruined in a UA-cam spoiler or just a quick Google search was so satisfying. I think that's part of why I can learn game mechanics so quick now tho b/c I always just had to pay attention to so many small things and learn as I went. Trying stuff to see what worked.
As for you wanting to make different types of videos - make what you want. I love watching you break down old stuff and the interest you show in it. I haven't played any of the stuff you've talked about nor plan to but I still like watching the videos. I'm not really into horror but you make it cool to watch.
Love your take on manuals! The building anticipation and excitement reading them before starting the game, there was something almost ritualistic about it
amazing! I remember seeing this game in a magazine back in the day, at that time I was obsessed with all things 'alien' and desperately wanted to play it, unfortunately, I had a speccy.
A two year development cycle for a game pre-2000 is absolutely insane.
Even during the PS1, many studios were pumping out games made in a year or less.
Tunic does a phenomenal job at integrating the manual as part of the game's story and puzzles, being an indy game the manual is virtual and within the game itself, but it teaches you an entire languages and is filled with secrets, including multiple endings, when done right manuals can enhance the experience just as much as a game teaching you through gameplay
I love old PC games. I love the feelies, the manuals. I liked how the books and manuals were used as a way not just to learn how the play, but to immerse yourself in the lore.
Also I love how you're seeding us with that Bioforge box. There's a lot of overlap between us at the moment and Bioforge is definitely on my list. Can't wait to see how we both cover that one! 😊
You really pulled off the "in Minecraft" at the end of the sentence in the sponsered segment lmao
Thanks for this great retrospective! In case anyone is interested, the C64 also hosts two seminal games for the cinematic action games genre: Forbidden Forest (1983) and Beyond Forbidden Forest (1985). They a similarity with Firestarter, in that their author (Paul Norman) was a complete outsider to the game development scene, and was free of many preconceptions: as such, the games are pioneers of many staples of the horror and cinematic genres, and they struggle against some of the platform limitations. They are well worth a try and some research if you're so inclined - I heavily recommend it!
I totally agree with you.. I miss manuals! I loved reading the storyline set up in the manuals and learning little things about the enemies, the characters, the setup. There was so much detail and story building in there most of the time! And I would love to see a video on the history of complex manuals being integrated with the game🙏👍✌️
I'd actually love to hear you talk about old manuals! I grew up during a time when manuals still had colour printing, but they were definitely shorter, less necessary, and on the way to being phased out. I know about some older titles having mandatory maps inside but I'd be really interested to hear more about other ways they integrated with the games they were for.
I've also heard in passing about old floppy disk or cassette titles being packaged with not just manuals but also "feelies" - physical objects that tied into the game in some way. If you know of any horror/"spooky" games from that era that did that, I'd be very interested in hearing about them if you'd be so inclined to include that sort of thing in a manual video.
Thanks so much for putting games like this on my radar! I don't have the skillset to play certain kinds of horror games but I find the history of them fascinating. I really appreciate you taking the time to break them down like this and put them in the context of titles that came out before and since.
I recently read through the Alpha Centauri manual, it's crazy how in-depth it is. It explains the details of game mechanics so well I don't even need to google for how things work.
It looks crazy epic this game. It seems so strange to see big detailed backgrounds and cut scenes on a C64 game. Trying to squeeze that on 2 disks must have taken a serious amount of effort. Great video. :)
This artwork is so good! Thank you for showcasing this. I have never heard of this before
I have been obsessed with this game over last couple years, due to it being an origin of survival horror, developed by dynamic which was acquired by Sierra 1 year after this and there aren't any good in depth YT videos on this title. This was such an amazing surprise to see a 40 min video dropped by you, it shocked me in a positive way
Super happy to hear! Yeah Dynamix made some amazing games.
@RagnarRoxShow I find it mind boggling how this monumental masterpiece of the late 80s has basically gone unnoticed, yet sweet home has been addressed over and over for years now. Great content as always, thanks again for this treat
I had no idea about this game, mindblown! I hope you can continue with this series, if there's not enough material for a video on an individual game, you could talk about a couple, but if you bring on obscure gems like this one, it will be worth it. Love whatever videos you release anyway!
It's funny you are posting this just now, cause I just hit credits on the cryostasis video. I want more ice horror!!!
This was a Noble and deserving send up to a game I've jump up and down for years about nearly everything you just said.
I think you covered nearly every single point I would bring up myself. One interesting Factoid: There are four ways to KILL the super creation. I'm amazed you actually completed the game with IT' chasing you the whole time. Kudos and Great job on this VERY important gospel on a game that needs to NEVER be forgotten
I've never heard of this game before. Thanks for putting a spotlight on such an interesting piece of gaming history. Also, to possible videos on both other, smaller survival horror progenitors, as well as game manuals, yes. I'd watch either in a heart beat. I use to love reading the manuals and back of box copy on the car ride home from the story, and can remember being actually saddened when game manuals started to decline, from great, full colour booklets containing store, controls, and illustrations to one staple, black and white pamphlets that basically told me how to void my warranty in seven different languages...
As always, love your work. Cheers!
I still remember fondly how the manual of Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games explained the rules on how action points are calculated in the game very thoroughly.
I miss game manuals. I grew up playing a lot of JRPGs, so the thing I miss the most in the manuals is the art. Playing PS1 and PS2 games their assets were often limited in how detailed and stylized they could make the in game assets. And the limited disk space for these massive games meant concept art was often not really viable to include on the disks. So manuals were how deyailed art assets were presented and I ate them up. It helped the worlds feel more real, especially with how often the manuals were presented as beginner adventuring guides. It was just so charming
Commenting for the algorithm to start giving Ragnar the love they deserve!!!!!!
Yeah.
Comment.
I love your videos man. Keep showing me games that I would have never known about otherwise
Playing "Empire of the Overmind", an old text adventure game(I played on a TRS-80), without the "Rhyme of the Overmind" would be impossible. You would never guess "Call Pyro" to call a fire salamander so you can see when you wake up in pitch black darkness. "Wish blanket" was obscure enough for me hahaha. It took 25mins to load from audio cassette, 5mins to load/save. Oh the memories...
This was fantastic, thanks. This series is great --- it's so good to see a bigger spread of "ancestors" than other Histories Of Horror Games I've seen. Well done.
Interesting. I enjoyed the recent System Shock reboot,
Perhaps they could re do this one as well.
I love the idea of the rogue agent running around sabotaging things while your trying to get through your mission.
I actually enjoy slow pace games that let you explore freely, so I would not be bored playing it before the mutants start attacking. 😊
Yes! Please do a follow-up bits and bob's for the origins of horror series!
Also, I loved manuals the best part of renting games was reading the manual on the ride home! I now have to hope special editions of games come with a manual and, though not often, I love it when they do!
Thank you for adding tracks from the CnC Covert Operations in this vid
Hey Ragnar, just wanted to leave you a few words in regards to your section on the importance of manuals. I was born in 2003, and it seems like I entered the world pretty much right on the cusp of manuals dying out. For me, manuals filled a very unique niche, less so as guides, and more as an extension of the game's world. I'd usually read them cover to cover when my Mom said I couldn't play that night, or on the car ride home after visiting my local game store. About a year ago, I had a conversation with a friend about manuals and box art, and she told me that she just threw those away after buying a game, because "the game was all that mattered. If I want to look at the boxart or read the manual, I'll just download it." Hearing that broke my heart and helped me to remember how important the physical component of video games is to me. The game Tunic puts a really interesting spin on the idea of manuals by feeding you individual pages of one throughout the game, acting as tutorials, maps, hints, and lore. If you do ever look at game manuals in a separate video, I'd recommend checking that out as a contemporary example of how developers are trying to keep the art from alive. Thanks for making cool videos. Cheers!
Yes, manuals is something I miss to this day. It was something I loved to read. Its such a shame that they have vanished.
Hell, some were full books in their own right.
I had no idea anything this cinematic existed on the C64. Great video as ever 👍🏽
The goldbox games were ones that required the manuals (and journals) for any progress. Text seemed to take a lot of space and it seemed easier just to print it out, and it also kind of encouraged you to map the gameworld for events and such, even if you had a rudimentary map in-game.
Ragnar! Thanks so much for that guide. That worked so well. I couldn't believe how bad the other instructions I've seen were. You rock!
DUDE YES! Please experiment! I know you put so much love and care into these videos that I can only see good things come of that!
I can understand how some people are attached to manuals but I never really had a moment where the manual was a real help it seems to be something really of the time especially in the C64 and even up to the N64 era of games.
But I can also see what you mean when you talked about how showing the player in the game and not needing to use a manual or look thinks up in games and say that is “good game design” can be limiting, thankfully there are lots of indie horror games that have you mess with internal files to figure things out (even though they have to be modified if they get ported to consoles like Doki Doki literature plus) and I could see a big manual included with the souls games be beneficial it would help not needing to look things online but at the end of the day I feel manuals are definitely something of the time that most older gamers (probably 28 and above) have great fond memories and nothing wrong with missing those things.
Great video thanks for showing so many games that need attention!
Many thanks Ragnar, I am always amazed of the work youy put into the videos that never cease to improve over time. PF was one of the very first games I played via VM, I certainly didn't know much of this information.
Fascinating ! Makes me wish that some dev team would make a remastered version of Project Firestart for a brand new audience that would give it the praises it deserves.
absolutely brilliantly done video as always. It's honestly saddening to see these relics not get the attention they deserve. beautiful game and I loved the in-depth look at it.
Seeing game manuals or guide books is something I found interesting growing up. My Dad didn't play many classic games around me, so the only guide books I saw were fairly big, fully colored and had lots of images. However, I always enjoyed reading through them, especially ones that gave info about the story and characters. Batman Arkham Asylum is one I have most memories of. I think seeing a video about game manual integration would be really interesting.
Finally the father of the genre gets some due!
18:34 Yes, please make that "best videogame manuals" video you were talking about.
I think my favorite manual design from back in the day was Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance. The manual was diagetically a technical Battlemech manual, and it had entries for all of the Mechs you encountered in the game. The cool bit was that it had been handed down to the player character from their father, and so the Mech models that had been produced in the interim years were all represented as pen drawings--because obviously the player character had had to hand-add the models that weren't in the original printing. It was a little thing but it was really neat.
Great work as always, and I for one would LOVE a deeper dive into manuals that tied into the games narrative!
i so wish more games today included manuals that you could at least print out - i loved flipping through them so much, seeing all the illustrations and world-building, hints and sometimes easter eggs. also wish for manuals again because the in-game tutorializing, when not done well, is very........ annoying to me, LOL. i would absolutely LOVE to see a vid from you about video game manuals more specifically!! great vid as always :)
Ragnar says “I’d love to make a video about manuals integrated into the game” and I immediately started salivating.
Dragon Warrior's Explorer's handbook was always in my lap when playing. I had rented StarTropics and we got to the point where you needed to wet the letter, since it was a rental the manual and letter was a photocopy. I'll never forget 747MHz.
I'd also think copyright might be a major reason it didn't get many ports. Not just for taking a lot from the Alien film, but the mutant is a sprite rehash of Tendril from the Inhumanoids from 1986.
Was looking for a comment to bring this up. I loved this game as a kid but the fact that the monsters were blatant copies of a toy on my shelf kinda undercut the fear factor (I hadn't seen Alien yet so the homages to that were lost on me at the time).
Thank you for all the (unfortunately) obscure games you cover! Personally, I'd never have known about this gem unless you did. It's fascinating how much this game created in terms of horror games and how well it stands as a game and experience, clearly a lot of passion and thought was put into it. It's a damn shame that it was ruined out of the gate by *certain publishers*
Also I love how you use Silent Hill OST for bgm, it's a wonderful nostalgia hit
Hey Ragnar! Thanks for another great video about an underrated gem of a game that you gracefully undug for us.
This little series was awesome, if you feel like expanding the "origins of survival horror" in the future, I'll definitely be watching!
Thanks again for your work and dedication, take good care.
I do miss manuals, as a kid one of the best parts of getting a new game was unwrapping it in the car and reading the manual on the way home. It always felt like a wonderful way to slide into the mindset that each individual game was trying to inspire -- by the time I would get home I would be completely ready to dive into whatever digital world awaited. It makes me sad that nowadays this just doesn't really happen, or if it does, it's usually a digital pdf of a manual included with the game and while I appreciate it, it's not the same. Also, manuals had blank pages in the back for note taking!! One of the reasons I became so in love with Signalis as a game was that it encouraged me to take notes!
For some reason, I find the idea of interplanetary, orbital fax messaging to be strangely compelling.
Yes I loved manuals, it used to be where you would get your lore, and character art, it’s what started me drawing. the gulf between detailed off-model art in the book and streamlined in-game art sparked my imagination
Going to Electronics Boutique with my mate, a tenner between us, digging through the trade-in/reduced bins and finding 2 or 3 *gems* - then excitedly reading the manuals on the bus home, drinking in _every_ single word and image, every enemy, every item..
I'm so SO happy I was a child when I was
1985 - 2001 RIP ❤🙏🏻
I know it isn't really an "origin" persay, but I'd love to hear something on how these very retro origin coalesced into famed titles like RE1 and Silent Hill- the games that get the credit that games like Sweet Home and Alone in the Dark pioneered. At the time of viewing, Resident Evil PS1 is 28 years old. That's a mere 4 years difference from Alone in the Dark.
Anyway, these were a treat to listen to.
Manuals were awesome back in the day. To this day I still read my alone in the dark 2008, Zelda Wind Waker and Zelda Twilight Princess manuals just because they’re fun and pretty.
I grew up a lot of dos games, so I don't have a lot of personal nostalgia over manuals, but they are something I treasure now in my retro games collecting. ps1 and 2 are my eras of choice most often, and so many of those manuals are packed with general tips and it was the only place you could see some of the original character art. I do miss that, basically getting a free art book with every game
Regarding the player having to chart their own map: it opened up gameplay outside the digital realm. The game knowing players are actually drawing a map and doing its best to throw them a curve ball in changing the layout of the dungeons for example, forcing the player to somehow include this in their physically drawn maps.
Really digging the series, lookint forward for the next part!
Reading manual was another part of the game. A physical bridge between you and the game. It was a wonderful experince to have.
Game manuals from the great companies were amazing, the tsr gold box dungeons and dragons games, the jagged alliance games, the microprose games like Sid Meier’s pirates or airborne ranger or civilization or darklands (you showed in this video) - game manuals were then what dungeons and dragons players and monsters guides are today; namely FANTASTIC 👏🇨🇦. My friends and I would read the manuals in class, at recess, during lunch …, basically any time we weren’t playing the game (I read through the jagged alliance manual until the cover fell off, my other favourite was the sierra game ‘colonel’s bequest), it was great time to be young and into computer games!
I can recognize command and conquer ost in your video.
good taste
What can I say, I'm a Mechanical Man.
I _just_ saw this game featured on another channel just a couple of weeks ago and now I've suddenly forgotten where it was. It wasn't a channel I was subbed to, just something from the recommended list.
18:35 Yes!
I want that video on games that tie in beautifully with the presentation or information given in the manual
Thank you so much for the kind words, I'm really glad you enjoyed the series
1. I would love a video about game manuals and game manual design. I am a graphic designer, and I love tabletop games so that video would be highly entertaining, especially if you talked about the art/artists who illustrate those guides. (Highly suggest checking out VERMIS made by hollow point press. It's a game guide for a retro souls-like game that was never made. Honestly, just a video on that and the nostalgia for print media would make me happy.
2. Your insight into video game history is always so interesting and nuanced that I would be interested in anything you find important.
3. Your voice is amazing, + your editing is top-notch; I've been subbed to you since 2015ish and have rewatched your videos as my comfort channel.
I'd be SUPER interested in the best "games with unique manuals" video. I wasn't playing games in the golden era of the manuals, but newer, different games - like Black Watchmen, The Secret World - requires you to do real investigation / reasearch, as they are partially ARGs. If it fits the game's themes, investigation, and finding the answer yourself is an amazing feeling, and as you mentioned it with the "faxed" report and map, fundamentally changes how the game is experienced.
I'm new to the channel and absolutely loving it. I, for one, would very much enjoy a deep dive episode around game manuals.
I think Maniac Mansion was an inspiration for this game. The adventure game elements, the graphics, the cut-scenes - it all just screams MM to me. Can anyone else see that?
Text and point adventures in general, yes absolutely.
The quality of your videos is always so cool ! I really wonder what kind of mic you're using to have that crystal clear voice damn
Maybe not the type of manual you're talking about, but the manuals for the Sly Cooper PS2 games was the in game book, the Theivous Raccoonus, with it getting more worn out each game.
Maaaan, when videogames used to provide foldout maps of the game world it made me sooo hype to explore that world in-game