Special Collector's Edition contains authentic Vintage Game Manual in the style of the days of yore when manuals contained more than seizure warnings, for only $80. Normal version contains professional digital download of manual in stunning high quality PDF format.

One company actually touted a "digital lithograph" recently. I kid you not. :facepalm:

haha I know this exact feeling. I remember getting the finest hour game with all the guns, character stories, and controls. When I got MW2 I felt gypped out of my money. The feeling of "are you kidding me" was one I hadn't experienced before.. :sadvaultboy:

I'd wager you're right on the money there.

I can't begin to explain how disappointed I am. When I open up a brand new game and instead of getting a proper instruction manual. I get a leaflet :sadvaultboy:
It actually takes away from the game experience for me.

That's the key. Saving money. The existence of game wikis / faqs, and .pdf documents were just the enabler, not the cause.

Every $ they save on packaging is one more $ they can recover from the fact that everything else gets more expensive (from the production, to the plastic in the box, to the shipping).

(Which is partially why they can sell us games for the same price for 5+ years, before having a price hike that everyone immediately whines about.)

i remember "back in teh day" i used to draw all teh characters found in game manuals, Anymore your lucky if the manual tells you the controls

I use to have a good friend way back when I was a kid that could draw VG character pretty damn well. He did this one drawing of Fox McCloud that was perfect.

I miss them too, especially well done manuals.

Favorite manual of all was from a little known game for the Commodore 64: http://jasons.wumple.com/Interests/Gaming/Computer/MagicCandle/files/mc1/magic_candle_manual.pdf. It's humorous in many places and is an enjoyable read in it's own right.

I loved arcanum manual, a work of joy.
And I agree I miss manuals I can take on the train to read. If I cant actually play the game I'm hooked on at the point, reading about it heals the hurt somewhat.

I agree, there's a lack of nice booklets that come with games these days or you don't get one at all. :brokencomputer:

I bought Assassin's Creed I & II Ultimate Collection and there's no manual, tho can't complain as it was only $18.

Guild Wars came with a nice booklet that's 144 pages with lots of lore and info.

Quake 2 had a neat manual that was designed on different colored paper and had it's own design.

The Doom 3 booklet had some snippets of lore / info from the first Doom. Tho I wish it was a bit longer than what it is.

Some of the older manuals kinda svck tho too. Looking at the Battlefield one and it's really bland but it has lots of info in there.

Oh man I totally forgot about Guild Wars. It didn't just have a ton of lore on the countries, classes, and races, but it also had a whole little short story in it about some of the main cast of NPCs you meet. Man they just don't do stuff like that anymore. It's like there are no writers to be found in the industry...