The Lost Art of the Video Game Manual

As a youngster, my parents didn’t approve of video games – I got the classic ‘games will rot your brain’ dose of parental sensibility. Getting a Nintendo NES or a SEGA Master System was out of the question, even though I had friends who had both – until one Christmas, when an uncle came from out-of-town to spend the holidays with us. He had no idea what to get my younger brother and I, so he took his best guess… and that Christmas day, I unwrapped a TurboGrafx-16 complete with Keith Courage in Alpha Zones!

I couldn’t play it right away – there were other folks opening presents, the lone family TV was in use, and there was supper to be had. Unable to contain my excitement, I did the next best thing to actually playing the Turbo – I DEVOURED every single line, screenshot, and drawing of the Keith Courage manual. This started a trend for me – it was months before young, no-income me could scrounge up the $14.99 to buy my very first game with my own money (the criminally underrated World Court Tennis, if you are curious), but when I finally bought it… the ride home from the store was another session of reading and re-reading the manual, cover to cover.

This continued on throughout the Saturn era. At the Saturn’s launch, I was still young enough that I had no steady income of my own. I could only stare longingly at all the store displays that carried video games, and my coveted Saturn. One random day, I bought my first Saturn game (Panzer Dragoon) a few months ahead of buying the console. I had recently gotten myself a paper route; buying a game for a console I did not own was a way to motivate myself to deliver enough flyers to save up the required funds. Predictably, having a Saturn game for months on end without the console meant that I had lots of time to marvel at the manual. It was so stylish! From the captivating story accompanied by a few screen grabs from the CG intro, to the complex-looking flight view diagram, to the concept sketch art used in the background of some of the pages… the manual is, in and of itself, a complement to the actual game. It is part of the experience and was a work of art in its’ own right, in a different way than the art style of the game or the majesty of the soundtrack.

The Saturn’s game manuals are definitely a step up from the Genesis versions. For all the things SEGA got wrong with the launch of the 32-bit system in America, they sure did a great job with the launch title manuals. They are an evolution of the style of their Genesis fore-bearers – classier, and more sophisticated. The paper used is heavier, the covers sturdy, the insides much more elegantly designed. SEGA was trying to attract an older crowd with the Saturn, after all; perhaps this was a way to signify that these games were intended for a more refined audience. Both SEGA Rally and Daytona USA, for example, feature a dramatic written intro at the beginning of each manual, which, to be honest, is completely unnecessary – but it sure cements the manual as an integral part of the game experience. The WipE’out” manual, as another example, features a trendy design style not found in other manuals, and this was done purposely.

Saturn had a very consistent look to all of its manuals, unlike Genesis, SEGA CD, and Dreamcast, all of which received a significant template makeover at some point during their retail lives. That said, soft changes to the template were introduced as time went on. Initially, SEGA opted to continue to use barbershop-style diagonal stripes – adopted during the previous generation – on the Saturn manuals, using white with a pale creamy-grey. The cover pages were also made of a heavier stock of paper, and since they were doing double-duty as the cover art of the oversized jewel cases, they were printed in full color (contemporary Genesis game manuals were black and white only by this point, as the manual was not part of the outer packaging). During those early days, many of the covers featured art that was not well fitted to the admittedly awkwardly long rectangular space available for artists to work with. This led to empty, art-free spaces at the top of the cover (Panzer Dragoon, Astal, Mortal Kombat 2, others…), usually simply filled with the game’s logo. The back cover often folded out to reveal a registration card for gamers to mail to SEGA. These were VERY early internet days – online registration was not yet a ‘thing’.

In 1997, SEGA made some subtle changes to Saturn manuals. Beginning with Fighters MegaMix, the tagline ‘A SEGA Exclusive’ began to appear on the front cover of each first-party game. The cover changed from the hard and heavy stock to glossy paper, and (visually) most notably, the barbershop stripes were dropped altogether in favor of a clean, clear white look. The registration card was also quietly eliminated at this time.

There exist, of course, quirks. The original Virtua Fighter is only available in a standard jewel case – it was a pack-in only in North America and was not available separately in a standard longbox at retail. The Virtua Fighter manual is in fact a fold-out, rectangular poster, with the actual manual on one side and the poster on the reverse. At the end of 1995, SEGA released two killer-apps that were showcases of the Saturn’s power: the ground-breaking Virtua Fighter 2 and the seminal SEGA Rally Championship. Both received a silver foil manual cover treatment, no doubt to differentiate them on retail shelves, as well as to mark their special status in the then-budding Saturn library. Additionally, three of the NetLink releases feature full-size, black-and-white supplemental NetLink manuals for SEGA Rally Championship Plus NetLink Edition, Virtual On NetLink Edition, and Daytona USA CCE NetLink Edition. Perhaps the most criminal faux-pas ever committed on Saturn manual is the upside-down ‘SEGA SATURN’ lettering on the cover of the The House of the Dead manual – a mistake that some of us OCD gamers can never

forgive. One could also throw the odd twist of Mystaria: Realms of Lore transforming into Blazing Heroes into this mix – but this is more a case of re-branding an existing game due to copyright issues. An oddity nonetheless.

One aspect of buying used / second-hand Saturn games involves occasionally finding the original sales receipt tucked inside the pages, providing a neat link to the previous owner and the part of the country where the game was initially purchased. Another – though arguably less desirable – is finding the previous owner’s notes or gameplay clues written inside the manual. Although personally annoying, the notes do provide a bit of history for each particular copy of a game. The strangest I’ve found was what appeared to be a grocery shopping list on the last page of a Winning Post manual. Hmm… not quite the conversation piece I was hoping for.

Quality of Saturn manuals varied by publisher. Some EA titles, for example, feature manuals that are slightly smaller than most other manuals by mere fractions of an inch: enough that they leave a visible gap when the manual rests inside the case (NHL ’97, Shockwave Assault). Some manuals have slightly incorrect colour schemes or other oddities (NHL ’97 again, Crusader: No Remorse). Perhaps the worst example of a company spending zero time on their manuals is Data East and the Defcon 5 manual – there are numerous references about how to correctly set up your PlayStation to enjoy this Saturn game, or how saving requires a PlayStation Memory Card (in fact, the Saturn game saves to either on-board or cartridge memory – the game is, unfortunately, incompatible with PlayStation memory cards).

There were other peculiarities as well. The Sim City 2000 manual, for example, mentions the ability to save cities to Expanded Memory (what would turn out to be the Floppy Disk Drive, or FDD), even though the FDD wasn’t available for sale at the time of the game’s release. The FDD ended up dropping exclusively in Japan in 1996 – a full two years after the console’s release in that region and a year after the release of the game and proved to be incompatible with Sim City 2000. Conversely, all versions of Panzer Dragoon Saga as well as Arcade’s Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection support direct save to Expanded Memory, but this is not mentioned in the manual. Myst is another example of a game that has a unique manual – the actual game instructions take up 6 pages and then there are 10 blank pages expressly for note-taking. Also, a quick mention must go to the many mock-ups of manuals (i.e., game case covers) that SEGA (and others) used for promotional material for up-and-coming games, many of which never saw the light of day. Notable examples include a very attractive alternate cover for Panzer Dragoon Saga, the unreleased USA cover of Destruction Derby, an absolute tease from Konami for the USA version of Policenauts, a plethora of never-released American Capcom games including Dungeons and Dragons – Tower of Doom, The Buster Brothers Collection, Fox Hunt, and even an alternate Resident Evil manual cover, and many others. Cover art, though obviously part of the manual, is a giant topic in and of itself.

Manuals can’t be discussed without mentioning the pioneers in quality-over-utility in this arena: Working Designs. Say what you will about the fidelity of their translations but the effort and love that went into every single one of their manuals is undeniable. They featured glossy covers with reflective foil and embossing, and full-color, hard stock pages throughout. Working Designs did not fear putting anime on the covers of their Saturn games during a time when 3D renders’ were all the rage, and consequently, the art gracing those manuals has aged well. The manuals featured high-quality screenshots, humorous explanations (the Stereo / Mono sound explanations from every Working Designs game stand out in particular), and all kinds of other goodies. The 1995 Iron Storm manual, for instance, features a button layout for the SEGA Shuttle Mouse, a peripheral that would not see release in North America until 1997 with NetLink hardware. The Magic Knight Rayearth manual features a sheet of stickers built in to the back page of the manual – and this is for a game

that released as the swan song for the Saturn and OVER A YEAR since Working Designs’ very public fallout with SEGA. They could have mailed it in, folks, but what we got was undeniable quality. Lastly, a mention about my personal favourite section of Working Designs’ manuals – the Translation Notes that are included in the last pages of each manual. These are letters from the producer, Victor Ireland, straight to fans, and they detail the challenges, the changes, and the oddities that went into the translation and localization of each title. This sort of direct communication was simply unheard of back then and is an amazing added touch to what are already absolutely top-notch manuals.

Starting around the 7^th generation of video game consoles (PS3, X360, Wii) and becoming the de facto norm during the 8^th generation (PS4, XBONE, WiiU/NS), the video game manual began its inexorable march into the twilight of gaming history. Publishers need not include a physical manual when online instructions suffice, or indeed when a growing portion of game sales happen digitally, with no physical release whatsoever. This is progress: logical, inevitable, and yet in some respects, cold and impersonal. The Saturn gamer lived in a different time – a time when these instructions, if not necessarily always essential to gameplay, were a part of the package; a part of the experience. Their passing is one that does not go unnoticed.

As the Saturn’s North American lifespan was winding down and SEGA prepared the last batch of games for release, they included a small, yet wonderful note on the last page of the Shining Force 3 manual. In the Special Thanks section, SEGA thanked all Saturn fans for their support and dedication during a difficult generation for the gaming giant. Shining Force 3 would end up being the last Saturn game that SEGA released in North America. What better way to do this than to add one single ‘thank you’ acknowledgement in the back of the game manuals for fans to discover? There couldn’t have been a subtler or classier way to say it.