TOTALLY UNAUTHORIZED
December 23, 2013 5:57 AM   Subscribe

Strategy guides, then. Some were official. Some were... less official. Unauthorized, even, free to explore a game's mysteries without the nagging presence of the developers hanging over them. Of course, being unofficial meant these guides couldn't use official artwork for their covers. They had to produce their own alternate, non-copyright-infringing cover art. Can you see where I'm going with this? That's right, here are some unofficial strategy guide covers and boy howdy are they a mess.
posted by timshel (14 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
People needed a strategy guide to beat Castlevania 64? There's really only one thing you need to beat that game: a sledgehammer.
posted by cog_nate at 6:08 AM on December 23, 2013 [1 favorite]


People needed a strategy guide to beat Castlevania 64? There's really only one thing you need to beat that game: a sledgehammer.

It's a Prima guide, so whatever they got, it definitely didn't help them beat the game.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 6:35 AM on December 23, 2013 [1 favorite]


In re: Prima's Secrets of the Game - Final Fantasy III:

"Finally, the author's name is apparently Hayaku Kaku."

So Hayaku Kaku is actually seminal video game (and wrestling) journalist Bill Kunkel. He wrote a bit about writing the guide here and the story is hilarious.
posted by griphus at 6:36 AM on December 23, 2013 [4 favorites]


It's a Prima guide, so whatever they got, it definitely didn't help them beat the game.

If it's a Prima guide you know exactly what they got: a copy of the manual with fake cover art.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 6:37 AM on December 23, 2013


Also, as the title of this post implies, I love the ones where "Unauthorized" is used as a positive thing, like, stuff THE MAN doesn't want you to know. You got the BradyGames Totally Unauthorized strategy guide for Super Mario 64? Oh shit, man, won't that put you on a CIA watchlist or something? You rebel, you -- totally unauthorized. Shit man. That's serious business.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 6:39 AM on December 23, 2013 [1 favorite]


At least the quality of the cover on the Castlevania 64 guide matched the quality of the game.
posted by JibberJabber at 8:38 AM on December 23, 2013


This makes me want to write fake unauthorized game guides for old games that are nothing but lies and screenshots of lies.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:41 AM on December 23, 2013 [3 favorites]


That is roughly with that FF III one is; they made quite a bit of it out of whole cloth.
posted by griphus at 8:42 AM on December 23, 2013


I really enjoyed Castlevania 64. I play as the girl. I've never really understood the criticism of that game.
posted by laconic skeuomorph at 8:52 AM on December 23, 2013


I just found the Resident Evil 2 Prima "Unauthorized Game Secrets" guide while packing a few weeks ago. That thing is ugly.

Up until a few years ago, I would still buy strategy guides, generally for the artwork that they had inside of them. I learned my lesson regarding strategy guides when I bought the Final Fantasy IX strategy guide as soon as it and the game was available at Babbage's, and wound up being told on every page to look up a keyword on PlayOnline (which at the time was just the online portion of the strategy guide). I didn't have an always-on connection at the time, so it was useless.

If you want to see really awful art, go look at the Nintendo Power guides. The Nintendo Power guide for Final Fantasy IV has some really awful art.
posted by Redfield at 9:07 AM on December 23, 2013


Yeah, I always liked that there was the "Official Guide to FFVII" and "The Totally Unauthorized Guide to FFVII".

Like you can't just be unofficial, you have to be TOTALLY UNAUTHORIZED! Like you just chugged a Mountain Dew, ate a bag of Doritos, and then snowboarded off Midgar.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 9:51 AM on December 23, 2013 [2 favorites]


This looks like either the perfect foddor for, or the resulting work of, Liartownusa.
posted by fontophilic at 10:38 AM on December 23, 2013


I used to look at strat guides and feel this palpable sense of despair wash over me. Why wouldn't people just go to gamefaqs? And then you would hear people saying "Aw, I got the book for that game. I know everything!" as if having this book with all the easy answers in it was any sort of accomplishment.

I still have my Final Fantasy 1 strategy guide because it came to me in just the way I like all my guides to: free and in the mail.
posted by Our Ship Of The Imagination! at 11:23 AM on December 23, 2013


I think I had that Final Fantasy III (VI) guidebook. It was as thick as a phonebook and seems to have been heavily rushed and based entirely on the Japanese version of the game, to the point where the character/monster/place names were transliterated differently and most of the plot points were unrecognizable. The bulk of the book was taken up with an encyclopedic list of all of the game's monsters and items with THE WRONG FUCKING NAMES (and for all I know, inaccurate stats as well).

On the other hand, it made my mom ~$25 poorer, so mission accomplished, I guess.
posted by Vulgar Euphemism at 11:24 AM on December 23, 2013


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