Online Game Manuals (for free!)

January 5, 2009 9:24 PM

Bought a video game second hand and found it doesn’t have a manual? Or have you been thinking about that great manual that came with that copy of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past you owned years ago and wouldn't mind taking a look through it again? Well, help is at hand! Vimm offers you heaps of free pdf manuals from retro systems as old as the Atari 2600 and as recent as the N64! Meanwhile Meekeo does much the same, although it mostly looks after current generation systems (including the PC) only. Finally, if you own a Nintendo Wii, DS, Gamecube or Gameboy Advance, Nintendo is offering up full colour pdfs of games they publish(ed) for these systems, as well as manuals for some of their older games.
posted by Effigy2000 (15 comments total)

Supplemental: there's never been a time when I looked for a PC game manual that it wasn't on Replacement Docs.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:34 PM on January 5 [1 favorite has favorites]

Or have you been thinking about that great manual that came with that copy of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past you owned years ago and wouldn't mind taking a look through it again?

??? Superb!

I'll be looking online for Lego instructions soon.

One boy at the age where he drops things and hasn't quite got the smarts to put them back together. And one in nappies who loves to DESTROY any printed material he can get his hands on.

Not a good mix.

Recently I put together a smashed Lego cargo truck "road train" sans instructions and I dead set deserve a Nobel prize for my brilliance. But I won't be doing that again in a hurry. 12/27/08. Nevarr forget.

/off topic
//slightly
posted by uncanny hengeman at 9:35 PM on January 5

This is great! I used to bring the books to school and read them during our daily quiet reading time. Back then books had a lot of awesome art since the games themselves didn't, and most of the story was usually told in the book since games didn't really at the time. The Zelda and Metroid books were two of my favorites.
posted by mediocre at 10:20 PM on January 5 [2 favorites has favorites]

I'll be looking online for Lego instructions soon.

Here ya go. Via this FPP.

posted by ALongDecember at 11:08 PM on January 5 [1 favorite has favorites]

Yes! I downloaded Tribes 2 and have been having the worst time trying to figure everything out, this is awesome. Thanks.
posted by hellojed at 11:39 PM on January 5

Huh, nothing for PC, bugger....
posted by hellojed at 11:40 PM on January 5

I needed this last week, to look up the names of all the monsters in Legend of Zelda I was destroying!
posted by illuminatus at 11:46 PM on January 5

h3llojed, here's the Tribes 2 manual via the website stavros linked to up-thread.
posted by Effigy2000 at 11:52 PM on January 5

oh, silly me for missing that, thanks!
posted by hellojed at 12:10 AM on January 6

You know, there was a time when Nintendo would actually sue people who sold or rented games with photocopies of their manuals. This seems like an uncharacteristic turn about-face for a company who was previously willing to punish economic activity that affected their bottom line.
posted by pwnguin at 1:11 AM on January 6

Thankyou, ALongDecember.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 2:23 AM on January 6

I was at Meekeo the other day seeking a manual for the used copy of Xenosaga I I bought. (Because, hey, Xenosaga is too fucking complicated for what amounts to two hours of actual RPG.) The site has nothing of interest: their PlayStation 2 section has all of three manuals. The rest have been litigated out of existence, probably.
posted by spamguy at 7:04 AM on January 6

Thank god for replacementdocs, though.
posted by spamguy at 7:07 AM on January 6

pwnguin, the local rental place in my hometown used to include photocopied manuals for any game we rented. This didn't bother me, because I understood the potential frustration of renting a game with no available manual. What pissed me off is that they would charge a hefty fee for replacing the shitty photocopy if we lost it. They treated it as if we had lost the original manual and charged us approximately what it would have cost them to buy an original replacement from Nintendo.

Not surprisingly, the only reason this store survived is that it was in a small tow with no big-box rental stores nearby. With the recent rise of Gamefly and Netflix, the place is pretty much defunct these days. I feel no pity.
posted by caution live frogs at 7:07 AM on January 6

FINALLY. I've been waiting 19 years!

*finds StarTropics manual*
*scrolls to uncle's letter*
*dips monitor in wat--......
posted by SpiffyRob at 7:39 AM on January 6 [2 favorites has favorites]