Miscellaneous
49 files
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Final Fantasy III Players Guide
By Areala
Final Fantasy III / Final Fantasy VI is, hands down, my favorite Final Fantasy title. And this right here just might be my favorite strategy guide of all time. Presented in full colour, flush with screenshots, along with copious artwork by artist Yoshitaka Amano, and a section at the end featuring some gorgeous full-size in-game maps, Olafson's guide is written more like a story as opposed to a walkthrough.
At $12.95, this was an absolute showstopper of a book. It may be less complete overall than Nintendo's own game guide, as it doesn't contain things like monster stats, weapon and item lists, Gau's Rage tables, or other in-depth information one might expect to see in an RPG guide. But the sheer quality of Olafson's prose guides the reader through the story so well it feels like playing the game. It's one of the few guides I've read from cover to cover multiple times. It's just that good.
This book is generally very expensive on the second-hand market. Copies on eBay routinely sell for $50 or more, and copies in excellent condition can fetch upwards of $100. For Final Fantasy III fans, it's a highly-sought collector's item. If you've ever looked at a listing and wondered why, I hope a flip through this book explains everything. If every guide followed Olafson's example, strategy guides would be regarded as works of art instead of simple cash grabs.
Enjoy! ❤️
1,479 downloads
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Ocean Jurassic Park Super Strategy Guide
By E-Day
Ocean Jurassic Park Super Strategy Guide
735 downloads
Submitted
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Tricks of the DOOM Programming Gurus
By Areala
A mammoth resource back in the day for creators looking to make their own levels for DOOM, DOOM II, and (to a much lesser extent) Heretic. Although the information on the various WAD authoring and editing tools is quite outdated (there are much, much better programs available for modern systems that also work under the enormous variety of source ports), if you're looking to mess around with the internal workings of DOOM then there's still plenty of information about level creation that is valid today. The book also spotlights a number of great WADs, points out some of the gimmicks in their level design, and explains how to use those same tricks and gimmicks in your own levels.
This is a massive book, nearly 950 total pages in size, including an 8-page color gallery right in the middle. It also contains a number of pages which are completely blank; to help lower the file size, I elected not to include these blank pages in the scan.
This file also doesn't include the CD which came with the book, but those interested in checking it out can find it over at Archive.org.
Enjoy!
*huggles*
Areala
563 downloads
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Duke Nukem 3D Official Strategies & Secrets
By Areala
Come get some!
The man with the mightiest boot in all of FPS-dom is in town with a few days to kill. But who wants to waste all their time bumping into walls and burning through jetpacks to find all the secrets, easter eggs, and crazy loot? So do yourself a favour: use this official strategy guide, with all its excellent walkthroughs and maps, to make those alien bastards pay for shooting up your ride.
This is a fun guide, with some extra developer commentary packed into the Appendix, and the obligatory CD-ROM on the back cover, stuffed with level maps, shareware, the entire first episode of Duke Nukem 3D, and other goodies.
The CD-ROM isn't a part of the .cbz archive, but you can download your own ISO of The Exclusive SYBEX/3D Realms Duke Nukem Companion CD to play around with, because your Retromags Goddesss loves you and ripped her copy so you could have the complete experience.
What are you waiting for, Christmas?
Enjoy! ❤️
652 downloads
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Lara Croft Paper Doll
By Areala
This most excellent paper doll was included as an exclusive bonus for people who purchased the Tomb Raider I and II Official Strategy Guide from Prima back in 1999. The doll herself was printed on thick cardstock, with scoring lines, while her clothing came on high-gloss paper stock.
I've done a high-resolution 600dpi scan of the doll by herself, so you can print her out, dress her up, and take her on all sorts of adventures outside of her video games. Where will you travel? What treasures will you discover? It's all up to you!
Enjoy! ❤️
613 downloads
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Mortal Kombat 3 Player's Guide
By Areala
A fairly comprehensive guide to Mortal Kombat 3, mainly focused on the Arcade version, but also applicable to numerous home ports as well.
What makes this guide especially interesting is that it's also a guide to Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II, with complete character breakdowns and move lists for those games too. So this is really a three-in-one deal. Not bad for the money!
Screenshots are very clear despite being black-and-white, and there was even an offer to get a supplementary update to the book for when the arcade MK3 received its newest upgrade (which wound up being the Ultimate MK3 board revision).
All apologies for the Walden Software sticker on the back, covering up some of the text. That sucker was on there like cement, and peeling it would have damaged the cover worse than leaving it on. It, like this book, is a relic of a bygone era. Consider it special bonus content, just for you!
Enjoy! ❤️
586 downloads
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Ultimate Unauthorized Nintendo Game Strategies, Volume 3
By Areala
Wow! So ultimate! Such strategy! Many unauthorized! Much Nintendo! Oh no!
So, yes, this is the third volume in Sandler and Badgett's series devoted to NES games. I don't know if this was just my copy or what, but the printing on this was some of the worst I've ever seen, with some pages printed at an angle, and some margins running straight to the bleed with seemingly little rhyme or reason. But, you know, back in the day, you paid your money and took your chances.
If you like these books, and their bizarre cover artwork, then you'll want this one in your collection, no doubt. If you don't? Then don't download it, I guess... You do you, Retromags peeps.
My final complaint? They rate the difficulty of Castlequest at "Apprentice", when it's one of the most punishingly brutal NES cartridges ever made. Seriously, the game comes with its own map showing you exactly where you need to go to rescue the princess, and also gives you fifty lives. Then it sits and laughs at you as you lose them all, one by one, and have to restart the game. What the hell were you smoking, Corey Sandler? Explain yourself!
Enjoy! ❤️
513 downloads
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How to Win at Nintendo Sports Games
By Areala
After three successful books covering Nintendo games of all genres, Rovin turned his roving eye to a sports-centric edition of his best-selling series, and thus, How to Win at Nintendo Sports Games was born. While some games, like Ice Hockey, were covered in previous volumes, even these titles get an expanded treatment, often re-measured against other games about the same sport. There's also a short section on some Game Boy sports titles, and a very short "Sports Shorts" section with a half dozen tips for sports-themed carts.
As with all of Rovin's other material in this series, this is all-text, all the time. Of course, the upside to this was they were inexpensive as well: four or five dollars as opposed to the ten or twelve other, more graphically complex guides could command.
Enjoy! ❤️
309 downloads
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How to Win at Super Mario Bros. Games (1990)
By E-Day
Searchable PDF version of this book
569 downloads
0 comments
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Gitaroo Man Official Guide
By boringhexi
Gitaroo Man Official Guide (Japanese)
Scanned and edited by boringhexi
2001
212 downloads
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Ultimate Unauthorized Nintendo Game Boy Strategies, 3rd Edition
By Areala
Jeff Rovin might have figured out how to get the money from video game books flowing, but brother, Corey Sandler and Tom Badgett's output over the years stuck a vacuum hose into the pockets of America's youth, siphoning off birthday cash, allowance money, and everything else they could get their hands on. This here's the third edition of their already best-selling Game Boy book, and for a mere five dollars, it promised nothing less than total dominance and the latest info on the most recent games.
You've got to hand it to these guys for attacking their topics with such mercenary zeal. Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Game Boy, TurboGrafx-16, Sega Genesis...no system was safe from this daring duo and their game-addicted progeny. This edition was condensed down to a more portable mass-market paperback from the previous versions' trade paperback size, also resulting in a price cut ($4.99 vs. $9.99), no doubt making it that much easier to sell, while scaling down the size of both the text and interior images.
It's competent, accessible, and everything you would want something like this to be. Which is good, because it's the fifteenth book these guys churned out in four years, so you'd expect them to have mastered the formula. They don't disappoint.
Enjoy! ❤️
466 downloads
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Ultimate Unauthorized Nintendo Game Strategies, Volume 2
By Areala
What's that? You want more ultimate, more unauthorized, more Nintendo, more strategies? Of course you do! Here's another 250+ pages of them!
Much like Volume 1, there's quite a bit left to be desired in this book. The images are still all in black and white, and still very low quality when compared to those in Prima's "Game Secrets" series. And there are some mistakes here and there (the image from Magmax showing up in the entry for Seicross being probably the most egregious offender). But look at all those money saving coupons in the back!
Well, they've long since expired, but you get my point. If you loved the first book, you're going to love the second. If the first volume did nothing for you, then I'm afraid I have some bad news...
Enjoy! ❤️
Edit: check out the discussion thread for this file for some more great info about the artwork by Bill Mayer used on this and other covers in this series, courtesy of @TresHombres:
512 downloads
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Castlevania - Symphony of the Night Survival Guide
By MigJmz
Castlevania - Symphony of the Night Survival Guide
726 downloads
0 comments
Submitted
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Final Fantasy VII Unofficial Strategies & Secrets for the PC
By Areala
An unofficial, text-only strategy guide produced specifically for the PC edition of Final Fantasy VII. This is a pretty odd beast, considering virtually every other FF7 guide on the market is both full colour and packed with screenshots. Even though this was meant for the PC release, there's really nothing preventing you from using it to play through the PS1 version, since they're almost entirely identical.
Not a particularly common guide, but also not a terribly interesting one thanks to its bland presentation. Ronald Wartow is a good writer though, and even if you've played through the console version many times, you may enjoy reading his take on the adventure.
Enjoy! ❤️
410 downloads
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How to Win at Game Boy Games
By Areala
Jeff Rovin and his sons branch into the portable gaming market with this book. Like the others in this series, this is an all-text, all-the-time format.
My copy of this book had a few pages where the print seeped dangerously close to the margins. I don't know if this was a problem solely with my copy, or if every book looks like this, but if it looks like the margins jump around at some point, it wasn't anything I did on my end while creating the file, I promise. There was also a corner gouged from one corner on the second-to-last page in my copy which shall remain immortalized in this scan. I try to take good care of my books, but accidents happen, alas.
Enjoy! ❤️
471 downloads
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Official Duke Nukem 3D Level Design Handbook, The
By Areala
Getting in just under the deadline for this to be possibly the final release for 2023, I present to you, my lovely Retromags family, friends, and followers, this wonderful showpiece of DOS gaming history! Matt Tagliaferri got the goods straight from the 3D Realm gurus themselves so he could explain how the Duke designers pulled off all those nifty tricks with the Build engine: moving subways, reflective mirrors, destructible walls, swimming pools, sector-over-sector placement, you'll learn how to do it all with this book at your side!
Also included are full appendixes which break down the ins and outs of CON file editing, a listing of all the sound effects from the game with their appropriate reference data, and full breakdown of the commands build into the DukeC scripting language. Finally, the CD-ROM gives out a plethora of new art assets, fifty ready-to-play levels from other designers, shareware versions of Duke 3D and a bunch of other Apogee and 3D Realms titles, and a utility allowing you to convert maps from Doom, Heretic, and Hexen to play within Duke Nukem 3D. 😵
And I, your beloved Retromags Goddess, has included the CD-ROM (as a bin/cue file combo) right within the download so you can extract it and play to your heart's content! Holy cow, it's a New Year's Eve holiday miracle! ❤️
Thanks to all of you Retro-maniacs for encouraging me to continue radically downsizing my personal library. No thanks to whomever assembled my copy of this book for pasting the CD-ROM sleeve on the inside back cover upside down, which is why it looks that way in the scan. Sure, I could have flipped it, but I'm preserving these things as I found them.
*huggles*
Areala
389 downloads
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Ultimate Unauthorized Nintendo Game Strategies
By Areala
A 1989 NES book published by Bantam, likely pushed out to capitalize on the success of Jeff Rovin's How to Win at Nintendo Games from St. Martin's Press. This is mostly text with the occasional screenshot or box artwork thrown in, but either their screen capture tech was too primitive, or Bantam's monochrome printing process wasn't set up to handle pictures, because the screenshots from this book look awful.
Also, the margins in my copy of this book are seriously wacky. You'll see text running almost straight to the edge of the page in some sections, while others give plenty of space for the text. This is an issue with the printing of the book, not me being a klutz with the cropping tool, but I still apologize for how the text waffles and flies all over the place as you're scrolling through.
That said, the book is amusing for Sandler and Badgett's witty asides and commentary on the games they are covering. It's one of the very few books from this era to cover Friday the 13th, and it also features write-ups with mock artwork for several NES titles which never came to fruition. I've never seen these games mentioned in any other publication of the era, so it's an important historical artifact from that perspective alone, confirming that Matchbox at one time was working on creating NES software (or at least paying someone else to do so).
In any case, this kicked off a successful series for Bantam, who followed this up with three additional volumes on NES games, along with books related to Game Boy, Genesis, Game Gear, and Super Nintendo hardware, many of which went through multiple print runs and editions.
Enjoy! ❤️
532 downloads
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Ultimate Unauthorized Nintendo Super NES Game Strategies '95 Edition
By Areala
The 1995 update to the long-running "Ultimate Unauthorized" series of books, this time written by Jason Rich as opposed to Corey Sandler and Tom Badgett. Very minimal illustrations and screenshots, almost all text, it's a travesty that at this point in the series they were charging $10.95 for this book when there were so many better offerings out there. About the only good things one can say is that it does cover a ton of titles, and the paper quality is superior to other books of its type.
Otherwise, pity the poor reader who wound up with this book instead of one of the many better selections out there. I felt guilty chopping up some of the other books I've scanned, just because going through them brought back so many good memories and it seems a shame to destroy one even if the end result is that it's preserved for others to enjoy.
This one though? I feel zero guilt. It merely existed on my shelf, and now I can recycle it to make room for something worthier.
Enjoy. ❤️
497 downloads
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QuestBusters: Keys to the Kingdoms
By Areala
Back in the pre-Internet days, Shay Addams ran an adventure gaming newsletter, later magazine, called "QuestBusters" which specialized in hints and solutions for computer RPG and adventure games. Shay parlayed his experience in the CRPG community into writing books which collected the hints and tips for a number of popular games. This, as far as I'm aware, is the second of three such books in the QuestBusters series, published in 1994.
All text, no screenshots, only the occasional piece of pen-and-ink artwork or hand-drawn map. But before GameFAQs, especially if you didn't have access to an online portal like CompuServe, this was the best you could do.
Enjoy! ❤️
227 downloads
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Deathmatch Manifesto
By Areala
The Deathmatch Manifesto is a fascinating book for a multitude of reasons. Published in 1997, really the dawn of the internet era for many home computer users, it's the first book of its kind to really dig in to the strategies used by gamers for fragging one another instead of the monsters. While competing against other human players itself went all the way back to the likes ofTennis For Two, Pong, and Space War, the concept of the "deathmatch" as it pertained to 3D gaming was in its relative infancy. Popularized by Doom, expanded on by Duke Nukem 3D, and levelled up by the release of Quake, there was a massive, untapped audience for this kind of thing, and Sybex sought to fill this void by publishing a guide not to beating the likes of those games, but rather beating the likes of those who had already beaten those games and were now looking for fresh blood to spill.
Much of the book is devoted to covering basic and advanced Deathmatch tactics which have long since become staples of the FPS genre, especially in the aftermath of the success seen with Quake 3 and the Unreal Tournament franchise, but what makes this book important from a historical standpoint is the snapshot in time it offers the reader. Documented within is the genesis of FPS gaming, the rise of online gaming, snapshots of popular gaming culture like cartoons produced using Quake's graphical engine and a listing of a number of different Clans who existed at the time, and even a look at new and upcoming gaming peripherals, like the SpaceOrb 360 controller, the VooDoo graphics card, and the MMX instruction set for Pentium-class computers.
I've included an .iso rip of the CD which came with the book. This includes a slew of deathmatch levels for your favorite games; demo file walkthroughs for every level in Quake, Ultimate Doom, Doom II, Duke Nukem 3D and the Atomic Edition/Plutonium Pak; a utility for converting Doom levels into Duke 3D levels; and a "secret Quake bonus" hidden somewhere on the disc for you to find. (No, don't ask me what/where it is--I'm not telling!). The DEATHMATCH.ISO file is included in the .cbz file, so open that with your favorite file compression utility, extract it, and get to playing around!
As usual for books like this, pages which were completely blank were omitted in order to reduce file size.
Enjoy! ❤️
241 downloads
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Compute's Adventure Game Player's Handbook
By Areala
Another 500-page tome of PC gaming goodness. Compute's Adventure Game Player's Handbook provides walkthroughs for 37 games which are (mostly) of the point-and-click variety from the mid-90's catalogue of DOS offerings. And these are some top-notch games: some Leisure Suit Larry titles, a couple of Space Quest entries, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, both Ultima Underworld adventures, the CD-ROM sensation that was The 7th Guest, Laura Bow's first outing in The Dagger of Amon Ra, the H.R. Geiger inspired Dark Seed, the second Tex Murphy adventure Martian Memorandum, Sierra's Rise of the Dragon cyberpunk tale, and even Steve Meretzky's comical final entry in the Spellcasting trilogy...seriously, some of the best PC adventure games available at the time.
Once again, not as outdated as you might think, since many of these titles are easily available and accessible from digital services like GOG and Steam, meaning you could re-play many of them today with minimal hassle and put this book to good use. Mostly text, but there are an awful lot of screenshots and computer-rendered maps along with other things like item lists and even the occasional cheat code or two which make this a great reference work.
Enjoy! ❤️
397 downloads
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3D Game Alchemy for DOOM, DOOM II, Heretic, and Hexen
By Areala
"More twisted levels and hellish horror!" declares the cover for this update to the prior year's Tricks of the DOOM Programming Gurus. And they are quite correct. This is not just Tricks version 2.0, this is an almost complete re-write from start to finish which, while almost 200 pages shorter than the previous edition, manages to contain more information between its covers. It does this by culling a good 75% of the empty pages from the first book (seriously, Tricks has dozens of pages which are completely blank compared to around 30 or so here), but also chopping out program-specific information and replacing it with generic how-to which explains the same concepts in a fashion more broadly applicable to whatever development tools you happen to be using. The end result is a tighter, more streamlined book which assumes you are familiar with how to use the software even if you're not that good at designing levels.
Despite the title, this book is still very much a DOOM-centric tome. While the designs discussed can be used with Heretic and Hexen, and there are tables and charts describing the quirks, enemies, and things specific to those games, make no mistake: the book's writers know you're here for the DOOM content, and they are only too happy to provide.
The CD-ROM which SAMS included with the book knows it too, coming packed with a fully registered version of the (now woefully obsolete) WADAuthor program for Windows and WADED program for DOS to build levels, along with its own graphical library of enemies, weapons, sprites, tiles, skyboxes, objects, and things to add spice to your own creations, and the DOOMShell 5 program which lets you point-and-click your way through level customizations easily. As if that isn't enough, you can bear witness to over two thousand levels created by talented designers, including several hundred DeathMatch-specific maps, either to use as-is or build off of for your own nightmares.
Given the release of numerous source ports and new level-making utilities, the software in this book is outdated and mostly unusable on modern systems, but the design concepts and general information within are still rock-solid bases from which to start your DOOM level design education. Included in this download is the 3dgamealchemy.iso which you can extract and burn to its own CD, or mount to a virtual drive and explore (which is why the file size is so large), and get the full 1996 experience!
Enjoy! ❤️
374 downloads
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How to Win at Nintendo Games #2
By Areala
Volume 2 of the series which keeps on giving gave everybody more of what they already got last time, and we were all delighted by that, thank you very much!
While this series wasn't specifically aimed at children, the ad in the back for a bunch of books in the "Truly Tasteless Jokes" series seems...well, tasteless. Then again, it's not like Rovin had half a dozen of these guys under his belt for St. Martin's Press to advertise, and crass humour likely sold just as well as video game books, so who knows: maybe they made a fortune off the cross-promotion.
Now I want to get one of those dirty joke books and see if they advertise Rovin's material in the back.
Enjoy! ❤️
503 downloads
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Gamemaster: Conquering Super Nintendo Games
By Areala
After teaching everybody "How to Win" for five years, Jeff Rovin adopted a new moniker for himself: "Gamemaster". A bit ironic, since Rovin himself never actually played the games for which he was writing down strategies, but the 90s were nothing if not the "fake it 'til you make it" era, so there you have it.
The book's broken down into two separate sections; the first features varying degrees of secret codes and strategies for 90 different titles, although nothing terribly comprehensive for any of the games no matter how complex or long said games might be. A little over three pages devoted to Final Fantasy II, about the same for Zombies Ate my Neighbors, but only one page or so given over to most action, platformer, and sports titles. The second section is literally nothing but cheats, passwords, Game Genie and Pro Action Replay codes, and the like; stuff you'd find in any magazine's cheat column. At $5 for a solid 230 pages of content, this isn't a bad deal. Rovin's introduction and afterward are also interesting reading, with Rovin making the case that the government has about as much reason to come after video games as they did with comics books back in the 1950s. Nice to see a guy who is a parent opining that it's really up to the parents to be responsible for what their children play instead of assuming an involuntary rating system will do anything except give kids a reason to rent the more mature titles on Friday night.
There are a lot of errors, omissions, and mistakes in this book though. The back cover claims Super Metroid is covered inside, when it doesn't appear in either section. The table of contents labels the second section of the book as "NES Short Takes" instead of SNES Short Takes. The front cover refers to the Zelda titles as "Link Games" (which makes it sound like carts you could connect to other carts a-la Sonic the Hedgehog 3), and the back cover mentions a game called "Streetfighters II".
There are also oddities in the presentation of some material. Rovin sometimes offers up passwords without explaining where they put you or what they'll give you (see Wings 2: Aces High), and does the same with Game Genie codes (see Final Fantasy II). Yeah, it doesn't take long to type in a couple of codes and see what happens, but maybe I'd like to know what I'm getting into before plugging in the ol' Game Genie. Especially if one of the codes you're going to give us is a "Gunslinger" code which can be used to change any item in the game into any other item in the game. If you don't explain what that code does, and how to use it, you haven't done anybody any favours, Jeff.
Anyway, my copy of this book has some slight water damage on the first couple of pages, but everything came out legible. Enjoy! ❤️
445 downloads
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