Digital collection of old instruction manuals

[lalalei2001]

I'm definitely interested! I once bought a new copy of an older game because I couldn't find the manual anywhere online, and the new copies were the only ones listed that came with the mnual.

[DoctorFink]

I grew up being excited to read a new video game manual at the dinner table. It was like reading a magazine but I was learning about the game I couldn't wait to play.

Very cool you have been scanning so many. I'd be interested in seeing them and possibly downloading some. I don't have a means to contribute myself. In terms of the NES or SNES era, I think I have one single book left. No boxes or packaging made it out alive back then unfortunately. If only I knew...

[Depressor]

Replacementdocs with their rules about manuals size and watermarks are very ugly site... With best regards to contributors - 40-paged manual cannot weight 7MB if you want good quality as i looked in 2013. But i look now - size upped for 64 MB. And if you want to update manual (missing pages\wrong crop\wrong angle) you must to unpdf it for work) Besides, looks like from 2013 replacementdocs are slowly dying.

P.S. miketheratguy you can use my collections))) Look here.

P.P.S. But i, personally, think that adding something except manuals pages in manuals - bad choice) I do the vise-versa - delete everything except manuals pages from files.

[Areala]

Replacementdocs with their rules about manuals size and watermarks are very ugly site... With best regards to contributors - 40-paged manual cannot weight 7MB if you want good quality as i looked in 2013. But i look now - size upped for 64 MB. And if you want to update manual (missing pages\wrong crop\wrong angle) you must to unpdf it for work) Besides, looks like from 2013 replacementdocs are slowly dying.

P.S. miketheratguy you can use my collections))) Look here.

P.P.S. But i, personally, think that adding something except manuals pages in manuals - bad choice) I do the vise-versa - delete everything except manuals pages from files.

Replacementdocs themselves have no rule about a maximum size for a scanned manual submission. What they did have when I was submitting was a 7mb limit per file upload. To submit larger manuals (for instance, my scans of Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete or Star Trek: Klingon Academy) I just had to split the images into 7 megabyte .zip files and name/number them sequentially, then upload. It was a little annoying, but it worked fine for my dial-up connection.

*huggles*

Areala

[Depressor]

I just had to split the images into 7 megabyte .zip files and name/number them sequentially, then upload.

Lucky you) When i asked them about the file size the answer was - no, only 7mb.

[gladiator]

The PSX Datacenter (a database of PS1, PS2 and PSP games) already got a manual section that is made by contributions for our contributors, there are no watermarks and most of them are in 300dpi size.

You can check the manuals in the downloads section of the site.

http://psxdatacenter.com/manuals.html

or

http://psxdatacenter.com/psx2/manuals2.html

If any of you want to contribute to the site please pm me or reply in this thread to know if they are needed (there are still lots of images not added to the site).

[landamo]

You know what I miss that can never be recreated digitally new manual smell. Damn that was my favorite part about getting a new game when I was younger. Oh well, it would be nice to read the manuals I never had.

[twiztor]

You know what I miss that can never be recreated digitally new manual smell. Damn that was my favorite part about getting a new game when I was younger.

that's not weird at all. i hope you can find a way to cope.

[3DOExperience]

I like what Miketheratguy is doing, as far as replacementdocs goes I use them and while the watermark doesn't bother me that much the compression does.

[robex]

awesome

[synth]

I would prefer the box front & back separate from the manual.

If you combine them in one file like the Castlevania example; I think it looks better to have the following order; box front, back, then manual.

Sometimes it's nice to just look at the box and if in hand, it makes most sense imo to turn the box around the read the back before opening the box to check out the manual.

I have the same Castlevania manual scan as in your example (minus the box art). I found a NES manuals torrent back in 2014 that contains manuals for the USA, UK, Australia and has the Hardware and Maps/Posters as well. It looks fairly complete although I haven't confirmed that yet. So far the ones I looked at are scanned in photo color and don't have any watermarks.

I got 879 NES box cover scans as well but no back covers. Finding the backs for the boxes is finding a needle in a haystack :(

It would be awesome to eventually have a complete collection of manuals and box art for all systems.

[CjGuitarist82]

Awesome Idea!
I loved reading the manuals.  I'd always take them to school so I could read them on the bus.  It was like getting to "play" the game when I couldn't Really play it.

I missed my stop one time reading the manual for Adventures Of Tom Sawyer.

[theassassin]

I took am looking to build my digital collection of classic game manuals so would appreciate shares or links of more places to look