Color Manuals Or Black And White

[8bitforever]

I used to love some of the manuals that came with the games but I always hated when they were in black and white and not color. What do you think? Or do you really care as long as the manual as the info you need to play the game.

[Mister Zero]

I like color, glossy pages. I never liked the cheap paper B&W manuals.

[Phillyman]

You know, I think manuals have kind of died off for me. I have bought maybe 30-40 games this past year.....and not once have I looked at any of the manuals. I think most games do a good job of providing tuturials in the game. But I do like the manuals to be in color

[Tony_32]

Color. I love good art and eye candy in a game manual.

[atik]

Yeah, I allways hated when I opened a game case or box and found out that the manual was black and white and not colour. I seem to remember that most of the Super Nintendo manuals were colour but many of the Mega Drive's were black and white.

[Mister Zero]

I also really like things like enemy and item lists. Just always thought it was neat to have.

[Helperspanish]

Color, of course.

I remember for example the Sonic series in Genesis-Megadrive. B&W here in Europe and in a glorius color in the Japan releases.

[Guest s1500]

B&W manuals looked terrible in the illustrations. It's like they used a printing/conversion process to make the pictures look as dark & unreadable as possible. Fallout 1 had a nice manual that I regret throwing away. Nicely spiral bound & everything.

[Hidinger]

Manuals should be in the same format as the game they represent. There needs to be conformity between the game and the manual. If the game is set in a timeperiod where the only print media was in black and white...then the manual should be in black and white. If it is set in the future where it is in another language the manual should be in that language (and a translation for english/etc). I am tired of these games that have a cool storyline and then ruin it with a stupid screenshot / basic manual.

Remember Star Tropics (I think) where the manual was actually required to get one of the codes needed in the game. We need more of that.

[triverse]

Ah, Hidinger, I fear that we are a dying breed that remembers copy protection being the sort that required the manual or some other pack in to advance in the game (remember The Enchanter from Infocom?  You had what, a sun dial, pinwheel and some other things in the box and the game would ask for something from one of those as a character so it was believable?).

I agree though with Hidinger on his other points too, the manual should be of the same time period.  I remember the Alternate Reality: The Dungeon manual for Commodore (not sure on other versions as this was the ony version I played new) it's manual used the same typeface as the game, same dialogue and all.  It had all kinds of details on monsters and weapons and even pages for some of the stores and guilds with a place to write prices of stuff in (and extra spaces for things they might sell that weren't listed).  It was really cool.

[Gnash]

I liked the color ones when they had game art. But now days it's just screens. So who cares :(

[Hidinger]

I liked the color ones when they had game art. But now days it's just screens. So who cares :(

In the Hidinger's Crusade to make manuals part of the game campaign, there would be no screen shots because that, again, takes you out of the mood that the game is setting. It would be like the first few pages of a book showing you how to read by giving you pictures of some dude reading the book you just bought. That would be retarded. Game manuals should be the same. They need to become part of the intro (7 layer code wheel not necessary)

[E-Day]

Colour. Black and white manuals just look cheap. I like to think that I am getting a little something extra for the $50-$60 I pay for a game.