Areala

Well, here's something completely different! Your beloved Retromags Goddess providing you (yes, you specifically!) with a book about games from the MS-DOS era!
Wait, sorry, I got my notes mixed up. This is actually just the next in a long line of books dealing with classic DOS games brought to you by yours truly.
In order, this book covers:
Duke Nukem 3D Quake MechWarrior 2 Crusader: No Remorse Hexen Heretic Star Wars: Dark Forces Descent Doom II Doom Earthsiege 2 Earthsiege Terra Nova Wing Commander IV Wing Commander III Fury3 Magic Carpet Renegade Now, you don't get full walkthroughs for all of these games. What you get instead for most are general, overall strategies that will serve you well throughout a playthrough, taken from articles and reviews written by the staff members of Computer Games Strategy Plus.
The book also came with a CD-ROM containing playable demos for nearly all of the games covered by the book, plus eighteen other games not covered between the covers. My copy, sadly, is lacking this disc, but the good news is that some other enterprising soul uploaded it to Archive.org, and you can grab your own copy of it to play around with!
Now, enough words! Download this book, enjoy the nostalgia, pay me my tribute by kicking that 'Thanks' button like you're Duke Nukem's mighty boot, and prepare for the next awesome release from your Retromags Goddess! ❤️
*huggles*
Areala

Another awesome Genesis compilation book from Prima. Full-colour, just like the first, with a slew of new games, only a couple of which were looked at in the previous edition. Strategies and tactics for 35 games, with a bevy of cheats, passwords, and other goodies for 35 more. An excellent addition to your digital library, if I do say so myself.
Donated by ModernZorker.
Enjoy! ❤️

These unauthorized compilation books from BradyGames really aren't that great. About the best thing you can say about this one is that it's in colour, and it covers nine different games, but even then there's just not a lot of content in those 128 pages. The strategies are fine, but there aren't any screenshots, just the occasional bit of artwork Brady could get away with including without obtaining an actual license to use assets. The code list which takes up the last few pages is honestly the best part of this. The Tomb Raider II section is just a list of where each item is found in each level, but it doesn't give you any help on actually beating any of the stages or anything. Boo!
At least with fighting games, it's pretty easy to nail down a move list and go from there. Then again, if one of the fighting games you're covering is Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi...well, do I really have to say anything?
The thing is, if these books didn't sell well, then it's hard to see why Brady would have kept cranking them out. I mean, five volumes of this stuff is about four too many, but Brady did a metric shit-ton of these compilation books spanning multiple eras and multiple platforms, so somebody must have been buying them.
This one was donated by ModernZorker, who isn't a member here (maybe think about fixing that, bro?) but who does write about video games and other nerdy things in various places around the internet, and who, according to him, made his wife's day by getting it out of his house. Now it's making my day by going into the recycle bin.
Enjoy! ❤️

Another totally unauthorized compilation book from BradyGames, this time aimed at the Sega Genesis, along with the Sega CD and 32X attachments. This is a pretty good book, all things considered. Lots of screenshots, printed in full colour on high-quality paper stock. Sega groupies will eat this right up!
Donated by ModernZorker.
Enjoy! ❤️

The follow-up to 1,001 Secret Codes, released a year earlier. This book doesn't present any walkthroughs, guides, or strategies, it's simply a compilation of cheat codes, passwords, unlockables, and other goodies to help you get the most out of games you already own.
That said, they still manage to misspell the occasional game title, so that mid-90's Brady "quality assurance" is still alive and well. 😂
Oh well. At least it wasn't on the front cover this time.
Donated by ModernZorker.
Enjoy! ❤️

Oh no! Fifty-four NBA pro all-stars have invaded your gaming space, determined to play a game of 2-on-2 with you at the helm. Obviously what you need here is a strategy guide to explain the finer points of offense and defense, and really break the game down for...
Sorry, I can't do this with a straight face. 😆
This is a basketball game. It's kind enough to give you the stats for all the different players right there on the screen, and assumes you're smart enough to understand the guy who is good at shooting 3-point shots should probably do that instead of going in for a dunk. There aren't any special moves, no fireballs or jump kicks or fatalities, just a joystick, a button to shoot, a button to pass, and a button to make you move faster until the meter runs out. I'm impressed that Corey Sandler, the same guy responsible for a bevy of those "Ultimate Unauthorized" books from the previous five years, somehow managed to talk Brady into buying the rights to make an official strategy guide to a game as straightforward as NBA Jam.
Midway, I am certain, laughed all the way to the bank with that money.
You could use the $10 you spend on this book to instead play 40 games of NBA Jam in the arcade (or 20 if the operator was a greedy turd burglar and set the machine to 50 cents/play) and you'd get just as good at it through actually playing. I reiterate: this is a basketball game where every rule except Traveling and Goaltending have been suspended. It's literally about who can toss a sphere through a circle the most. This is not rocket science.
The artwork is cool, the production values are high, and the paper quality is outstanding. It includes some cheat codes, some Game Genie goodies, and the necessary info to unlock most of the hidden characters in it, but you could get all that from an issue of EGM at half the price.
Utterly baffling, but hey, here it is, so indulge!
Donated by ModernZorker.
Enjoy! ❤️

Another solid game compilation guide, this time from Prima, who seemed to do better at these kinds of things than Brady much of the time. This covers a slew of great games that most people would be interested in playing: top-notch stuff like Link's Awakening DX, Donkey Kong Country, two Wario Land titles, and even contains a bit about the Game Boy Camera peripheral. It's nothing mind-blowing, but the production value is high, there are plenty of full-color screen captures, and the writing for the walkthroughs is on point and descriptive. Well worth the download, IMO.
Donated by ModernZorker.
Enjoy! ❤️

This is a much better multi-game guide than some of Brady's other offerings. Ninety-six pages of cheats, unlockables, and GameShark codes for Nintendo 64, Saturn, and PlayStation titles...this stuff was like GameFAQs before there was a GameFAQs, ya know?
Because of the way this book was printed, a lot of the text on the odd-numbered pages ran smack-dab against the gutter. I don't think anything got completely lost in the de-binding process, but you may see some white areas where I over-compensated for the close shave. My apologies; I suck at editing.
Donated by ModernZorker, who isn't a member here, but sent me this in a care package anyway.
Enjoy! ❤️

Of the classic, PS1-era Tomb Raider titles, Tomb Raider III is probably the most difficult, and not always for the right reasons. With Core Design's employees struggling with epic burnout after being forced to churn out two sequels in two years, this game had the largest design team yet behind it, but by now the cracks were starting to show. With the public clambering for more everything, and no time to build a new in-game engine, they still managed to pack in new moves, including crawling, hand-over-hand climbing, and sprinting. Lara's arsenal was upgraded. There were new outfits to wear and new environments to explore, new enemies to slay, and new traps to contend with. The devs put a major focus on the idea of multiple ways to reach the same goal this time around, something they briefly toyed with in a couple of places in the first two games; this time, it was practically law. Instead of linear level progression, once players beat the opening stages set in India, they could choose to visit London, Nevada, or an island in the South Pacific, before taking Lara to Antarctica for her final confrontation.
The other Tomb Raider games could easily be completed without a guide; you'd occasionally want to refer to one if you couldn't locate that last secret, or were having difficulty understanding one of the puzzles, but by and large, it was within most players' abilities to complete the game without one. Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider II fostered level design that wanted to surprise and delight the player. Tomb Raider III, on the other hand, was designed in such a way as to be openly hostile, with massive, sprawling levels filled with death traps and obtuse puzzles, along with enemies placed specifically to force the player to waste resources. Picking the wrong location after finishing India, in fact, is tantamount to the game kicking you in the nuts/ovaries, and the "wrong" choice is not telegraphed in any way. If you ever flip through a strategy guide for Tomb Raider III that does not instruct you to go to Nevada upon finishing India, throw that book away.
Fortunately, this Prima guide does not make that mistake, and the path Kip Ward lays out is the "easiest" way through the game. That doesn't mean you get a cake walk, it just means you won't flip the difficulty switch to "screw you" without realizing it. Kudos also to Ward for providing a walkthrough of sorts for Lara's Home, explaining how to get into the secret treasure room, find the Racetrack key, and unlock the Quad Bike course. None of this is essential to beating the main quest, but it's possible to explore her mansion without realizing there's more to it than just beating the Assault Course and learning how to jump around.
Enjoy! ❤️

A short, fifteen-page guide to the original Tomb Raider which gives a run-down of Lara's moves, the traps she can encounter, and the locations of the extra weapons she can acquire. I'm not entirely sure where this came from. It may have been a freebie that came with the purchase of Tomb Raider Gold on the PC, it may have been included with a magazine...I just don't know. It's nothing special, but now all of you can enjoy it too!