I have a lot of video games. Up until 2001 or so the vast majority of those games were on the PC. There used to be stores where the only thing they sold were PC games (and a little bit of productivity software on the side.) No longer. PC games also came in big boxes with sleeves inside, before CDs, you’d find stacks of disks, thick manuals, charts, code-wheels, posters, maps, doo-dads, feelies. It was pretty awesome. This wasn’t just A-list title stuff either. Every game, even the crappy ones came with neat stuff, they had to fill those boxes somehow.
Today, that isn’t the case. Most PC games come in a DVD case. If there is manual it is an afterthought. Some black and white 6 page, poorly edited affair ran on cheap paper. It’s depressing to look out which is why they’re mostly left out. All that other stuff that used to come with PC games? That stuff you now have to pay a premium for it’s reserved for collector’s editions and Bicarbonate editions, or pre-order specials. The profit margins must be razor thin these days…
The sad thing is that I got rid of all of my boxes when I came up to northern California for college to conserve room, with the boxes went most of the cloth maps, doo-dads, feelies, and chotskies. Also dumped were probably 100+ games that I felt had no value to me anymore. Too bad there isn’t a secondary market for PC games. Too bad there isn’t some sort of Musuem or Hall of Fame for them yet either…
Anyway, let’s see what I got in these stacks:
- Here is an assortment of fold-outs: tech-trees, key mappings, fake newspapers, flow-charts, etc…
- full color on glossy paper? Madness!
Next time we visit these manuals I’ll talk about some of my favorites; what makes them so wonderful; and, what we lose by not having them…
Have you checked with the Library of Congress on this? If so, what did they say?
I have not Patty but I’m not too hopeful either. Looking into the manuals/books/instructions I don’t see any ISBN numbers or anything other kind of tracking number that might be used to identify and catalog them… I should contact them or the Smithsonian though. To see if any kind of preservation work is being down for electronic media. Thanks for the suggestion.