![]() The manual for A Link to the Past is a delight. Even if Konami is absolved of all its sins in the distant future, nothing will erase the travesty of "Paula Abghoul and Fred Askare." I appreciate the floating horse head named "Mr Hed," though. The instruction booklet for Castlevania IV is a lovable nightmare of groan-worthy puns and bad wordplay. In the 8- and- 16-bit era, Konami loved to joke around in its instruction booklets. There's a lot of great art and exposition in the F-Zero booklet, some of which is delivered via a small comic by Valiant. Once Nintendo made up its mind, though, it committed to the whole "future racing" business. F-Zeroį-Zero wasn't initially supposed to be set in the future the technical limitations of the SNES forced fate to make a sharp turn. ![]() I also like the large map that explains each region and links Super Mario World to Super Mario Bros 3 via the Sunken Ship guarding the Valley of Bowser. That's cool-especially since Mario World has a lot of moves compared to its predecessors. Super Mario WorldĪs with its booklets for Super Mario Bros 1, 2, and 3, Nintendo's booklet for Super Mario World illustrates each of Mario's moves with a full-color picture. Here are ten SNES instruction booklets that deserve to be re-read. Between Nintendo's efforts and its excellent Star Fox 2 instruction booklet mock-up, it's good to see the company go the extra mile to preserve such an important-if under-celebrated-element of retro gaming. Even baked-in strategy guides are on display. Nintendo has clean scans of each SNES Classic game booklet. Oh, you missed out on the golden age of pack-in video game literature? No worries. Unsurprisingly, most of the games Nintendo selected for its SNES Classic Edition line-up were initially bundled with excellent instruction booklets offering all of the above, and more. The best booklets contained high-resolution color artwork, well-written stories, detailed character profiles, and even jokes and puns. While most instruction booklets of the era delivered the bare basics, some went above and beyond. Back in the 16-bit pre-dawn, you had to turn to these glossy, stapled bundles of paper if you wanted to know everything about your quest, its characters, and its power-ups. Most SNES games aren't very text-heavy compared to games today, but they still deliver decent exposition through their instruction booklets. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team. This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247.
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