Have only picked up a few strategy guides that I can recall. I’m pretty sure I had the one for Civ I, I had the one for Daggerfall and Oblivion, Moo 2, and this one:
Really enjoyed reading it and when I was done I passed it on to my Dad who still has it.
Aces of the Pacific and Aces over Europe both had nice manuals as I recall and were really like history books.
Alan Emrich? Looks like I’ll have to pick that up too.
Macaw streamed today Deadly Tide, a rather plain PC rail shooter published by Microsoft, but the stream ended on a high note to me: the revelation of its strategy guide. A 288 pages novel, written by Phil Powell, after a 2 hours long on-rail shooting game.
Can’t wait to flip its pages!
Did you buy that guide? I see a couple copies on Amazon for pretty cheap, although they only say 224 pages (maybe it’s longer in French).
I actually had Deadly Tide back in the day but don’t really remember anything about it. Didn’t have the guide, which is too bad because I probably would have loved it.
Surprised there’s no mention in here of Rusel DeMaria’s X-Wing and TIE Fighter guides, which were in a similar vein. Characters, between-mission vignettes, they were really like novels as much as guides. I loved them to death as a non-computer owning kid. They come with the GOG versions of the games, now. Wish they had Deadly Tide!
I ordered it and it’s coming from the US. I blame Amazon for the wrong info!
Well, I just bought one, too. Wish I could send it back in time to my 16-year-old self.
That is very nice, did not know that. Good job Gog, and I’m glad Prima (original guide publisher) didn’t give then too much stink for it.
As if they were selling them without securing an accord first!
It’s probably that the dead Prima didn’t own the rights to those books, but the owners to Tie Fighter, as they were bundled with the game from the digital launch.
There have been a couple of cases over the years where it took time to secure the rights — I should say, find who the hell might be holding them — and the vast majority where it’s not even worth bothering.
Some were probably easier, such as most classical Sierra games that are bundled with the books to solve their insane puzzles — those were selfpublished.
I fully admit to not watching the video, because I hate videos, but if he truly did use the word “novel,” and if I bought the correct Deadly Tide book by Phil Powell (although it’s hard to imagine there being more than one), that is stretching the word past what I would consider its breaking point. I haven’t finished it, but from what I have read and skimmed ahead, it’s nothing like a novel. It’s a teensy bit like an old choose your own adventure book, I guess, in that it’s written in second person, but really the style is more as if your excitable buddy who’s prone to flights of fancy had played and loved the game and was now walking you through it. I am honestly let down. I’m sure Mr. Powell was just working to his writ, but I had my hopes up for something approximating the actual “novel” strat guides of Rusel DeMaria for X-Wing/TIE Fighter, which sadly remain two of a kind, as this is most definitely not that.
I got it and am absolutely not let down. This is just goddamn hilarious to me. The efforts gone to describe shooting mindless hordes of boring enemies over two hours is wonderful.
I guess you had to have been in the game to really appreciate it XD
It’s definitely got a lot more personality than most game guides, it’s just not what I was hoping for!
but… don’t you see?! it’s absurd!
I glanced through the Ultima IV official game guide, which is bundled as a freebie with the other docs on the GoG version. They go to some effort to make it thematic, and it has the usual Origin production values, but dang, not a lot of info there at all. The dungeon maps are the only really hard info, the rest is just vague directives to talk to this or that NPC. I think if I’d shelled out for it back in the day I would have been pretty disappointed.