Not to be Old On Main but one of my favourite books when I was a kid was the Diablo 1 instruction manual.
This thing wasn't a lil' tiny booklet, it was almost a novella sized brick of paper, and I read that thing over and over again.
And it had all the usual stuff in a game manual, like technical support, troubleshooting, installation instructions and so on, but then next to those instructions you'd also get stuff like... a little poem, or a little lore tidbit from the game just hanging out in the dark margins, spicing up the place.
It also contained instructions for things which, nowadays, you probably wouldn't even get an in-game tutorial for in a lot of games, like "It also contained instructions for things which, nowadays, you probably wouldn't even get an in-game tutorial for in a lot of games, like "you can't walk through walls" or "clicking on a character interacts with them." This was a time when gaming wasn't ubiquitous, where a lot of people saw computers mainly as data entry work tools, and a time when in-game tutorials simply were not a part of game design yet.
You want to know how to operate the software? Consult the manual.
But the REAL prize that got me reading the thing over and over again was the concept art and the lore, the story, this literal VOLUME of background and information about the game world that, much like the tutorial, would never be explained or be accessible in-game.
Oh, bad anatomy Chris Metzen warrior illustration, you informed so much of my younger self's idea of what cool fantasy aesthetics look like...
Besides those biographies of the warrior, rogue and sorcerer, there were extended details about the items and weapons, diagrams and drawings of the magic system and the bestiary and, most fascinating of all to young me, literature and art from the deep stories of the setting.
Playing Diablo itself, you would only ever really get the cliff's notes and hints about the full breadth of the lore and story created for the game, and so the developers took great time and care to cram it into - as I remember it - almost a 100 page booklet full of all the creative ideas they couldn't fit into the game proper.
The instruction manual felt like a true companion piece to the game, an equally important part of the experience if you wanted to fully understand the game you were playing. Getting to read the instruction booklet for a game you you had bought after only ever playing it at a friend's house, back then, felt like being let in on something. I guess the closest equivalent would be... it felt back then kind of like how discovering a really fascinating fan-theory, or a really great video essay about a game, feels today. Like a step deeper into something that's otherwise closed off to you.
Now, I don't want to wax TOO nostalgic, though. A lot of game manuals weren't this elaborate and interesting (Blizzard always took special care with theirs), and for all that I loved the Diablo instruction manual, it's not like any of the writing in it would make for literary classics. It hits about the level of the worldbuilding notes for a really cool homebrew D&D campaign, deeply stewed in 90s fantasy cheese and underground comix aesthetics, complete with... that particular cultural moment's approach to female characters.
(this is an approach to character design Blizzard has never grown out of, even to this bloody day)
And for all that I love the instruction manuals of old, yeah, I'm not gonna pretend like it's not more convenient and holistic to have an in-game codex and in-game tutorials, I'm not gonna act like the registration cards and ads and half-baked and incomplete attempts at troubleshooting and tech support aren't relics of a time when better options weren't available.
There is not a lost golden age of manuals when games were more magical and the experiences were more real, no prelapserian utopia from whence the modern world has fallen.
But game manuals were, once upon a time, a thing that creative folks at game companies poured a lot of time into, a lot of care and attention, and buying a big box brand new video game for a game with a really good manual felt that much more special and revelatory for it.
I do miss the physical media of games, the game boxes and manuals and jewel cases for CDs or floppies. A steam library is way more convenient and often better, but there is just a different feeling to holding something physical in your hands.
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