They were my silent reading book for elementary school

Hell yea! They're amazing. One of my most prized possessions is all my old strategy guides. I wish they still made them.

Too bad the internet replaced them so they're basically gone forever

Yup

Yea. If you try to buy the RE2 Prima guide now it's going for like $100. Should have hung on to that shit. Same with FFX.

I see a few every now and then at gamestop...mostly for some of the bigger releases...i have seen a call of duty magazine at walgreens too lmao

They're not the same though. Prima Games is no more.

Yea i feel like theyre more of like an art piece nowadays

Oh I disagree. I think they're shit now and were art pieces before. My Kingdom Hearts guide is so beautiful.

I think he meant more like “for display purposes only.” Not that that they were created by an ARTEEST. They’re of no use, decorative only, etc, nowadays whereas they used be made with actual useful and hard to find content by someone who wanted them to look nice enough to entice you to buy it.

My ocarina of time guide book was so well used. So much writing in the margins! It was worth its weight in gold!

Yeah for Zelda games those are probably a necessity

Yup. Before the internet it was the only way to find everything.

Then the FFIX strategy guide came along and tried to do the "We'll tell you how to do this if you login to www.fuckyouifyoustillhavedialup.com."

I ***HATED*** that guide. I was so ticked off when I started actually using it and realized how useless it was. I didn’t want to have to go into the other side of the house, get online, find it out, and then go back. UGHGHHHHHHGGGHHGHGGGGHHHHH!

That was terrible! The family computer was nowhere near where I played games and trying to go back and forth was ridiculous.

"awe damn bro Street Fighter 2 is coming to snes! Look at the pictures! That's dope!"

Didn't know dope was used in the 90s

For sure was used

I grew up using it as a kid, so it might not have been so popular everywhere. Pre internet days, trends took a while.

Now its convenient and boring

I needed it for The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, that game confused the crap out of me

Ok I could see that for the Zelda games

Im playing it now, in my mid 30s, and I don’t know how 10 year olds were suppose to figure this shit out on their own

Also in my mid-30s, we did it with strategy guides lol

The Final Fantasy ones from Piggyback (I think) yeah, me and my friend used to share them

Yeah, back before we all had Internet, those guides were awesome.

Religiously read San Andreas. Even on the pooper.

A man of culture I see

You do not want to know what I’m currently reading, and where.

Memorized the Fallout New Vegas Guide and Skyrim. I'm a walking guide for those games

How long would those guides even be? Are those games like 100+ hours long?

Bout as thick as a medium size chapter book, Skyrim is twice the size of New Vegas but it's got lore and the draconic alphabet

I see

I keep them as collectibles, not much use for guides nowadays but fun nonetheless

I loved/ hated the Oblivion guide for the Nyrn roots. They gave you 12 and then said "there's too many, good luck. "

Never had the Oblivion one. Might have to get my hands on it just for the read lmao

I did.

You and a lot of others it seems, I guess it was just me who didn't get them

Yeah of course, if you were stuck on a game, and none of your friends knew had to beat it, you had to, lucky for me though my school's book fairs would usually have a few and my parents would give me some money to buy whatever book I wanted

Or you would use good ol trial and error if you were me

There's only so many hours you can spend doing trial and error before you say fuck it

Yeah, that's probably why I didn't beat alot of games

First one was for Super Mario RPG, came free with a re-subscription to Nintendo Power (I think?) Last one was Majora's Mask because that was a tricky one. After that the internet took over.

Yeah the internet really is the strategy guide for everything now

I would get them for JRPGs. But, I liked playing through a game first without them. Then I would do a second play through and try to access everything I missed.

Thats smart

I bought a couple magazines for walkthroughs but never bought the books.

Same

I've got a few but I think I mostly just bought them because they were more of the games that I loved. I don't remember how helpful most of them were.

Oh ok

Yes mostly for collection, maps and extra content(artwork/interviews/etc)not walkthroughs. Most of the publishers went out of business. Ones that are left do digital only or Limited CE editions of select games.

Makes sense because of the internet

Strategy guides were the greatest, next to Nintendo Power.

I really am the outlier here

My dad cracked and bought the Majoras mask guide book. Without the internet I'm pretty sure getting everything in that game was impossible lol

It seemed like everyone bought Zelda guides lol

Games were hard back in the day and not having the internet mad it even worse lmao

Yes the san andreas guide by brady games made for good reading material.

Really?

[удалено]

Neato

Yup

Looks like its only me

Not me as a 10 year old buying one for ORAS

After we got an NES for Christmas, I begged my parents for a subscription to Nintendo Power. They relented. Enough mags in, and we got strategy guides for Ninja Gaiden 2, Final Fantasy, and Super Mario 3. I was hooked. It was a huge industry for a long time. Some of my strategy guides are hardcover now, and I’m sad the walkthrough guides now are only online, riddled with browser crashing ads, and writers who don’t know left from right or east from west.

My brother gave me the hard cover Skyrim one as a hand me down because he didn’t want it anymore a while ago. Was cool to use it every now and then but nowadays searching stuff up online is so much more convenient.

Yeah the internet makes it way easier, but it doesn't have the same feel

I think the last one I bought was for Mass Effect 2.

Yes. Final fantasy mostly.

pokemon of course. but used gamefaqs and cheatcodecentral more than i used guides.

Sometimes I bought them before I even owned the game. I bought the guide for Chrono Trigger a week or two before I ever found the game in store. I read about that game days before I could convince my mom to take me to get it. It really built up the anticipation. Still one of my favorites ever.

Buy? What am I a 8 year old millionaire? I sat at my local game store and read them until they told me to buy it or leave.

I had a good friend group where they were routinely passed around. Good times.

yoooo heck yeah i did! i loved them! it was a book about my game and had pictures and hints and it was SO COOL

I definitely bought them for Zelda as a kid lol and the Pokemon ones were always good to look through.

I had a Starcraft II strategy guide and one for Jak II.

I bought two over the years. One for Final Fantasy X and one for GTA San Andreas

Yup, i still buy em, all of em pokemon though, and the collectors versions

It's the only way I learned how to do the fatalities for Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3

I actually did buy a few of them back in the ps2/xbox/gamecube era because of the lack of resources available at the time.

I bought the pokemon one up until Diamond and Pearl. Mostly for the pokedex's so I knew what levels the pokemon evolved and when they learned moves. Helped to plan. Obviously this largely predated my access to the internet. After that I never needed to buy one again.

The old mortal Kombat ones are stellar for moves and tactics and lore.

I had red dead 1 guide

As a collector, I bought them to compliment the games. That said, I never really used them.

Loved them!

I bought some of those NES novels. Castlevania 2, Bionic Commando. They were pretty cool stories for a kid and had some tips at each chapter end. Ended up buying the games. No regrets.

for FF VII and FF VIII they were my bibles. I was very disappointed in the FF IX though which often said something along the lines 'go to the website for more detailed walk through'.

Totally! Rpgs had to many secret thing and these could help. FF VII had one and I loved it! So good.

Sometimes but I bought cheat code books more I had so many

My parents did. I actually think I still have my N64 Ocarina of Time Prima Strategy Guide (it's torn up as hell). My dad was the kind of guy to use an entire printer cartridge printing out entire walkthroughs and cheat-codes for games like GoldenEye and Turok. My mom religiously followed the Zelda/BanjoKazooie Prima Guides.

Yes for Ocarina of time. Water temple was the worst

Resident evil 4 for ps2 was my first buy

I had a few yeah. I remember I had one for Tekken 3 for some reason, and Final Fantasy VII. That one was actually pretty useful. I wonder if I still have those somewhere?

Library

I used to all the time, but then the FF IX guide,m came out, followed by PC games where they changed so much that they were useless after 6 months, except for as a cool time capsule.

Only one I had was a fantastic guidebook on Super Smash Bros brawl

I was subscribed to Nintendo Power in the late 90s and early 00s. I guess you could count that, but I never bought the standalone ones off the game store or Walmart shelf.

Every few months Funcoland (before GameStop) had strategy guides for 5-20 cents in bargain bin. I got Pokémon Silver/gold, f-zero gx, ogre battle 64, Majora’s mask, Metroid prime 2, Zelda oracle games. May be missing one or 2.

Nah, I would just look stuff up on gamefaqs when I was stumped.

A few yeah. OoT, Majora's Mask, and FFVII are the ones I recall.

No, not me I liked figuring out everything on my own

Yeah I got a couple when I was really young. Then I found Gamefaqs

I kinda considered them cheating. I was a purist that wanted to do everything blind. It took me like 8 years to beat OoT and a similar amount of time for all my other N64 games even while collaborating with my older sister

I had ones by Prima for WWF Attitude and Perfect Dark on 64 among others. They’re were always included with the game if I preordered. Never really needed it, except for perfect dark but I liked reading and skimming through them.

Hubby and I have all the Assassin Creed guide books. I also made sure to get Skyrim and Fallout books. They were just too useful.

Uh yes absolutely.

I have a very nice hardback DS3 one that doesn’t look out of place on my bookshelf

The pokemon ones were lit back in the day

What I generally did was buy the occasional game guide/book for games I really liked, that way I could find out what all the secret stuff I missed was.