• leggettc18@programming.dev
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    11 months ago

    Well there’s a few things for early at home games, for one the instruction booklets were actually worth a damn, often containing the story, tutorial, and more. Also, size was at much more of a premium, so since instruction manuals were a thing, it was considered a waste to have all of that stuff in the game itself. I’m sure there are exceptions but that’s the general idea.

    Much as I lament the loss of good instruction manuals, it’s understandable why they went away in light of why they were necessary before.

    • Shiggles@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      It’s okay, most* games have good wikis that do an alright impression.

      *Less so now that we have the plague that is fextralife and similar doing their damndest to elbow out useful wikis for any and every game.

    • 1984@lemmy.today
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      11 months ago

      Yeah the best manual I ever read was for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunship_(video_game), it was amazing. A thick manual explaining so much about the military helicopter and how it worked. Was thrilling to read as a kid.

      I don’t remember the graphics being so bad though…:) But it’s pretty shit by today’s standards.

      • samus12345@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        For PC in 1986, those are pretty good graphics. Arcades were where the best graphics were back then.

          • samus12345@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            I’m using PC in the literal “personal computer” sense. I don’t recall PC = Microsoft being a thing back then, though I may be wrong.