Highlights
- Physical strategy guides were important and cherished resources for gamers in the past, providing helpful tips and strategies, as well as extra content and artwork.
- The shift to digital guides in the mid to late 2010s brought convenience but lacked the ability to keep up with frequent game updates and patches, making them less reliable and relevant.
- While printed guides may no longer be practical in the current gaming landscape, there is still a nostalgic desire for them, with some gamers longing for indie companies to create for-order versions reminiscent of the past.
As part of my video gaming New Year’s resolution, I’ve been going back and playing some games that I’ve once upon a time dismissed for one reason or another. Recently, my gaming endeavors have led me to replaying Ni No Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch. In retreading these old grounds, I usually attempt to fish out any old physical copies of strategy guides I may have lying around. As a nostalgic part of my personal library, they each hold memories that are dear to me.
“Back In My Day…”
My history with physical strategy guides dates back to about 2002, but I admit that it didn’t become more personalized until around 2004. You see, my first experience with a physical strategy guide wasn’t with my own copy but my friend’s.
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He owned a Nintendo 64, and our sleepovers consisted of trying to beat the classic shooter Perfect Dark. Being an old-school shooter, there were no recharging shields behind cover. He, as the main character, called the shots and I was his backup. We had to inch our way to the strange ending involving an alien named Elvis. From what I remember, we were stuck on a level where we had to make it past a Robocop-like police assistant who pelted us with bullets the moment it caught us in its sights.
His mom had taken him to GameStop where he got a used copy of the strategy guide for Perfect Dark. It was in pretty good shape, and I marveled at the crisp, shiny pages as he flipped through the book. I was particularly drawn to the great artwork.
One of the things he loved about the guide was that he got to take it to school to read during recess. It was also convenient for us because we weren’t allowed to get online until after 10 PM (ah the glory days of dial-up). Eventually we were able to not only get past the annoying Robocop wannabe, but we beat the entire game!
Taking It Personally
I got my first printed strategy guide in college. It came with my preorder of Star Ocean: Till The End Of Time. At that time I was living in the dorms at the University of New Mexico. I feel like Till The End Of Time was the perfect first game to get a strategy guide for.
As well as the traditional multiple endings you can get with different characters in Star Ocean games, the game also had a series of challenging post-game dungeons.
I religiously replayed Star Ocean, learning from the guide how to prepare for the endgame dungeons by making items like orichalcum and refining them so that they add about 500+ to a character’s attack stat. The guide taught me how to play the game on 4D difficulty, the game’s highest difficulty level, and how to manipulate the squad AI so I could sling spells as Sophia, while Fayt (the main character) and Cliff (the residential buff man) attacked enemies.
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But the most important thing guides did was provide me quiet moments when I was away from the game, reminding me of what I had waiting for me at home. Many times, especially in college, I had to spend hours on campus. When I had to write an essay, I’d sometimes be there until midnight getting my work done. My eyes would be tired and I’d be ready to give up and just let the dream of passing that class go. But at points during the long sessions, I’d take a break to eat, crack open one of my printed strategy guides and recenter my thoughts.
Beyond The Strategy
These guides would often come with extra content too, including tidbits of lore, canon and worldbuilding that you wouldn’t find in the main game.
I will always remember Final Fantasy X-2 as the most memorable. My excitement for the game was not only fueled by my love for Final Fantasy X, but also by Yuna herself, who remains my favorite fictional character of all time. As part of the game purchase, you’d receive a small discount on the guide. A cool pull-out poster was included in the X-2 guide that featured Yuna, Rikku, and Paine in their goofy yet iconic final costumes, which were, of course, the overpowered ones that could get you through the insane amount of side quests required to complete the game. I had the poster on my dorm and apartment walls for years.
There were also limited edition guides you could get through different gaming stores and websites. Many of these were hardbound and made with a tougher cut of paper. Beyond having exclusive art, some of these even came with autographed pages with developers’ names on them, and more information about the characters and the worlds they inhabited. The Halo 4 collector’s edition Prima guide was loaded! The guide offered an extra 48 pages filled with ‘Behind-The-Scenes’ materials, interviews, concept art, and photos curated by 343 Industries. Additionally, it included 10 War Games specific Dry-Erase Cards featuring MLG pro tips, as well as a complimentary download for the Cryptum Avatar T-Shirt. To me, during that time, the extra information was important because this was around the time that Halo was shifting to another developer, and I was curious about how they were going to develop the information. Not to mention it was where Cortana’s story began to unfold, which created an interesting year for me.
You didn’t just read them for strategies and tips, you also read them for the art and behind-the-scenes commentary—especially if you were a lore nerd like me.
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The Shift To Digital
It was in the mid to late 2010s when I started noticing the shift. The emergence of digital ebooks, while initially promising a convenient alternative to printed guides, soon revealed their limitations as well. Unlike online guides that could be updated on the fly, digital ebook guides found themselves struggling to keep pace with the frequent updates, patches, and downloadable content released by game developers. It is undeniable that digital access was convenient, but the inability to update digital ebooks quickly in real-time marked a turning point in the demise of once cherished strategy guides. Additionally, the significant factor that online guides were freely available further tipped the scales, making it harder for digital ebooks to compete in a landscape where accessibility and cost played pivotal roles in shaping gaming preferences.
My last hurrah with the printed strategy guide was the collector’s hardcover edition of the Prima strategy guide for Mass Effect Andromeda in 2017. I didn’t necessarily need it but I was so happy to see it available. It came with a DLC booster pack for multiplayer, extra artwork, and even a digital e-guide component that I assumed was meant to be an updated version that would address incoming patches and such. To me, it’s now a relic of a time now past. Prima Games officially stopped publishing guides in 2018.
I totally understand the ease of using a phone or a video to get help with a video game. It’s something I do all the time. In spite of the modern convenience of writing something like “how do I get past the temple in Ni No Kuni” into Google on my iPhone, there was something so special about holding that hefty tome in my lap, running my index finger across the words a few times, to ensure that I understood what it said.
I am aware that the world has shifted too much for such a relic to exist in a popular realm now. Printed guides are just not malleable enough to work with the various updates and DLC that come out for modern games. But it would be nice if there were indie companies who, for nostalgic fools like myself, created for-order versions of the yesteryear guides, all the way down to the smell of fresh printed glossy pages. I’d pay to get one of Baldur’s Gate 3, complete with exclusive artwork and silly side-stories, though with the game getting so many patches that are constantly tweaking and rebalancing it, I appreciate that the very earliest we’d get one would be with the inevitable ‘Definitive Edition.’
