Do you have any experience or nostalgia associated with game guides? I was never big on them, but I have very fond memories of using a Gamefaqs guide to help me get through the stickier bits of Final Fantasy VI. I know they aren’t really a thing anymore, but are there any guides that enhanced your experience with a game? I’m wondering if playing retro games I missed out on might be more fun if I do with a Prima guide.
I LIVED in game guide books for certain games as a kidI still have my original Pokemon guides where I’d circle important stuff or translated the braille for the Regis in gen 3, etc.
My mom would also look up cheats and stuff in early GameFAQs days (and eventually I did too) and we still had some of those printed. I like to keep GameFAQs or cheats printed in game cases when I can.
I started a new island in Animal Crossing New Horizons with my wife and daughter recently and had the thought to see if guides were still a thing. I was hoping to keep up the kiddo’s enthusiasm about the game when she isn’t playing and any amount of reading is good you know? I couldn’t find much, but I ordered a used unofficial from Better World Books. It’d be cool for her to have an artifact to go with the memories like you do with your Pokemon guides.
Printing out the GameFAQs is such a good idea! I just tried keeping a tab open the last time I tried using them. Printing seems much easier. There are certain games that I’d want to be able to reference something for rather than beating my head against a wall for the limited time I have to play these days.
GameFAQs was always my go to. I doubt I could have ever finished Majora’s Mask without it. Such a shame the site is owned by Fandom now.
My goodness yes… I was HUGE into video game magazines as a kid, and had a few guides. I remember waiting soooooo many weeks (months?!) for the Super Mario RPG guide to arrive in the mail because I was stuck in that game.
Some of my fondest memories of the last couple years have been playing some of the SNES/PS1/PS2 era JRPGs for the first time with their original guides. It’s kind of sad that paper guides don’t really seem to exist anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I love GameFAQs but the modern day SEO-optimized game guides spread over dozens of pages don’t hit the same notes for me.
Also… Tunic? I guess less a “game guide” than a love letter to instruction manuals, but close enough. One of the best games I’ve played this decade, period.
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I’ve been going to internet archive and looking for the strategy guide scans for some games instead of GameFaqs or a Video guide. Something feels more intimate about opening up a big book with all the info there. I remember picking up Dark Souls during release and buying the strategy guide with it. I think I spent more time reading that book than I did playing the game, taking it to school with me and studying it like a test to figure out how to get past spots. I would collect them, but probably only for the games I really like.
I may be mistaken, because I don’t follow gaming news anymore, but I read that a couple of years ago many video game websites made a hard pivot to guides content instead of publishing reviews. I guess, because nobody visits regular websites anymore and they all started relying heavily on SEO traffic. Needless to say that many games journalists got layed off in favor of much cheaper guide authors.
I was never really a big fan of them growing up, mainly do to lack of access to them, so I don’t really have much nostalgia for them. If I had more access to them as a kid, I probably would— but nowadays I often feel like they were just an economic barrier, and that access to hidden content would be needlessly obfuscated for the sake of selling game guides. My recent play through of Final Fantasy 7 brought back that sort of sour taste, with friends pointing out things that I could miss out on (like entirely missing out on Yufi) that feels so ridiculously obtuse to get that it was only done to sell a guide. I personally don’t miss this about games, but I also understand how those who did have access to guides greatly enjoyed them and would have nostalgia for it.
What I do miss though, is more game journalism done through physical media. I would flip through the occasional Game Informers & Nintendo Power magazines that I was able to get my hands on to read reviews, find new games & help round out my holiday wishlists.
I was excited to see Game Informer coming back from the dead in 2025 and brought the staff back. But the gaming studio behind this accomplishment is associated with NFTs and was in the news recently for other reasons.
Ah shit thats a bummer to hear, I backed the kickstarter for that 
After reading @Akino’s post earlier I was nostalgic for some of the old gaming mags I had and looked them up on ebay. Plenty of Gamepro and Nintendo Power that available for reasonable prices! Ya know, I bet @EposVox and some folks could assemble a pretty sick video game zine someday if they were interested 
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I would absolutely be down!!!
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That would be super sick! Maybe even some demo discs
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That would be awesome, I’m sure there are some indie game devs that would be down to help out with some demos!
I have a lot of nostalgia for EGM and looked into magazines recently.
I’ve read a couple issues of Edge Magazine through Libby. They also have PC Gamer and Retro Gamer That’s been giving me some of the same vibes and I’ve been enjoying learning about new games and gaming news without immediately wanting to look into reactions. They also have PC Gamer and Retro Gamer, but I haven’t read those much yet.
There are some cool looking independent/small print projects out there. My wife got me the first issue of A Profound Waste of Time for my birthday and that has been really cool to read. I’d balked at the $30 plus shipping, but it was a cool gift. Most of their issues are sold out unless you go for the even more expensive special editions. And even then, they aren’t always available.
I like projects that have a PDF as an option. They’re cheaper and look great on my tablet. I literally just found this while writing about this, but there’s a project called Heterotopia that looks promising. It says it’s “a project focusing on the spaces and architecture of virtual worlds.” I just picked up a bundle of the issues off of itch.io.
Some other miscellany I found while writing this. The Video Games History Foundation has a digital archive that includes a magazine library that includes an archive of old Game Informers.
As an aside, zines are huge in the tabletop RPG and miniature wargaming spaces and I would be down to spin up a conversation about those in another thread if therere’s interest.
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I lived off of demo discs as a kid. I’ve been loving their resurgence through Steam’s Next Fests.
@Scootsyy A video game zine would be super cool. I’d love to see a zine that covered some indies or highlighted games with demos so you could roll your own demo disc with links.
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