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   elilla&, arm trans women :nkogun: (elilla@transmom.love)'s status on Friday, 04-Sep-2026 02:00:58 JST elilla&, arm trans women :nkogun:

   one common misunderstanding about retro games I see in younger people is not being aware that games used to come in boxes with printed manuals and there was an expectation that you'd read the manual in preparation for it.

   so people will be like "how was I supposed to know I had to press up then A", etc., when it was in the manual all along. same goes for background lore that's never present in the game; yes there was no intro or explanation or anything of who you are and what you are doing, because this was annoying and costly to do with cutscenes so it was left for the manual.

   of course in the third world we only ever had pirate games without manuals so our experience playing was like the modern player's lol

   • Ódio e Apatia :Ryyca: repeated this.
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     FoolishOwl (foolishowl@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 04-Sep-2026 02:02:40 JST FoolishOwl

     in reply to

     @elilla Early game manuals were often explicitly used for "copy protection", and I think the later development of an extensive market of "game guides" was symbiotic with games that were very difficult to play without detailed walkthroughs. Later on with the peak of an accessible web, people were writing and publishing walkthroughs for free.

     Now I'm wondering if an aspect of Gamergate was that gaming magazines were under threat from people giving away information about games they used to control.