Best Famicom / Disk System Manuals

[M-Tee]

What games do you think had the best manuals?

What made them so awesome?

[BaconBitsKing]

The Zelda manual was pretty nice. It had tons of artwork and even gave people a small map.

http://legendsoflocalization.com/media/the-legend-of-zelda/manuals/ZeldaFDSManual.pdf

Akumajou Dracula's manual had a lot of nice art, too.

http://www.castlevaniacrypt.com/cv/manual/jap

[P]

It's too many games that has equally awesome manuals as Zelda and Dracula to list.

What makes them so awesome is the artwork and the little hints and stuff that might be hard to figure out yourself. And of course the background story which is almost never in its entirety in the game itself.
I'm a sucker for the 80s and 90s artwork so, generally the best manuals, in my opinion, are the ones with a lot of detailed artwork of that style.

[aguerrero810]

Man, I wish I had a manual for my zelda. How did games even come in Japan for the FDS? Was there a bigger box for the other things?

[P]

Retail FDS games came in translucent plastic boxes that had room for both the quite thick FDS manuals and the hard diskette case that the FDS disk came in (which in turn also contains a hard paper obi and a soft paper sleeve for the disk). I'm not sure if the manual served as the front box art through the translucent box or not. At least one game I have does have a dedicated front title art as well as the manual (though they both have identical front title art).

Disk Writer bought games often came with a non-colour fold-out manual that the store clerk apparently provided you with, along with the obi, after have written the disk for you. These fold-out manuals are much smaller printed than the retail manuals and maybe also simplified (I haven't compared them thoroughly). I'm not sure if the plastic outer box came when you bought empty disks, but it seems you would need it to store the fold-out manual with the disk.

[zmaster18]

I like how the FDS manuals have a spine to them and also have extra disk labels inside. I think I have the stickers in a Palutena no Kagami manual, so if I ever get that game and it needs the labels, I can totally save the day!

[P]

Yeah Paluthena and certain other titles like Nazo no Murasame-jou has extra labels and some more stickers with artwork. I have never had to use any of them though.

[Zycrow]

Yup my Metroid has the stickers too. They have artwork of some of the enemies and minibosses and I've considered trying to find some place to stick them, but I'm not sure if I should peel off these 30-year-old stickers.

It's interesting to note that the manual for Zelda has all the enemy and boss names in English. I also note that "Testitart" became "Manhandla" and "Tartnuc" became "Darknut" (which I always thought was a mistranslation of "Dark Knight," but I'm glad to be proven wrong) for the localization, which I guess they changed because those names sound a bit goofy or maybe even kinda lewd to English-speaking ears.

One of my favorite manuals is for Valkyrie no Bouken. The game actually has a thicker box so it can fit the large manual and full fold-out map of the overworld inside. The manual has a mini-walkthrough (probably because of the unforgiving difficulty), and the whole package is so attractive that it made me enjoy the game more than I probably would have otherwise.

[P]

but I'm not sure if I should peel off these 30-year-old stickers.

My feelings too so I actually scanned them and printed them on sticker paper and cut them out, then used them.

note that "Testitart" became "Manhandla" and "Tartnuc" became "Darknut" (which I always thought was a mistranslation of "Dark Knight," but I'm glad to be proven wrong) for the localization, which I guess they changed because those names sound a bit goofy or maybe even kinda lewd to English-speaking ears.

I sometimes wonder if manhandle is more appropriate than testi.
The Tartnuc enemy becomes even more interesting if you look in the Zelda II manual. The Ironknuckle is called Ironnuc in Japanese, strongly suggesting that they both belong to the "Nuc" family of enemies. Later Zelda games expands the family in the Japanese versions with the Hammernuc (the ball and chain knight in Twilight Princess) among others.

And there are more interesting names. The Geldarm in Zelda II and Geldman in Zelda III could be equally correctly be romanized as Gerudoarm and Gerudoman, suggesting that Geld/Gerudo is a word in the Zelda universe for desert or sand.

So there seems to be words in some kind of Hylian that are frequently used:
Nuc - Armor/Knight
Stal - Skeleton/Skull (Skullkid is called Stalkid in Japan)
Fos - Warrior
Geld/Gerudo - Desert/Sand
Orm/Arm/Worm/Tail/Mola - Worm/Centipede
Tart - ??

[Zycrow]

Tart - ??

Let's assume that "Tart" means "metal," so that "Testitart" can be approximated as something like "floating metal ballsack."

[hippy dave]

It's interesting to note that the manual for Zelda has all the enemy and boss names in English. I also note that "Testitart" became "Manhandla" and "Tartnuc" became "Darknut"

Hm, whatever you do, don't try reversing the spelling of that one.