Revisit gaming’s lost art with this free archive of old manuals
Modern games teach you the basics as you play, but older games took a slightly different approach. They either gave you nothing at all or made you buy a thick booklet and expected you to read it before pressing Start. If you miss those manuals—or threw yours away years ago—Video Game Manual is here to help.
The site hosts a huge collection of scanned manuals from older consoles such as the Atari 2600, Game Boy, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, and PlayStation 2. Each manual comes as a PDF that you can read in your browser or download.
The archive is useful if you’ve picked up an old game without its original box. You can look up the controls, learn the rules, or figure out how saving works. Many manuals also contain maps, character profiles, item lists, story details, and hints that the games themselves never explain. I’m using it to finally beat Devil May Cry 3’s Mission 19—younger me would be so proud.
But you don’t need to be stuck in a game to enjoy the site. I remember back in the day reading all of the extra backstory and character bios in these manuals to psyche myself up before I even reached the title screen. Their colorful art, blocky screenshots, odd warnings, and tiny story sections bring back a part of gaming that digital downloads have mostly erased.
The site has a pre-Y2K look of its own, and admittedly it can be clunky on a phone. The console pages and A-to-Z links make browsing easier though. I’ve found that if a PDF shows only its cover on mobile browsers, you may need to download it in order to see the whole thing.
Video Game Manual is both a handy reference guide and a small digital museum. So fire up that old favorite you want to replay and reminisce while you flip through its booklet one more time.
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