About two weeks ago my mom told me she had found some of my books out in her garage. In the boxes with all of the books, I found a small white box with "Bethesda Softworks" written all over it. I knew what it was pretty much immediately and I was more excited to have found that than all the old Stephen King and Michael Crichton novels. To make a long story short, it was the box for Arena from back in 95 or 96 or so (I forget). The contents were in really good condition. It also had the Battlespire manual (though, sadly, none of the Redguard or Daggerfall stuff), the original Warcraft manual, X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter manual, and a few others.

So I got to thinking about how much more awesome a lot of the older manuals were than what we get today. Especially the Arena stuff and the Warcraft manual. I think they just breathe all the effort the people who designed them put into them. They'd probably be an entertaining read even if there wasn't a game to go with them (I *think* I still have the disks lying around).

Edit: I decided to kill the link. I thought the scans were ok since they were only of a few pages, but I double checked the manual for any copyright info and there's a warning not to reproduce any of it. Apparently Bethesda threatened legal action against some website for having the Morrowind manual online, so I'd rather avoid any possible legal confrontations. Kinda svcks though, it's really well-made - I wish companies would go back to manuals like that.

This was a very kind gesture, that unfortunately will (in all likelihood) be taken down.