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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Oh, MicroProse. They did make a lot of good games, even if often underappreciated. I have strong feelings of nostalgia to some of the titles of theirs, that I used to play as a kid. In fact, I recently wasted couple of hours trying to get one of the old games (Star Trek: Generations) to run - and in the process I learned that it's quite hard to emulate a Windows 95 machine these days.

Also, manuals in XX century were great. They were often decent books by themselves, full of information and lore. Somehow, this concept was abandoned around 2000 +/- couple years (StarCraft, from 1998, originally had a small-book-sized manual with details and stories; that's the last one of this kind that I remember.).

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>Also, manuals in XX century were great. They were often decent books by themselves, full of information and lore. Somehow, this concept was abandoned around 2000 +/- couple years

Very interesting point. I wonder why did this happen? I believe the manuals/books with backstory/guides that came with the box, added to the engagement with the game. Why did they go away? Seems like a needless regression :)

Sometimes I lament that the entire character of PC games changed as well during the same timeframe, as they become more console-ish/FPS-style, rather than adventure/puzzle/strategy/sim style. But then I remember that probably every generation romanticizes the good old days. Technology advancement explains the shift to FPS (better game engines, graphics cards, leading to more immersive worlds and movie-like narratives + multiplayer is exciting), but doesn’t explain the death of the game “manual/novel/book” :)

> Very interesting point. I wonder why did this happen? I believe the manuals/books with backstory/guides that came with the box, added to the engagement with the game. Why did they go away? Seems like a needless regression :)

I remember it happened around the time of the CD-ROM and the digitization of manuals as PDF files simply dropped on the disc. Then, economy.

I forget the source for this but it boiled down to:

- Apparently lots of people didn't read the manuals

- Game designers started using intro levels to teach the player what to do.

Personally, I LOVED the MicroProse manuals and was always super excited when I unboxed a new game and would spend hours reading all the details and stories (the games were awesome too).

> (better game engines, graphics cards, leading to more immersive worlds and movie-like narratives + multiplayer is exciting)

I strongly disagree that better game engines, graphic cards led to more immersive worlds and movie-like narratives. It's like saying Marvel movies are more immersive and have better narratives than pre-fx movies.

You may be right. I just don’t know why the old style pc games died. I just attempted one possible explanation —- For sure there is more to it.

it just seems to me that LucasArts (adventure games like Monkey Island), MicroProse, Sierra, Westwood, Firaxis, Brøderbund etc just died in a span of 10 years and PC games just never got back to their older style.

Visually immersive.

Which has nothing to do with how realistic graphics are.

Nobody said "realistic." But higher-quality graphics (in a realistic style or not) are obviously more immersive. There's more to graphic quality than tech, but tech is a major factor.

Might be a Blizzard thing, I remember the original WoW box (the 5 CDs version) came with a small-book sized manual (200 pages or so, IIRC) with lore and explanations for the various classes, races, skills.

The battle chests (base game + expansion pack) also came with a detailed guide to all the new content, with leveling guides for the new areas, raid guides for the new bosses etc - though I don't think those were made by Blizzard, they just bundled them in the box.

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