Game manual preservation? \ VOGONS

Game manual preservation?

Topic actions

First post, by Kirben

Posted on 2022-03-16, 10:36

Kirben Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 32
Joined: 2010-07-10, 06:11
Location: Australia

Are there any projects around for complete preservation of game manuals for older DOS games? I mean actually converting game manuals to digital formats, with color artwork, proper pages (no folds in middle), indexing and text search. Rather than just scanning the game manuals into a digital format.

The Museum of Computer Adventure Game History offers the best I can find, but their source materials are often flawed (writing inside).

Reply 1 of 6, by RandomStranger

Posted on 2022-03-16, 11:13

RandomStranger Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1632
Joined: 2018-12-06, 07:50
Location: Somewhere Back in Time

Not that I know of. GoG manuals are usually good, but even they are not consistent. Like for example their Daggerfall manual is just a simple scan.

Reply 2 of 6, by Stiletto

Posted on 2022-03-16, 16:37

Stiletto Offline

Rank l33t++

Rank: l33t++
Posts: 5133
Joined: 2002-07-01, 21:57

Moved to Milliways.

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 3 of 6, by gerwin

Posted on 2022-03-16, 17:04

gerwin Offline

Rank l33t

Rank: l33t
Posts: 3192
Joined: 2004-05-07, 19:21
Location: NL

Here are about 4000 PC (DOS/Windows) manuals. Mostly scans and native digital format:
http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?list.2

Archive.org also has game manuals, usually they come with crude machine-OCR-ed digital versions.
It can be a long way from a crude OCR to a polished and nicely readable digital document...

--> ISA Soundcard Overview // Doom MBF 2.04 // SetMul

Reply 4 of 6, by Cuttoon

Posted on 2022-03-16, 17:11

Cuttoon Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 995
Joined: 2013-03-30, 11:02
Location: Berlin

I can tell you that much, they do exist. Really perfect editions in PDF.

I have this for the original Master of Orion:

moo.pdf

(@moderator, I'm sharing this in good conscience as I own the printed original. Please remove if necessary, sorry.)

I like jumpers.

Reply 5 of 6, by Cuttoon

Posted on 2022-03-16, 17:37

Cuttoon Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 995
Joined: 2013-03-30, 11:02
Location: Berlin

also, this:
http://replacementdocs.com

(may be old news, I did not check the average quality of their 3.7 gazillion PDFs.)

I like jumpers.

Reply 6 of 6, by doshea

Posted on 2022-03-23, 07:32

doshea Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 429
Joined: 2009-05-22, 09:37
Location: Australia

I found some good scans of manuals for Microprose games on scribd.com by user "remow", and it looks like they've scanned manuals from some other publishers too. They don't have a PDF table of contents or internal links, but the text is searchable and generally all the materials including maps have been scanned in colour.

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to Milliways