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Editor's note: Remember the days when we used to write notes in every instruction booklet instead of looking everything up on the Internet? Brian sure does, and he shares the insights his 11-year-old brain saw fit to record in one of his games. -Jason
As I was sitting down to a quick lunch the Sunday before last, I found myself in a quandary about how to entertain myself while I was eating. All I had was a sandwich — there wasn't enough time for a TV show, I didn't feel like trying to keep crumbs out of my keyboard while surfing, and starting a book usually means that I'll be doing nothing else for the next 3 hours until I've finished said book.
My hungry eyes roamed around the room and happened upon my trusty multimedia shelves, where I store all of my games. Taking a closer look, I noticed that a couple of instruction booklets were still stuffed into the black cases around my NES games.
Figuring that the bite-sized read of an old instruction booklet would be the perfect way to pass the time, I grabbed the booklet for Faxanadu, a side-scrolling action-RPG that Hudson Soft released in 1989, and sat down.
As I started to flip through the pages, I discovered to my delight that my 11-year-old self had scribbled all over the thing — circling words and phrases seemingly at random, writing notes in the margins, the whole nine yards — and I figured that it would be worthwhile to share this trip down memory lane.
the booklet in the game's case a zillion times.
as much as the licensing fee that the developer paid Nintendo to put it there.
How else do you explain how games like RBI Baseball and Super Sprint
didn't get the seal but M.U.S.C.L.E. and Deadly Towers did?
Remember how NES games were officially called "Game Paks"? That kills me.
Also, you can see here that I circled the page numbers of the weapons and magic-items
pages for some reason. Honestly, it's a 30-page booklet — did I really think that
this information was going to be that hard to find?
Here's something that you don't see all that often anymore — full color hand-drawn artwork
spanning two full pages of an instruction booklet. Heck, this wasn't even that common back in the 80s — the instruction booklets for most NES games were sparse black-and-white affairs and riddled with spelling errors (which was the chief complaint of How To Win At Nintendo Games 2).
"From the World Tree to the Evil Place — Now begins a mystery-packed journey of adventure."
How can you not love a game with an introduction like that?
"Mantra" was Faxanadu's term for password — a 32-character monstrosity that
was an enormous pain in the ass to write down. Honestly, was there anything worse
as a kid than spending 3 hours playing a game, taking 5 minutes to carefully
write the password, and then having the damned thing not work?
Experience and money — very important concepts, apparently.
I'm still trying to figure out why on Earth I needed to circle these things.
Remember when controllers only had two buttons? Also, the item screen in this game was
pretty much used only for red (healing) potions, which I was obsessed with, as you'll see.
If you look carefully, you'll see that I circled the red potion in the picture
of the item subscreen. This was really important stuff!
I love this page. I didn't bother to actually circle the part of the page that actually
says "Press up on the control pad to talk" — I just circled the page's heading, which was
already separate and highlighted. Gotta love that 11-year-old's logic.
Sadly, my handwriting still looks exactly like this.
as I would've been able to write in the box for the battle suit instead of squeezing
it in the bottom margin. And since I'm pretty sure that I wrote this using
one of those "four colors in one" pens, I'm kind of surprised that I didn't.
Actually, since I had one of those pens and was 11 years old, I'm kind
of surprised that every letter isn't a different color.
Faxanadu's idea of puzzles was to inscribe words like "Jack," "King," and "Joker" above
the keyholes of certain doors and then have J-, K-, and Jo-keys available for purchase.
Not kidding — though I wish that I was.
was supposed to mean. (I think it was the name of a character I was looking for
in one of the towns, but it also could've been a premonition.) Also, I found this booklet's typo —
"The doctor will offer a treatment that will completely restore the Hero's magic and energy,
if pay him some money." I'd offer just about anything, if pay *me* some money.
I know that I played Zelda before this, so I must have been familiar with the concept
of a healing item, yet I still felt the need to add a circled description and arrow
to the all-important red potion, in addition to the four previous circles. The moral of the story:
If you ever play Faxanadu, make sure you get some red potions! They're VITAL!!! You also
get to see the infamous lettered keys and some commentary on the apparently not-so-helpful glove.
When I saw this page, I knew I needed to share this on Bitmob — that I actually took
the time to write "yuck!" in the instruction booklet is just too freaking adorable,
which brings me to the serious part of this article. It seems to me that these days,
most 11-year-old gamers are too busy engaging in console wars on the GameFAQs
message boards and screaming expletives and various racial/religious/homophobic slurs
into their headsets to write something like "yuck!" in their instruction booklets,
which is really depressing. When did kids stop being kids?
Let's end this trip down memory lane with the ubiquitous "notes" page that seemed
to appear in every instruction booklet back then. They were usually too small for
any decent notes or fit more than two or three passwords. I always used a separate piece
of paper or a small notebook. Either way, I think I've summed it up pretty nicely in the top margin.
Well, that was fun, wasn't it? In the final analysis, this is why I'm glad that I'm a gaming packrat — I currently have over 100 cartridge games, boxes, and booklets taking up room on my shelves or in my closets.
Sure, I've had the cartridge for Faxanadu for nearly 20 years and probably only played it for a couple months right after I got it — but the glimpses into the past and the memories that came flooding back from something as simple as flipping through an old instruction booklet are well worth the space.