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I remember going on vacation with my parents and all I had was the Diablo game manual, because I got the game 1 hour before we left. I read the manual about 100
by Exuma 8y ago
I remember going on vacation with my parents and all I had was the Diablo game manual, because I got the game 1 hour before we left. I read the manual about 100 times in the car... good memories
- learc83 8y agoSame thing happened to me with Diablo 2. It came out while my family was visiting my aunt on the other side of the country. My parents bought it for me, but my aunt and uncle didn't have a computer that could play it, so I spent the week looking through the manual.
- LoSboccacc 8y agoI had the inverse with carmageddon. I used to study abroad so I waited till I was on vacation to get the uncensored edition, then carried the box all the way home. The manual wasn’t as tick nor as useful as caesar iii’s tho.
- Exuma 8y agoHoly crap I forgot about that game
- paulmd 8y agoBut wait, it gets better: it's on GOG now.
- LoSboccacc 8y agoAnd there’s a not great but decemt enough remake on steam
- wingerlang 8y agoAnd the original is in iOS (and Android I guess) as well.
- spapas82 8y agoI remember trying to play Diablo multiplayer through a 55.6 kbps modem. It was nice for like 5 minutes but then the connection lagged and I couldn't control my character. When the connection quality improved, I saw my character dead with all his (high level and very diffucult to find) gear stolen by other players. I was so frustrated I removed the cdrom from the drive and threw it on the wall; the cd broke and that was the last time I played Diablo...
- stormbrew 8y agoThere's a very real possibility it wasn't your connection that was the problem. Since Diablo 1 was a peer to peer game it was super easy to just flood another player to lag them out and steal their crap. The game's public multiplayer was notoriously full of griefing like that. There were also ways to get firewalls to go on the spawn point and pvp was easy to force. It was a mess. Going into a public game was basically just asking to get screwed over.
- gameswithgo 8y agoWhat is fascinating is the guy who coded and designed the multiplayer is actually a genius, he was just inexperienced at the time. His next big project was a huge, complicated, MMO that you could start playing before it finished downloading, and everything worked from day 1, which is rather unique among MMOs!] edit, sorry: Pat Wyatt of Guild Wars good interview with him talking about screwing up Diablo and doing a good job on Guild Wars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1faaOrtHJ-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1faaOrtHJ-A
- fusiongyro 8y agoAnd who and what is that?
- gameswithgo 8y agoPat Wyatt - Guild Wars
- 8y ago
- amatecha 8y agohaha! I remember borrowing my friend's WarCraft 2 manual before I could play the game (wasn't yet out for Mac), and imagining the epic gameplay. Back in the days when games actually came with a manual and often included tons of awesome artwork you wouldn't see elsewhere. :) Actually reminds me I scanned some of the artwork and printed them out so I could color them -- still have a couple of those!
- kirbypineapple 8y agoFor me it was the Starcraft game manual. I took that thing everywhere!
- mbauman 8y agoSame. I took the manual to school for weeks so my friends and I could look at all the crazy Metzen illustrations.
- picsao 8y agoThose illustrations and stories where the reason I bought SC.. Event though wc2 was just a polished dune clone
- jakebellacera 8y agoSame here! I was OBSESSED with that game as a kid and took the manual with me to school every day for a couple of weeks. Developing custom maps actually got me into programming (setting up triggers, building maps, etc). I remember trying to storyboard my custom "campaign" during recess, and even went so far as recording voice prompts. So many memories!
- SiempreViernes 8y agoI still have the tech tree from Civ 2 saved in my bookshelf, along with the Caesar III manual...
- AcerbicZero 8y agoI did something similar with the Starcraft manual...the art work alone was awesome.
- robbiep 8y agoCiv 2 for me Game manuals are a lost art :(
- amatecha 8y agoI sometimes pick up copies of old games I never owned but always wanted (or played at friends' houses, etc.) -- just so I can have the physical media with the awesome manual full of artwork and so on. They are becoming harder and harder to find!
- isolli 8y agoI fondly remember the Ultima VI manual, complete with cloth map. Those were the days :)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jczhang 8y agoThe first Diablo manual had great background stories and mythology. When I watched Constantine for the first time, I realize it had the same setting as Diablo!
- digi_owl 8y agoThey reuse some religious themes etc, but other than that they are not related what so ever...
- jczhang 8y agoI mean the whole idea of heaven and hell fighting for power and that they are not supposed to have any physical influence, but the demons of hell sneak in anyways, not just by mental influence but physically as well. That's how the Diablo 1 story begins, with the corruption of the Archbishop (I remember way too much lol).
- tarsinge 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Heaven https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Heaven https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim
- mkirklions 8y agoI think this is why it was so epic. As a kid evil is the worst thing ever. No 'bad guy' quite compared... Until Diablo
- raesene9 8y agoFor me it was the Bard's Tale. A demo of Skara brae and a couple of levels of the first dungeon was put on a magazine cover in the UK months before the game came out. I played that demo to oblivion, I can still pretty much remember all the street layouts
- robodale 8y agoThe Bard's Tale - I had that for my Commodore 64 back in the day. Absolutely loved that game. I'm pretty sure I would mourn the loss when members of my party died.
- ChuckMcM 8y agoSomeone at G3 had the music from the Inn as their ring tone (go figure) and when their phone rang I was instantly back in the game even though I hadn't played in over a decade by then.
- JohnBooty 8y ago"Name the endless byway"
- Hallucinaut 8y agoAbsolutely the same addiction here. Even the identical looking houses (at least on the CPC464) I'm pretty sure by muscle memory I could find the Guild and dungeon entrances, I did them so many times. I loved that game so much I finally, last week, made it to Orkney to see the actual Skaea Brae. Little bit of artistic licence taken, but Orkney is an amazing place to visit regardless.
- BadassFractal 8y agoReading the game manual was one of my favorite rituals when I couldn't actually get to play the game for a while, amazing memories.
- mikepurvis 8y agoCaesar II was that one for me— got the game for Christmas and then immediately was in the car to visit family for a week.
- samplatt 8y ago"Plebs are needed!" is still a phrase between my brother and myself whenever we need an arbitrary increase of effort.
- robohamburger 8y agoI met a friend, who I am still friends with today by lending them my Diablo 1 manual in class. That was an amazing manual.
- phusion 8y agoYeah, the day I bought the game, along with my best friend and PC gaming buddy, after playing for hours, we stayed up really late as I read the manual aloud. Ahh memories.
- Waterluvian 8y agoI had the exact same experience. That was also my first true adolescent introduction to the female form with the full page rogue showing some rather PG-13 characteristics.
- digi_owl 8y agoI did something similar with a set of manuals for a Microprose B-17 simulator. Thing is that one of the manuals where more of a history text book going over all the tech and such used to guide the bombers to their targets.
- Zardoz84 8y agooriginal Heroes of Might&Magic. Had a great deal of lore with the mails of Lord Iron First to his brother.
- cabaalis 8y agoThat manual and the warcraft/starcraft manuals are responsible for a large part of the person I am. I was 10 at the time, and the universes that Blizzard created got me into gaming, from there into social gaming (m:tg) and then into computers and programming so that I could make my own games.
- filesystemdude 8y agoDitto. I tried to write a .pud editor in QBasic in about the summer of '98 or '99, and built a WarCraft fan site for my Kali/Engage gaming clan with entirely hand-coded HTML and some random and probably terribly-insecure cgi-bin Perl scripts for guestbooks and whatnot. I probably learned more from that than any single other time period in my tech career.
- megaman22 8y agoI miss the days of actual boxed games, with real manuals in them. So much nostalgia for going to the mall and finding a rare treasure that would run on my decrepit 586 in the back of EB Games, then reading the manual cover to cover a couple times waiting for my mom to finish up shopping and drive home. I hope I still have my Warcraft, Lords of the Realm 2, Close Combat 2 and Civilization 2 manuals somewhere.
- norbertdragan 8y agoAre you me? I had this exact same experience with the Diablo 2 manual.
- Fnoord 8y agoI did the exact same with the Warcraft 2 manual.
- Fnoord 8y agoWhat's better is that your name is a reference to Exuma - Baäl [1] from 1970 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y94GLSGVRWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y94GLSGVRWg
- khalilravanna 8y agoI remember bringing the manuals for Civ II, Black & White, and Morrowind to school. Oh man, I miss manuals
- Exuma 8y agoBlack and white!!! I forgot about that too. I also read it about 100 times for The Sims
- catacombs 8y agoThat must have been the longest vacation ever.