Back when visuals left much to the imagination, designers would sometimes try to squeeze a bit more effort into what went into the box along with the floppies and cartridges to describe what would be waiting inside.

It was often all that I had to go on before I could get home to play these gems as a kid. Peeling away the plastic wrap with New Game Smell™ filling the air or cracking open that rental case and then getting to the manual immediately put my imagination into overdrive on what I could expect - or set me up for grave disappointment. The game could still suck.

Yet whether it was through entertaining prose, a practical map, comics, or as a 'magazine' that doubled as flight instructions, manuals were often the first slice of the game that players would get outside of what the box or magazine spread had told them back then. I had no idea what to expect from a Phantasy Star or Life Force in those days - but the manuals for both pumped my expectations on what I was getting into.

Early examples were sometimes decorated with diagrams and level layouts. Funky statistics, such as measurements on the Vic Viper to the backstory on an arcade port were typical and utterly unexpected. Further on, titles such as Falcon 4.0 sported massive tomes out of necessity while others such as Baldur's Gate 2 literally doubled as the “short” version of the Player's Handbook for AD&D.

Gradius with a backstory? Where did that come from? Now it's part of a wiki dedicated to the series. Sending the time machine further back, Atari had packaged a few of its 2600 titles with “Atari Force” comics –  penned and inked by DC. Its Swordquest series had even used them to hide puzzle clues. Nintendo could always be counted on to fill their manuals with colorful characters and expressive icons instructing players on how to save Zelda once again.

Not every manual was handed the creative treatment. Most were your standard “here is what does what” stereo instructions for your hands. But enough were given a few more splashes of color and text to turn them into small, illuminated chunks of digestible fiction worthy of a second look.

As technology (and storage space) evolved, designers across platforms have become better at cleverly blending teaching with gaming reducing the need to reference a dead tree – or a digital copy of one – for any reason. Yet on the other hand, it's also hard not to feel that an imaginative outlet is slowly fading away as elements that had been taken for granted at one time are being marginalized into the occasional Collector's Edition.

Many early CRPGs came with maps, for example, sometimes made out of cloth and often came with manuals lined with detail if only to describe the complex gameplay systems at no extra cost. Even the occasional JRPG, like Final Fantasy III (aka FF6 in Japan), came with their own maps. One or two games even came with books, such as Interplay's Stonekeep which came with a hardcover novelette entitled 'Thera's Awakening'.

RPGs didn't have a monopoly on extras, though. Infocom's text-only adventures famously included plenty of extras that ranged from origami, scratch 'n sniff stickers, and even a piece of “magical” crystal in its own velvet pouch.

I agree that not all games need as many pages or extras – I'm not weepy eyed in seeing something like Call of Duty go nearly down to a sheaf of glossy paper leaving everything else in-game. Yet when a big deal is made out for something as straightforward as an FPS, that's just additional icing on the cake. I won't complain there, either.

And a few efforts still manage to squeeze by the bean counters, such as CD Projekt RED's packaging for the Witcher 2's “premium” edition which costs the same as a regular copy.

Though it's not as much of a common practice nowadays as Richard Garriott's Ultima made it out to be back then, whenever a developer decides to stretch their creative legs through the pages of that little book inside with the game, it's always a welcome surprise.

The next few pages have a several examples of the cool, strange, and inventive twists manuals and a few light extras have given their games. If you have a favorite of your own, be sure to let everyone know in the comments!