So, you guys all enjoying your Pokemans? I am essay.
…On a more coherent topic, remember when the Pokemon game manuals had all sorts of art and little snippets of worldbuilding in them? Now it’s all technical information and stuff like that.
(Then again, at least this is an...
Oh yeah! I remember reading through that. Really interesting stuff.
When I think about game manuals from my childhood, the first one I think of is actually the Gold/Silver manual - I just remember it’s “welcome to the world of Pokemon”-esque first page and how much wonder it incited in me, more than anything else.
I do remember Fire Red and Leaf Green preorders came with this really nifty Pokemon Trainer’s Manual thing - about the size of the game box, though obviously not as thick, but it was this surprisingly comprehensive guide to type matchups and characteristics and it talked about the gym leaders and other cool things, and it had lots of decent-sized art in it. It was pretty cool.
But yeah, the relationship between games and their manuals seems like it’s really changed - as more can be fit in a game (I mean with literal technological limitations, not in any imaginative sense), there’s far less, if any, vital need for worldbuilding and flavor text in manuals. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is, of course, entirely subjective.