9th September 2026, 7:49 AM
(This post was last modified: 9th September 2026, 7:53 AM by Dark Jaguar.)
I got a few of those video tapes myself! The Donkey Kong Country one is eternal, but I also have the Star Fox 64 one and... I think one other. I seem to recall in one video they had "the competition" torturing a Mario doll for intel on the Nintendo 64 or something. Frankly, I cringe thinking back on the obvious corporate propaganda, but there's still a twinge of nostalgia.
The map design Nintendo had really set a standard that other guide makers had to follow, to varying effect. I know that PC game guides had totally different layouts. Those often lacked ANY color maps, instead going for purely text in many cases... but in exchange ooooh the text they had, fully expanding the world and story. They were less player's guides and more... expansive lore explorations.
Nintendo Power player's guides varied in quality, and I think they started to go down in that respect midway into the N64 era. By the time the Gamecube came around, the guides felt very by-the-numbers. Well, I'll focus on my absolute favorite guides instead then!
Firstly, the Super Mario Bros 3 guide impresses because of just how IN the code that guide got. It went beyond level maps and into incredible depth on just how various secrets worked, including explaining the background mechanics of the card memorization game so that you could easily predict which of a few set "boards" you got.
Then there was the Super Mario World guide, called "Mario Mania", which outside of just providing the full maps and reveal of secrets, also was a retrospective on the Mario series up to that point. It got into specifics like the exact run speed and handling of Mario across the mainline games, as well as listing every random cameo appearance in various other games he'd had, and even got into design documents showing some prototyping of concepts like Mario riding a dinosaur. It also previewed the... "amazing" Super Mario Bros. movie, and even showed some translated interviews with Miyamoto himself. It functioned as the first time I actually discovered the name behind the character.
The Earthbound guide is a treat, partly because they went and packed a copy in with every copy of the game, in an oversized box. So as one might imagine, the first few pages function as a game manual to start with. I loved the conceit of this guide, presenting itself as a travel guide to various vacation spots around the world, as well as a sort of log of Ness' journey. As was the style of the time, they packed in scratch & sniff cards and little instructions throughout the guide on where to scratch that particular itch for greatest effect. There's one notable flaw in the guide, in that the instructions on how to get the most powerful bat for Ness are quite wrong, and it actually drops from a different version of that enemy only accessible past the "point of no return", meaning not only is it ridiculously rare there's no way to save that you got one, so it's a bit pointless at that stage in the game to bother. All in all though, that mistake aside it's still one of the greatest game guides.
Secret of Mana is an interesting case. There was one text only guide printed out by Square at the time, and another three part full game guide printed in the pages of Nintendo Power over three issues. Both of them are written in a sort of "journal" style, but the written guide writes it in this second person style "You did this, you felt that", where the Nintendo Power one goes first person "I did this, we felt that". While neither guide lists every single secret, the better of the two in my opinion is the one in Nintendo power, simply for the incredible hand drawn art. It's both fantastical and rather "gritty" for lack of a better word, certainly not the generic "anime" style that would permeate the genre in years to come. If you want a close example, look at the drawn art in the NES Zelda manuals. Not the prologue part, but the style used when you get to the lists of items and enemies.
Speaking of, we get to what's still my favorite player's guide, and that's Link to the Past. Once again, it has a conceit and this time it's as a historical book writing about events of the past. The art design is amazing, once again in that half-gritty-half-fairy tale look. The guide is split into two "parts", both covering the whole game, but in different levels of detail. One is a lighter "here's the basics" guide, and the other a much more long form "here's every single detail" version. Along the way, the guide has all kinds of added details about the world, the people in it, and the various items along the way. From the specifics of rupees and their various shapes and colors, to the nature of the witch's cook pot, to some added details on the "imprisoning war" that would later be covered in Ocarina of Time, to specifically placing the events of the NES Zelda games as happening long after this one and with a different Link, it has quite a lot. I recall it going into the nature of Hylian clothing and what influenced it's design, as well as particulars and histories of locations in both the worlds of light and darkness. It also mentioned that "long eared" hylians were said to "hear the voices of the gods", distinguishing them from those with regular rounded ears.
Depending on just what you wanted, you could go in depth or just for the light touch, and of course at the very end it'd list all the collectibles. I got this guide some time after I'd already beaten Link to the Past and found everything on my own, and yet I didn't regret having it at all. It was THAT well made!
Ah the letters section... People forget there was a time when Nintendo directly encouraged fans to make fan art and the like! I loved seeing some of the more amazing examples of artwork in there, as well as pictures of costumes or even some photos of fan games. Now, Nintendo seems intent to take ALL of that down, but it just goes to show that any time a company defends a "takedown notice" by claiming they MUST do it to keep their license... it's a lie. No they don't, and there's too many examples to count where a company gave their blessing to a fan project. Heck a more recent example is Capcom not just giving their blessing to a fan made "Megaman Vs Street Fighter" game, but HOSTING it on their own web site. When a company issues that cease and desist, that's a choice they made, every time.
The map design Nintendo had really set a standard that other guide makers had to follow, to varying effect. I know that PC game guides had totally different layouts. Those often lacked ANY color maps, instead going for purely text in many cases... but in exchange ooooh the text they had, fully expanding the world and story. They were less player's guides and more... expansive lore explorations.
Nintendo Power player's guides varied in quality, and I think they started to go down in that respect midway into the N64 era. By the time the Gamecube came around, the guides felt very by-the-numbers. Well, I'll focus on my absolute favorite guides instead then!
Firstly, the Super Mario Bros 3 guide impresses because of just how IN the code that guide got. It went beyond level maps and into incredible depth on just how various secrets worked, including explaining the background mechanics of the card memorization game so that you could easily predict which of a few set "boards" you got.
Then there was the Super Mario World guide, called "Mario Mania", which outside of just providing the full maps and reveal of secrets, also was a retrospective on the Mario series up to that point. It got into specifics like the exact run speed and handling of Mario across the mainline games, as well as listing every random cameo appearance in various other games he'd had, and even got into design documents showing some prototyping of concepts like Mario riding a dinosaur. It also previewed the... "amazing" Super Mario Bros. movie, and even showed some translated interviews with Miyamoto himself. It functioned as the first time I actually discovered the name behind the character.
The Earthbound guide is a treat, partly because they went and packed a copy in with every copy of the game, in an oversized box. So as one might imagine, the first few pages function as a game manual to start with. I loved the conceit of this guide, presenting itself as a travel guide to various vacation spots around the world, as well as a sort of log of Ness' journey. As was the style of the time, they packed in scratch & sniff cards and little instructions throughout the guide on where to scratch that particular itch for greatest effect. There's one notable flaw in the guide, in that the instructions on how to get the most powerful bat for Ness are quite wrong, and it actually drops from a different version of that enemy only accessible past the "point of no return", meaning not only is it ridiculously rare there's no way to save that you got one, so it's a bit pointless at that stage in the game to bother. All in all though, that mistake aside it's still one of the greatest game guides.
Secret of Mana is an interesting case. There was one text only guide printed out by Square at the time, and another three part full game guide printed in the pages of Nintendo Power over three issues. Both of them are written in a sort of "journal" style, but the written guide writes it in this second person style "You did this, you felt that", where the Nintendo Power one goes first person "I did this, we felt that". While neither guide lists every single secret, the better of the two in my opinion is the one in Nintendo power, simply for the incredible hand drawn art. It's both fantastical and rather "gritty" for lack of a better word, certainly not the generic "anime" style that would permeate the genre in years to come. If you want a close example, look at the drawn art in the NES Zelda manuals. Not the prologue part, but the style used when you get to the lists of items and enemies.
Speaking of, we get to what's still my favorite player's guide, and that's Link to the Past. Once again, it has a conceit and this time it's as a historical book writing about events of the past. The art design is amazing, once again in that half-gritty-half-fairy tale look. The guide is split into two "parts", both covering the whole game, but in different levels of detail. One is a lighter "here's the basics" guide, and the other a much more long form "here's every single detail" version. Along the way, the guide has all kinds of added details about the world, the people in it, and the various items along the way. From the specifics of rupees and their various shapes and colors, to the nature of the witch's cook pot, to some added details on the "imprisoning war" that would later be covered in Ocarina of Time, to specifically placing the events of the NES Zelda games as happening long after this one and with a different Link, it has quite a lot. I recall it going into the nature of Hylian clothing and what influenced it's design, as well as particulars and histories of locations in both the worlds of light and darkness. It also mentioned that "long eared" hylians were said to "hear the voices of the gods", distinguishing them from those with regular rounded ears.
Depending on just what you wanted, you could go in depth or just for the light touch, and of course at the very end it'd list all the collectibles. I got this guide some time after I'd already beaten Link to the Past and found everything on my own, and yet I didn't regret having it at all. It was THAT well made!
Ah the letters section... People forget there was a time when Nintendo directly encouraged fans to make fan art and the like! I loved seeing some of the more amazing examples of artwork in there, as well as pictures of costumes or even some photos of fan games. Now, Nintendo seems intent to take ALL of that down, but it just goes to show that any time a company defends a "takedown notice" by claiming they MUST do it to keep their license... it's a lie. No they don't, and there's too many examples to count where a company gave their blessing to a fan project. Heck a more recent example is Capcom not just giving their blessing to a fan made "Megaman Vs Street Fighter" game, but HOSTING it on their own web site. When a company issues that cease and desist, that's a choice they made, every time.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)