Prima Guides
122 files
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Pokémon Gold & Silver Versions - Prima's Official Strategy Guide
By E-Day
Pokémon Gold & Silver Versions - Prima's Official Strategy Guide
2,701 downloads
0 comments
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Secret of Mana - Official Game Secrets
By E-Day
Secret of Mana - Official Game Secrets
1,899 downloads
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Resident Evil Director's Cut (Prima's Unauthorized Guide to)
By E-Day
Resident Evil Director's Cut (Prima's Unauthorized Guide to)
1,318 downloads
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Jade Cocoon - Story of the Tamamayu - Prima's Offical Strategy Guide
By E-Day
Jade Cocoon - Story of the Tamamayu - Prima's Offical Strategy Guide
731 downloads
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0 comments
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Tomb Raider I and II - Prima's Official Strategy Guide
By JohnR
Tomb Raider I and II - Prima's Official Strategy Guide
Paper Doll can be found here scanned by the lovely Areala
1,217 downloads
- tomb raider
- tomb raider 2
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Tomb Raider Hint Book
By Areala
A short, fifteen-page guide to the original Tomb Raider which gives a run-down of Lara's moves, the traps she can encounter, and the locations of the extra weapons she can acquire. I'm not entirely sure where this came from. It may have been a freebie that came with the purchase of Tomb Raider Gold on the PC, it may have been included with a magazine...I just don't know. It's nothing special, but now all of you can enjoy it too!
413 downloads
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WCW/nWo Revenge Prima's Official Guide
By MigJmz
WCW/nWo Revenge Prima's Official Guide
651 downloads
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Fear Effect - Prima's Official Art Book
By E-Day
Fear Effect - Prima's Official Art Book
557 downloads
0 comments
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Legend of Legaia - Prima's Official Guide
By MigJmz
Legend of Legaia - Prima's Official Guide
802 downloads
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The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Prima Guide
By MigJmz
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Prima Guide
959 downloads
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Complete Final Fantasy III Forbidden Game Secrets
By Areala
Holy cow, you guys, this book.
This is one of the most ridiculous guides I've ever owned.
Back in 1994, Final Fantasy III was released in the US, and like many people, I went absolutely ga-ga over the game. It's my favorite entry in the series, and I've beaten it multiple times and on multiple platforms, including the Game Boy Advance version with the extra content. In my obsessive quest to learn everything I could about the game though, I bought every magazine and book I could find about it, including Nintendo's own official guide and Peter Olafson's full-colour guide. And then...there's this one...
Part strategy guide, part fanfic, Complete Final Fantasy III Forbidden Game Secrets is a nearly 500-page tribute to absurdity and lies.
The author's name, "Hayaku Kaku", is written as '早く書く' in Japanese. This isn't actually a name, it's a fragment meaning "fast write", and it's a clue to why this guide is so bizarre. See, Final Fantasy III (or Final Fantasy VI as it's now known) is a massive game, and as noted in the introduction, not one you can finish over the course of a three-day rental. Writing a guide to a game that large requires an exceptional lead time if you're planning to match the game's release date, and from the contents of the book, it's easy to ascertain that the author (in this case, Bill Kunkel, aka "The Game Doctor" himself, with assistance from another writer named Ken Vance) was working off pre-release materials.
One of the necessities for squeezing all of the story into the cart, as related by translator Ted Woolsey in an interview, was re-naming the bulk of the enemies, items, spells, and Espers in the game, in order to fit into the character limits imposed by the game. What's odd about this book is that it gets almost all of the character names and spell/Esper names correct, even when it comes to the bizarre spellings imposed by Woolsey to comply with the aforementioned character limits ('Fenix' instead of 'Phoenix', etc...). But the items? Almost all the item names in this guide are completely incorrect--it's likely the item list was among the last things Woolsey worked on, since the majority of his effort was likely focused on the game's massive story. If that's the case, it's almost certain Kunkel and Vance were working off incomplete information and a near-zero knowledge of the Japanese language. More credence is given to this theory since one of the screenshots includes the original Japanese "Bar" sign, which was censored by Nintendo, and read "Cafe" in the US edition of the game.
'Spears' are translated as 'spheres' for some reason. Item names, as noted, often bear no resemblance to their final forms. What's more, the explanations of item abilities and magic spells often read as though someone gave them a very basic, machine-like translation from the original which were never edited for clarity. (Edit: see the update below, but this is exactly what happened).
The maps, maps, and more maps hyped on the back cover are likewise odd. These are not maps, exactly...more like someone took pictures of the screen, printed those pictures out, then placed a sheet of tracing paper over them and drew over every building, tree, hill, stream, and other feature, but never bothered to fill in any of the information. Thus, what you get are a bevy of hand-drawn maps that show the entire area...but are almost completely worthless for all the work put into them, since they don't point out any useful features.
Even as a walkthrough or secrets guide, the book is deficient. It will point out what items can be found in each area (well, most of them at any rate...Kunkel and Vance didn't find a lot of the off-the-beaten-path goodies), but it does not explain where any of them actually are in relation to the map, or what steps might be necessary to uncover them. In addition, a lot of the walkthrough is just plain incorrect in literally dozens of places. It's impossible for anyone well-versed in the game to go more than 2-3 pages without finding another mistake, whether it's a simple mistranslation or flat-out misinformation like: claiming you can earn experience in the "Beastfield" (the Veldt), when in fact, battles there don't earn you any XP; claiming it's possible to get Shadow back into the party via betting items at the Coliseum if you didn't wait for him on the Floating Continent; claiming Locke gains the ability to pick locks as the story continues; saying Celes can use her 'Runic' ability to learn spells faster; a screenshot of a character suffering the 'Imp' status effect incorrectly labeled as 'zombified' by the caption; claiming the 'Quartr' spell reduces the target's HP by 1/4th, when it actually results in a 75% reduction...the list goes on and on.
Speaking of lists, while the book impressively details the Items, Magic, and Espers available in your quest, it also omits an awful lot of other useful lists which other guides did not. These include a list of Gau's available Rages (and the enemies he needs to fight in order to acquire them), a list of items bet & won at the Coliseum, and a list of enemies from whom Strago can learn his different Blue Magic spells.
Also omitted are seemingly obvious things you'd want to point out in a strategy guide: while it explain that calling the Merton esper in combat causes a raging inferno to scream across the battlefield, it neglects to mention this afflicts both the enemies and your party. Now, sure, you're going to learn this as soon as you use it the first time, but knowing an attack could nuke my team BEFORE I use it is kind of the point of a strategy guide, right? Likewise, there's no indication that the Cursed Shield (or the "Bloody Shield" as this book refers to it) can be un-cursed, or that you can equip a Ribbon in order to remove nearly all the negative effects your character will suffer while trying to do so. The book assumes Cid will die, when it is in fact possible (and rather easy) to keep him alive.
I seriously could go on for pages about everything wrong with this guide. There are a lot of books over the years which I have no problem labeled shameless cash grabs, but the level of hyperbole this book builds on its back cover compared to the results it delivers between the pages is a disconnect of truly epic proportions. Download this and read it to understand the nightmare which was the world of video game strategy guides in a pre- (or at least very young) Internet age, marvel at its inconsistencies, and boggle at the fact they were willing to charge $14.95 US (or 2.89 gold flemkes in "East Domo").
In an old forum post at the J2Games website, which is no longer accessible since they removed their forum, Bill Kunkel spilled the beans about writing this book, and how much of a nightmare the project was. I almost feel sorry for him, and got the impression from reading it years ago that this project very quickly spiraled out of control in terms of the time they assumed it would take to write, and the results here speak for themselves. The good Game Doctor is no longer with us, but it's a shame his spirit is forever associated with this absurdity.
Enjoy! ❤️
Update: I discovered, to my delight, that Kunkel's recollections about working on this game guide in that old forum post on J2Games were collected in one of the chapters in his autobiography, Confessions of the Game Doctor. I've corrected some things in the above writing which I got wrong due to my own faulty memory (chief among them: his co-author was not Rusel DeMaria, but Ken Vance), but I'm reproducing this part of the book so you can see exactly what went into the creation of this guide.
It was actually worse than I remembered!
So, there you have it. A strategy guide written by two guys who cribbed all the relevant information about the game by having a local Japanese professor translate bits and pieces of Japanese guide books which Prima imported instead of actually playing through the game (something they apparently didn't even have access to).
You really can't make this up.
580 downloads
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Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Game Secrets
By Areala
This was the first book Zach Meston wrote for Prima without Rusel DeMaria's name associated with it. If the introduction is to be believed, DeMaria handed the project to Meston and told him to go forth and kick ass, which is what Meston did.
This is the first of two versions of this book published. This one contains the walkthrough for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but also contains a supplementary section that reprints the entries on The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link which previously appeared in their NES Game Secrets series. For $9.99, you get full walkthroughs for three awesome games, making it a great value for the money. Unsurprisingly, this book was a massive seller for Prima, reprinted over twenty times.
The second version, which was released in 1997, altered the title slightly, redid the cover art, and dropped the Zelda and Zelda II portion of the book, replacing it instead with the walkthrough for Link's Awakening which used the same format as similar walkthroughs from their Nintendo Game Boy Secrets line, and again sold a ridiculous number of copies. Don't worry; I'll have that one up for you here shortly.
Enjoy! ❤️
590 downloads
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Secrets of the Games Series - Sega Genesis Secrets Volume 2 (1991)
By E-Day
Secrets of the Games Series - Sega Genesis Secrets Volume 2 (1991)
694 downloads
0 comments
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Granstream Saga, The - Prima's Official Strategy Guide
By E-Day
The Granstream Saga - Prima's Official Strategy Guide
454 downloads
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Tomb Raider II Official Strategy Guide
By Areala
The second installment of the Divine Pony-tail's adventure takes her globetrotting polygons to the mountains of Nepal, the depths of the ocean, the Great Wall of China, and the mine-infested canals of Venice in search of the Dagger of Xian, which turns you into a dragon if you stab it directly into your heart.
That sounds painful. Don't do that, boys and girls.
This Prima guide is in full-colour, featuring a walkthrough by Kip Ward filled with copious screenshots and illustrations of Lara Croft adorning every single page! What more could a love-struck woman such as I, Areala fans of Tomb Raider II ask? So, while it pained me to put my beloved TR2 guide beneath the cruel guillotine for debinding, the ability to spread the Gospel of the Divine Pony-tail will hopefully more than make up for the sacrifice.
Enjoy, my beloved disciples! Enjoy! ❤️
796 downloads
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WCW vs. nWo World Tour - The Official Trategy Guide
By E-Day
WCW vs. nWo World Tour - The Official Trategy Guide
563 downloads
0 comments
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Tomb Raider III Official Strategy Guide
By Areala
Of the classic, PS1-era Tomb Raider titles, Tomb Raider III is probably the most difficult, and not always for the right reasons. With Core Design's employees struggling with epic burnout after being forced to churn out two sequels in two years, this game had the largest design team yet behind it, but by now the cracks were starting to show. With the public clambering for more everything, and no time to build a new in-game engine, they still managed to pack in new moves, including crawling, hand-over-hand climbing, and sprinting. Lara's arsenal was upgraded. There were new outfits to wear and new environments to explore, new enemies to slay, and new traps to contend with. The devs put a major focus on the idea of multiple ways to reach the same goal this time around, something they briefly toyed with in a couple of places in the first two games; this time, it was practically law. Instead of linear level progression, once players beat the opening stages set in India, they could choose to visit London, Nevada, or an island in the South Pacific, before taking Lara to Antarctica for her final confrontation.
The other Tomb Raider games could easily be completed without a guide; you'd occasionally want to refer to one if you couldn't locate that last secret, or were having difficulty understanding one of the puzzles, but by and large, it was within most players' abilities to complete the game without one. Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider II fostered level design that wanted to surprise and delight the player. Tomb Raider III, on the other hand, was designed in such a way as to be openly hostile, with massive, sprawling levels filled with death traps and obtuse puzzles, along with enemies placed specifically to force the player to waste resources. Picking the wrong location after finishing India, in fact, is tantamount to the game kicking you in the nuts/ovaries, and the "wrong" choice is not telegraphed in any way. If you ever flip through a strategy guide for Tomb Raider III that does not instruct you to go to Nevada upon finishing India, throw that book away.
Fortunately, this Prima guide does not make that mistake, and the path Kip Ward lays out is the "easiest" way through the game. That doesn't mean you get a cake walk, it just means you won't flip the difficulty switch to "screw you" without realizing it. Kudos also to Ward for providing a walkthrough of sorts for Lara's Home, explaining how to get into the secret treasure room, find the Racetrack key, and unlock the Quad Bike course. None of this is essential to beating the main quest, but it's possible to explore her mansion without realizing there's more to it than just beating the Assault Course and learning how to jump around.
Enjoy! ❤️
812 downloads
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DOOM II Official Strategy Guide
By Areala
A reasonably decent guide to DOOM II, written by Ed Dille in the voice of an annoyed drill instructor trying to whip a new recruit (that's you, the reader) into fighting shape. It includes a number of strategies for co-operative play, which game guides often lacked back in the day, especially for First-Person Shooter titles. No Deathmatch strategies beyond "always be running, don't stand in one place, and fire the biggest guns you've got", but the amount of time spent discussing fire team formations and other co-op strategies is really cool to see. Also includes a short interview with John Romero which is worth reading by itself, although much of the information in it you'll already know if you've read Masters of DOOM.
This should have been a black-and-white guide, but Prima for some reason chose to go with a spot colour printing approach, infusing red ink into virtually every page, and even into the black-and-white screenshots. It's an interesting look, but it also jacked the price of this guide up to $20 US when it really should have been $15 or thereabouts. Prima must have realized this price might turn some people off, because they released a stripped-down, 96-page budget hint book called The DOOM II Survival Guide which contains the basic item, enemy, weapon, and map info from this book, but none of the level strategies, multiplayer info, interview, or cheat codes.
But here's the big, bad mama in all its glory. Enjoy! ❤️
641 downloads
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Master of Magic: The Official Strategy Guide
By Areala
This is a testament to how useful a well-written game guide can be. Master of Magic is an incredibly complex and deep RPG/turn-based strategy hybrid, easily capable of overwhelming novice players before they've had a chance to get a handle on the rules. More than a simple walkthrough, this behemoth of a guide explains everything you never even knew you wanted to know about the game: its units, spells, weapons, monsters, diplomacy, missions, everything.
It was one of the most popular titles of its ilk in the 90s, and remains accessible to this day thanks to being re-released on platforms like GOG and Steam, which include a number of quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes. This is a gold-standard guide book, pretty much the opposite of Complete Final Fantasy III Forbidden Game Secrets, written in conjunction with people who actually made the game to ensure every bit of it is accurate down to the last decimal place.
Blank pages have been omitted in order to reduce file size.
Long out of print, commanding a price ten times that of the game itself, your Retromags Goddess has lovingly sacrificed her copy to the guillotine so that players everywhere no longer have to scrape together fifty bucks or more to access it. You can show your love by leaving her a like.
Enjoy! ❤️
592 downloads
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Body Harvest - Prima's Official Strategy Guide
By E-Day
Body Harvest - Prima's Official Strategy Guide
464 downloads
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Nightmare Creatures - Prima's Official Strategy Guide
By E-Day
Nightmare Creatures - Prima's Official Strategy Guide
535 downloads
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Prima's Official Guide to the Ultima Collection
By Areala
Promising to be a complete walkthrough for ten games set in or around the world of Ultima, this is slightly misleading. After all, the book is only 320 pages, and surely there's a Hellsteed of a lot more going on, especially in the later games, than could be encapsulated by even the best team of editors and writers in so small an area.
Your suspicions are correct. There's a lot going on in the first few titles, and the guide devotes a mere few pages at best to the first two Ultima games (five pages for Ultima I, seven for Ultima II), along with Akalabeth, the precursor to the Ultima series. Ultima III is where the guide ramps up, with 21 pages worth of maps, gameplay tips, and charts. Fully half the book is given to Ultima VII and Ultima VIII content.
This book also comes with a double-sided, fold-out color poster which shows the overworld maps for all the games. This poster is bound in between pages 145 and 146, but sadly my copy of this is missing, so I wasn't able to include it (and I'm not sure I have the skills necessary to stitch together a giant poster from multiple image files in any case). All apologies.
Update: user @Xuio has graciously provided a high resolution scan of both sides of this poster map for us. You can download it here:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/2dksw4m9upihhtt/UCmaps.7z/file
Enjoy! ❤️
470 downloads
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Nintendo Games Secrets
By Areala
Nintendo Games Secrets is a historical landmark in the world of video game publishing, being the first title produced by Prima for their newly-birthed "Secrets of the Games" imprint in 1990. From the humble roots of this black-and-white, mostly-text guide written by then-GamePro staff writer Rusel DeMaria, Prima rose to become one of the preeminent publishers of gaming strategy guides, eventually acquiring their closest rival, BradyGames, in 2015.
Prima's "Secrets of the Games" imprint played an enormous role in the company's success throughout the 90's, with multiple volumes covering NES, Genesis, Game Boy, TurboGrafx-16, and Super NES games in this format, as well as stand-alone guides for specific games like Secret of Mana, Super Mario World, Super Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
If you browsed a bookstore in the early 90s, and you were into video games, chances are good you drooled over one of these Prima books and tried to convince your parents to buy one for you. Maybe you succeeded, maybe you didn't, but either way, I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane. I have thirteen more of these in my collection, so expect to see more in the future.
721 downloads
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Latest Products
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GMR Issue 19 (August 2004)
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Retromags Blindbox Fundraiser!
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Electronic Gaming Monthly Issue 13 (Christmas 1990)
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