Areala

Hey all you 'Secrets of the Games' collectors out there! Welcome to volume 1 of Prima's Super NES Games Secrets, where GamePro's Andy Eddy compiled strategies shared by Zach Meston, Rusel DeMaria, and Donn Nauert into a book covering most of the original releases for the console. Expect to see Super Mario World, Pilotwings, U.N. Squadron, F-Zero, Super R-Type, Gradius III, and (admit it, the real reason you bought this book) True Golf Classics: Waialae Country Club!
Otherwise, why are you reading this? There were something like two dozen books in this format put out by Prima. You know what they look like. You know what you're getting. You already downloaded it. Click 'Thanks' to pay your tribute, and await the release of Volume 2 as soon as I get it finished. ❤️

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! ❤️

Straight from Prima, the official book publishers of GamePro (according to the small print on the back cover), here's ONE THOUSAND freaking hints, tips, secrets, passwords, cart swap tricks, and other assorted nonsense from the Pros. If you've been struggling with Sonic the Hedgehog, bogged down in Beast Wrestler, stuck in Splatterhouse 2, caught up in Castle of Illusion, wrapped up in Wings of Wor, traumatized by Trampoline Terror, paused in Predator 2, grounded in Gaiares, broken by Burning Force, tripped up by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist, agonized by After Burner II, demented by Dark Castle, pounded by Pit Fighter, thrashed by Technocop, menaced by Might and Magic, abused by Arnold Palmer Golf, outgunned in Onslaught, mystified by Mortal Kombat, dizzied by DecapAttack, harassed by Heavy Nova, crushed by Chakan the Forever Man, undone by Universal Soldier, zonked by Zombies Ate My Neighbors, shamed by Stormlord, kicked by Klax, lambasted by The Last Battle, rattled by Rolling Thunder 2, embarrassed by El Viento, or mauled in Mutant League Hockey, then maybe, just maybe, the stuff you need to win can be found in this handy-dandy booky-wook.
Download it, slap that 'Like' button, and leave a comment so I can afford a new thesaurus.
Enjoy! ❤️

You know what this is. I know what this is. You know you're going to download it. I know you're going to download it.
Volume 1 of Prima's Nintendo Game Boy Secrets is Rusel DeMaria and Zach Meston doing the thing they did for Nintendo NES games, Super NES games, and Sega Genesis games, only for (wait for it) the Nintendo Game Boy!
See? I didn't even have to write that. You didn't have to read it. But I did. And you did. Now, download the file, pay your tribute to your Retromags Goddess by smacking that 'Thanks' button like you're trying to smack the batteries out of your portable system, and prepare for the next release in the "Secrets of the Game" series, coming soon from my bookshelves.

This was one of the best-selling video game guidebooks of the 90's. It's a bit odd, in that there were two different versions of this book published (one with this name, the other with the slightly different title of Super Mario World Secrets), and I'm unsure of the reason behind the name change. I have both books, but aside from some minor changes on the Library of Congress page and some slight differences in cover design, I can't tell a difference. This one is copyright 1991, while Super Mario World Secrets is copyright 1992. But they otherwise have exactly the same information, the same page count, the same screenshots and information. They even use the same ISBN. I haven't done a page-by-page, line-by-line comparison on my copies, but if there are any differences, I've been unable to find them.
This is entirely different from the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past book from the 'Secrets of the Game' series, where one version contained tips for Link's Awakening on the Game Boy, while the other had strategies for Legend of Zelda and Zelda II on the NES. So while I did scan both versions of that book, I don't see any reason to do so for Super Mario World Secrets unless someone can point out some major differences or discrepancies in the text.
In any case, this is a perfectly awesome walkthrough for the game, even if it's only black and white. It won't help you break a speedrun record or anything like that, but it does actually feature a small section on getting through the game as quickly as possible, using only 13 of the game's stages (or 11 if you're willing to skip the Yellow Switch Palace), which I absolutely used back in the day.
In any case, enjoy! ❤️

Unless you were alive back then, it's almost impossible to understand just how massive the adventure genre of gaming was for personal computers. Exhibit one, were I attempting to make a legal case, would have to be this book right here. It covers seventy-seven adventure programs released across various computer platforms, everything from Adventure to Zork III, and had a cover price of $19.95. Twenty bucks probably seems like an average price for a strategy guide, especially a 350-page behemoth like this guy, but in 1984 that was the equivalent of sixty US dollars in today's currency. How on earth could publisher Arrays, Inc. get away with charging that much for a black-and-white, mostly-text guidebook?
To put that a bit more in perspective, purchasing a copy of Zork I: The Great Underground Empire for your Apple II home computer back in the halcyon days of 1981 would have set you back $39.95 (or roughly US $120 in today's money). Computer games weren't just costly, they were downright extravagant. And that was after you factored in the several thousand dollars that buying the home computer itself had already set you back. Sure, there were deals to be found when shops were looking to clear out last year's inventory to make room for the next wave of software, but there was no Steam Summer Sale where you could pick up a bunch of AAA-blockbusters for 75% or more off their list price. If you wanted to play Zork, or Wizardry, or Ultima, it was going to cost you. Minimum wage at the time was $2.75/hour, so you can do the math.
Nobody wanted to dump $40 on a game they couldn't beat, there was no internet where you could consult a FAQ, and while BBS systems were a thing, modems were not a part of the typical home computer installation. So the notion that, for half the cost of a typical adventure game, you could get puzzle solutions and maps for over seventy-five of the most popular titles from the last few years? That was a no-brainer. It was such a no-brainer that one year later, Kim Schuette put out The Book of Adventure Games II, which covered forty-five more adventures that had either been left out of the first volume, or had come out in the meantime, and it too sold like gangbusters.
I've had this book for almost as long as I've been alive. It (and its sequel) are long out of print, expensive on the second-hand market, and highly sought-after by retro adventure game enthusiasts and collectors. Chopping this one up was hard. But putting it out here, so it can have a new life and be seen and appreciated by others who may never have even known of its existence before now, gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling. I hope you enjoy looking through it as much as I have done over the years, back when I was just a little girl, doing her best hunt-and-peck typing on her TRS-80 keyboard, trying to figure out how to beat The Sands of Egypt.
This isn't just a piece of gaming history. This is a piece of my history. I hope you'll treasure it with me. ❤️

The first of a four-book, me-too Nintendo video game hints series. It was followed by "Mastering Nintendo Video Games II" which was a minor updated edition that reused much of this book's content. "Tricks of the Nintendo Masters" came next, and the series flared out and died with "Beyond the Nintendo Masters".
"Mastering Nintendo Video Games" was clearly inspired by Corey Sandler and Tom Badgett's "Ultimate Unauthorized Nintendo Game Strategies", what with its reliance on cute little icons and block text. Like other books of the time, this one focuses mainly on tips and strategies for accomplishing specific things in each game, like beating Elecman in Mega Man, or finding the raft in Zelda II. There aren't any pictures or screenshots of any kind, although some of the sections (especially the one on Super Mario Bros. 2) contain some computer-drawn diagrams to illustrate what you're going to face or what you should do.
The bad news is, the book also contains a number of hints that are either of little to no use, or are flat-out wrong. The Castlevania II portion, for instance, suggests that you should show the Ferryman some garlic, but this will do absolutely nothing except waste your garlic. Otherwise, this is a paint-by-numbers strategy book with tips mainly cribbed from the pages of Nintendo Power and GamePro.
My copy was acquired second-hand and the previous owner had made notes in pen on a few of the pages. I did my best to clean these up, but my background is in writing and not image manipulation so...sorry.

Now this is a piece of retro gaming history. While not the first book written describing strategies for winning in the arcade, Michael Blanchet was among the earliest authors putting pen to paper and explaining the ins and outs of video games as he saw them. A recent college graduate, he worked in an arcade by day, dispensing both quarters and tips for fellow gamers, and picking up strategies from his regular customers. It didn't take long for him to realize there was a thirst for this kind of knowledge, and after winning top marks in an arcade gaming tournament for his performance in Battlezone, he got noticed by an agent for Simon & Schuster. They were looking for a book about arcade games, since "Mastering Pac-Man" by Ken Uston and "How to Master the Video Games" by Tom Hirschfeld had both become recent best-sellers. Blanchet said he had some ideas he'd been kicking around, and the result was the publication of this book in 1982, which reportedly sold over 80,000 copies.
Blanchet was able to parlay the success of this book (and its successor, "How To Beat Atari, Intellivision, and Other Home Video Games") into a regular newspaper column which ran twice a week up until the industry crashed, at which point Blanchet left video games journalism and moved on to the next phase of his life.
Your Retromags Goddess is pleased as punch to be able to bring you this awesome piece of early video game history as her first scan for 2024.

Getting in just under the deadline for this to be possibly the final release for 2023, I present to you, my lovely Retromags family, friends, and followers, this wonderful showpiece of DOS gaming history! Matt Tagliaferri got the goods straight from the 3D Realm gurus themselves so he could explain how the Duke designers pulled off all those nifty tricks with the Build engine: moving subways, reflective mirrors, destructible walls, swimming pools, sector-over-sector placement, you'll learn how to do it all with this book at your side!
Also included are full appendixes which break down the ins and outs of CON file editing, a listing of all the sound effects from the game with their appropriate reference data, and full breakdown of the commands build into the DukeC scripting language. Finally, the CD-ROM gives out a plethora of new art assets, fifty ready-to-play levels from other designers, shareware versions of Duke 3D and a bunch of other Apogee and 3D Realms titles, and a utility allowing you to convert maps from Doom, Heretic, and Hexen to play within Duke Nukem 3D. 😵
And I, your beloved Retromags Goddess, has included the CD-ROM (as a bin/cue file combo) right within the download so you can extract it and play to your heart's content! Holy cow, it's a New Year's Eve holiday miracle! ❤️
Thanks to all of you Retro-maniacs for encouraging me to continue radically downsizing my personal library. No thanks to whomever assembled my copy of this book for pasting the CD-ROM sleeve on the inside back cover upside down, which is why it looks that way in the scan. Sure, I could have flipped it, but I'm preserving these things as I found them.
*huggles*
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.

Brady's unofficial pocket guide to the original PS1 release of Resident Evil. This doesn't cover the Director's Cut, which got its own pocket guide release later.
A very bare-bones walkthrough presented almost entirely in text with the occasional screenshot and a few maps. It covers both Jill and Chris's scenarios, and presents a single optimized route through the Spencer mansion and surrounding environs for each character. Walkthrough text is presented in both black and red; red sections are meant to be skipped if you are attempting a sub-one-hour play in order to unlock the infinite Rocket Launcher for subsequent playthroughs.
My copy of this has some minor water damage to a few of the pages early on; I did the best I could, but the quality isn't stellar because I have zero Photoshop knowledge. Anyone with the means and/or desire to clean this one up, feel free.

Well, here's something completely different! Your beloved Retromags Goddess providing you (yes, you specifically!) with a book about games from the MS-DOS era!
Wait, sorry, I got my notes mixed up. This is actually just the next in a long line of books dealing with classic DOS games brought to you by yours truly.
In order, this book covers:
Duke Nukem 3D Quake MechWarrior 2 Crusader: No Remorse Hexen Heretic Star Wars: Dark Forces Descent Doom II Doom Earthsiege 2 Earthsiege Terra Nova Wing Commander IV Wing Commander III Fury3 Magic Carpet Renegade Now, you don't get full walkthroughs for all of these games. What you get instead for most are general, overall strategies that will serve you well throughout a playthrough, taken from articles and reviews written by the staff members of Computer Games Strategy Plus.
The book also came with a CD-ROM containing playable demos for nearly all of the games covered by the book, plus eighteen other games not covered between the covers. My copy, sadly, is lacking this disc, but the good news is that some other enterprising soul uploaded it to Archive.org, and you can grab your own copy of it to play around with!
Now, enough words! Download this book, enjoy the nostalgia, pay me my tribute by kicking that 'Thanks' button like you're Duke Nukem's mighty boot, and prepare for the next awesome release from your Retromags Goddess! ❤️
*huggles*
Areala

You've no idea how long I've wanted to bring this one to the site.
Stupid expensive on the second-hand market, even moreso if you want a copy with the CD intact, but not as outdated as you might think considering people are still making levels for the original Quake to this day! Matt Tagliaferri knows his game level design, and this book brings together every trick and tip in his arsenal to help you build the best Quake level your heart can dream up.
I've included a rip of the ISO file for the CD-ROM within the download, so you can mess around with that. The qED software itself won't work with current versions of Windows, but the bonus levels are playable in the main game or any one of its many source ports as-is. Just open the .cbz file with your favorite file compression software, and you'll see the QUAKE_LEVEL.ISO file right in the front. You know I wouldn't be your Retromags Goddess if I left it out.
Pretty straightforward, but I need to point out the back cover text promises the level editor will be compatible with Duke Nukem Forever, because that game was on track to come out a year after this book was published!
Enjoy! ❤️

It's a Quake II strategy guide which printed the maps twice: one in green-and-greyscale, once in full colour! And they're just as useless no matter which version of them you're viewing! Hooray!
Otherwise, this is just your bog-standard strategy guide to an FPS. There's the obligatory enemy list, weapons load-out, multiplayer tips, a page and a half on using the console, and those full colour maps!
Also, whoever had the bright idea to only put page numbers on every other page, or just stop them for a bit then start up again later, deserves to be dipped in horseradish and thrown to the jellyfish. 😡
You don't need this. You're going to download it anyway, because you're a digital hoarder, and that's totally fine. I'm just pointing out the obvious.
Enjoy! ❤️

Guides which brand themselves as "totally unauthorized" are a mixed bag. I mean, the writers of the authorized guides get their info from the game's publisher and developer, they get the rights to use artwork, screenshots, and other assets, and typically offer some bonus features like interviews with the developers, a CD-ROM stuffed with extra goodies, and other tidbits. The "unauthorized" guys, though? They have to make do with whatever artwork the in-house artists come up with, don't get any special access to designers and programmers, and have to build their strategies from scratch. To stand out, the unauthorized guides are usually a few bucks cheaper than the official one right next to it on the shelf, and that's usually all they've got. But occasionally an unauthorized guide will go above and beyond the call of duty to kick ass and take names, making itself worthy of your cash despite not being authorized.
This book, my friends, is one of those special snowflakes. Because despite Sybex buying the right to make the official guide for Duke Nukem 3D (and making a kick-ass guide in their own write, complete with its own CD on the back cover), Steven Schafer and the hooligans at Brady Games laced up the combat boots and waded into the trenches to make their combat guide totally worth the money.
In here, you'll find the normal write-ups on weapons, enemies, and power-ups. In here, you'll see the same level maps as you'd see in the official book. But that's only the first 150 pages. From page 152 on, you're treated to an orgy of information concerning configuring and playing multiplayer DukeMatch games, a comprehensive breakdown of all the game's media files (textures, sprites, sounds, etc...), and a complete tutorial on how to make your own levels using the Build Engine (which is where all that index info on the game's internal media files comes in handy, and can help you best utilize and/or replace assets as needed).
The official guide devotes a whole two pages to this. They're basically like, "Yeah, um, Duke Nukem 3D includes a level editor. It's called Build. Check it out!". Probably this was so people would feel enticed to fork over another $24.99 in order to get Sybex's Duke Nukem 3D Level Design Handbook (which is a great book in its own right, well worth the buy if you want to get into the nitty-gritty of level creation, and will be appearing here in the not too distant future), but I'm not joking when I tell you this unauthorized book can teach you enough to make the level design book almost completely unnecessary.
It also covers the secret DukeMatch-only level, "Faces of Death", which comes with the game, but requires a command-line interface trick to get working if you want to see it in single-player, and is something even the official guidebook doesn't bring up.
I reiterate: the official guide leaves out all mention of the fact this level even exists, but the Brady gang gives it two full pages of maps and basic level info. What?!
This book kicks some serious ass, and as far as I'm concerned, if you're a Duke Nukem 3D fan, you need it in your library.
Enjoy! ❤️

Age of Shadows was the fifth expansion for Ultima Online, released in early 2003, and like the previous year's Lord Blackthorn's Revenge, also featured a darker vibe. The primary purpose of this expansion was to add a crap-ton more land to help with the player housing situation. To that end, the team created a new land mass called 'Malas', an area that was essentially a giant, broken-up continent with hundreds of smaller island-like locations connected by bridges. Major changes came to the housing system, allowing players to customize and create structures of much broader and grander design than the small number of prefab options which had been available for the last five years. Established players who had already built and maintained homes were allowed to convert their old homes to the new design standard, ensuring they wouldn't be left out of the fun. In addition to alleviating the housing bubble, the expansion also introduced two new playable classes (the Paladin and the Necromancer), and added a Diablo-style explosion of magical item attributes and properties, allowing for a much greater range of possibilities for the loot tables. 
But it wasn't all fun and games. All that extra stuff came with an increased monthly fee, and players discovered the new and powerful magic items turned the UO experience from a skill-based roleplaying experience into a loot hunt for the best gear so as to allow accelerated character growth. The combination turned off veteran players, who left the game in droves, and marked a significant downturn in the game's place in the much more crowded MMO marketplace.
This guide is an oddity, being mostly a reprint of the Lord Blackthorn's Revenge book (minus the Todd "Hey, I'm the Spawn Dude!" McFarlane interview), with only the last fifth or so being devoted to the new content unveiled in the expansion itself. Not bad if you skipped buying the LBR guide in 2002, but otherwise...
Enjoy! ❤️

I'm not sure why Prima (or anybody, really) thought this game needed a strategy guide. I mean, Quake III Arena was literally nothing more than 'deathmatch-on-demand' with the possibility of fighting against AI bots if you didn't have any real-life friends. All the weapons and power-ups were culled from iD Software's previous Doom and Quake titles, and chances are if you bought Quake III you had already been playing deathmatch with your friends for five years and had a solid understanding of techniques like rocket jumping. The only thing really new for this game were the levels themselves. But, you know, props to Prima for managing to still get 200 pages' worth of content out of it somehow. Good on you, guys!
Unlike previous guides to Quake games, this one's also in full colour, so there's that...
Enjoy! ❤️

This was published in 2002 to coincide with the release of the expansion, the fourth for Ultima Online, which was noteworthy for none other than Todd "You're Damn Right, I Created Spawn!" McFarlane joining the design team to populate a new zone within the now much larger map of Britannia with all sorts of twisted nightmares from his imagination.
For some reason, the two expansions that happened prior to Lord Blackthorn's Revenge (Ultima Online: Renaissance and Ultima Online: Third Dawn) both dropped without getting corresponding strategy guides, official or otherwise. Because of that, the guide to Lord Blackthorn's Revenge had to cover an awful lot of territory, as the playable world within the game had more than doubled since Second Age, with entire new continents now populated with extensive new dungeons. But in addition to covering all the updated content, this book offers a slew of extra content of use/interest to fans of Ultima who couldn't care less about playing the MMO. This includes an overview of the grand Ultima timeline featured in all the games which had released up to that point, a character glossary for major NPCs, significant events that had taken place both in the online and off-line games, a guide for new players, an interview with Todd "Did I Mention I Created Spawn?" McFarlane, and a bunch of other goodies. Even if you couldn't care less about a twenty year old expansion to an MMO, you'll probably find something worth reading if you have even a passing interest in the Ultima world or RPGs in general.
This is a remarkably well put together book, with a lot of great information. Obviously it's more useful if you're familiar with Ultima Online, but even if you don't know much (I never played the game myself, though I had friends in college who did, so most of my knowledge comes from their accounts), it's still a really cool book that deals with far more than just stat tables and skill progression lists.
Enjoy! ❤️

Ultima Online: The Second Age was the first major update/expansion to Ultima Online. Released in 1998, a year after Ultima Online's debut, it added a new swamp/marsh zone called "The Lost Lands" (which included two new cities), a plethora of new enemies to fight, and the ability for players to construct their own cities. A plethora of other mechanics were implemented and enhanced as well, including a real-time text translation service allowing players world-wide to break the language barrier, modifications to the user interface, and an expansion of in-game chat features.
For many, The Second Age is considered the definitive version of the game, as a massive number of players joined UO with this specific edition. This has led to a plethora of user-created servers (known as 'Shards') dedicated to running versions of the software that most closely mimic the look, play style, and features of this specific instance versus the version of the game running today. Indeed, if you want to see what all the fuss is about, the shard is free to play, with the software that can be found here:
https://www.uosecondage.com/
Because of that, this guide has actually retained its value on the second-hand market, making it a $20-30 acquisition for anyone wanting their own copy. After learning this, it pushed this book to the top of the preservation stack, and I'm delighted to offer it up for your perusal and digital hoard.
The only down side? My copy was acquired second-hand, and is lacking the full-colour poster map that came bound as a tear-out sheet between pages 144 and 145. If anyone else has a copy of this poster already scanned, please don't hesitate to contact me, and I'll add it to the file with full credit to you.
Otherwise, enjoy the download, smack that 'Thanks' button, and I'll see you with the next upload shortly! ❤️

Considering it's an outdated strategy guide for a version of a game that's been unplayable since the early 2000's, this book is oddly expensive on the second-hand market, with listings usually in the $20-40 range. Equally unusual, this guide was essentially co-authored by a bunch of members of the same guild, who shared their tips and techniques with Sybex, making it something of a curiosity for that alone. In any case, this is the very definition of a historical artifact of a bygone era, which is why it's so important for us to preserve it. Ultima Online is still around, and still playable today, but it looks nothing like it did in 1997 when this came out.
Use it as anything but a trip down memory lane at your own risk.
(Blank pages were omitted to save time and space, so if you notice page numbers skipping, don't worry, you aren't missing any content).

If you downloaded the first incarnation of this file, please re-download this one. The initial release was complete, but had a pagination problem which has been fixed.
Regardless of your feelings about GamePro the magazine, there's no denying this book is awesome. While the competition was going the black-and-white-only route, either with text only, or the occasional monochrome screen cap, the GamePro editors went all-in on this 220-page, full-colour beast of a book printed on high-quality paper, and sold for the same price as the less-cool-looking book right beside it on the shelf.
GamePro only did two books of this sort, this one for Adventure games, and a second for Sports titles. Unfortunately I only have this one, so @E-Day will have to wait, quivering with anticipation, until one of us gets ahold of the other one.
As with other scans, I've left out the completely blank pages so as to lower the file size.
Enjoy! ❤️

After the original Nintendo Games Secrets became a best-selling success, a sequel was all but assured. Sure enough, one year later, Prima released this book onto store shelves, giving kids a reason to do their chores and accumulate the $10 US (or 14 so-called Canadian "dollars") necessary for its purchase.
More of the same, but also a little less of the same. This volume omits Rusel DeMaria's "Introduction to Video Games" and "A Parents' Guide to Gaming" which were present in Volume 1. It also focuses only on software, so there are no previews of any upcoming peripherals. Added are some cartoon segments which combine over the course of the book to present an overall narrative which, we are assured, will be continued in Volume 3. (Spoiler alert: it is not.)
At 328 pages vs. the original book's 360, this feels like a step back. On the other hand, while there are plenty of other books out there which covered major titles like Castlevania III, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game, and Mega Man 3, there are nowhere near as many which covered the likes of The Immortal, Dungeon Magic, or Ultima: Quest of the Avatar, so you have to give it props on game selection at least.

Oh no! Fifty-four NBA pro all-stars have invaded your gaming space, determined to play a game of 2-on-2 with you at the helm. Obviously what you need here is a strategy guide to explain the finer points of offense and defense, and really break the game down for...
Sorry, I can't do this with a straight face. 😆
This is a basketball game. It's kind enough to give you the stats for all the different players right there on the screen, and assumes you're smart enough to understand the guy who is good at shooting 3-point shots should probably do that instead of going in for a dunk. There aren't any special moves, no fireballs or jump kicks or fatalities, just a joystick, a button to shoot, a button to pass, and a button to make you move faster until the meter runs out. I'm impressed that Corey Sandler, the same guy responsible for a bevy of those "Ultimate Unauthorized" books from the previous five years, somehow managed to talk Brady into buying the rights to make an official strategy guide to a game as straightforward as NBA Jam.
Midway, I am certain, laughed all the way to the bank with that money.
You could use the $10 you spend on this book to instead play 40 games of NBA Jam in the arcade (or 20 if the operator was a greedy turd burglar and set the machine to 50 cents/play) and you'd get just as good at it through actually playing. I reiterate: this is a basketball game where every rule except Traveling and Goaltending have been suspended. It's literally about who can toss a sphere through a circle the most. This is not rocket science.
The artwork is cool, the production values are high, and the paper quality is outstanding. It includes some cheat codes, some Game Genie goodies, and the necessary info to unlock most of the hidden characters in it, but you could get all that from an issue of EGM at half the price.
Utterly baffling, but hey, here it is, so indulge!
Donated by ModernZorker.
Enjoy! ❤️

This book. Oh my gosh, this book.
I've seen a lot of strategy guides in my four decades on this planet. I've seen a number of books and guides which have typos in them. Sometimes in the text, sometimes (very rarely) in the table of contents or the index. But I want you to take a minute and open up the cover image for this book, and take a look at it. Because never have I seen a strategy guide so rushed to market that it misspelled the name of one of the games it covers on the front cover.
Can someone, anyone, please tell me about the game "Soul Egde"? Because I've certainly never heard of it. Soul Edge? Absolutely! But "Soul EGDE"?
SOUL EGDE?!
On the front and back covers of your book?
Please, BradyGames, PLEASE tell me someone lost their job over letting that one slip through quality control.
As if the black-and-white only presentation wasn't cheap enough. As if the text-only interior didn't already scream "we put this whole thing together the night before the deadline". But then you expected us to pay ten dollars, in 1996 money, for a book with the misspelled title of a game on the covers?
You, sir, are the cash-grab guide book to end all cash-grab guide books.
Debinding this book brought me nigh-on orgasmic pleasure. And I would do it again in a heartbeat.
Good day to you, strategy guide.
I SAID, "GOOD DAY"!
Enjoy! ❤️

A fairly comprehensive guide to Mortal Kombat 3, mainly focused on the Arcade version, but also applicable to numerous home ports as well.
What makes this guide especially interesting is that it's also a guide to Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II, with complete character breakdowns and move lists for those games too. So this is really a three-in-one deal. Not bad for the money!
Screenshots are very clear despite being black-and-white, and there was even an offer to get a supplementary update to the book for when the arcade MK3 received its newest upgrade (which wound up being the Ultimate MK3 board revision).
All apologies for the Walden Software sticker on the back, covering up some of the text. That sucker was on there like cement, and peeling it would have damaged the cover worse than leaving it on. It, like this book, is a relic of a bygone era. Consider it special bonus content, just for you!
Enjoy! ❤️