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!

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.

Final Fantasy III / Final Fantasy VI is, hands down, my favorite Final Fantasy title. And this right here just might be my favorite strategy guide of all time. Presented in full colour, flush with screenshots, along with copious artwork by artist Yoshitaka Amano, and a section at the end featuring some gorgeous full-size in-game maps, Olafson's guide is written more like a story as opposed to a walkthrough.
At $12.95, this was an absolute showstopper of a book. It may be less complete overall than Nintendo's own game guide, as it doesn't contain things like monster stats, weapon and item lists, Gau's Rage tables, or other in-depth information one might expect to see in an RPG guide. But the sheer quality of Olafson's prose guides the reader through the story so well it feels like playing the game. It's one of the few guides I've read from cover to cover multiple times. It's just that good.
This book is generally very expensive on the second-hand market. Copies on eBay routinely sell for $50 or more, and copies in excellent condition can fetch upwards of $100. For Final Fantasy III fans, it's a highly-sought collector's item. If you've ever looked at a listing and wondered why, I hope a flip through this book explains everything. If every guide followed Olafson's example, strategy guides would be regarded as works of art instead of simple cash grabs.
Enjoy! ❤️

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! ❤️

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! ❤️

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! ❤️

A mammoth resource back in the day for creators looking to make their own levels for DOOM, DOOM II, and (to a much lesser extent) Heretic. Although the information on the various WAD authoring and editing tools is quite outdated (there are much, much better programs available for modern systems that also work under the enormous variety of source ports), if you're looking to mess around with the internal workings of DOOM then there's still plenty of information about level creation that is valid today. The book also spotlights a number of great WADs, points out some of the gimmicks in their level design, and explains how to use those same tricks and gimmicks in your own levels.
This is a massive book, nearly 950 total pages in size, including an 8-page color gallery right in the middle. It also contains a number of pages which are completely blank; to help lower the file size, I elected not to include these blank pages in the scan.
This file also doesn't include the CD which came with the book, but those interested in checking it out can find it over at Archive.org.
Enjoy!
*huggles*
Areala

Come get some!
The man with the mightiest boot in all of FPS-dom is in town with a few days to kill. But who wants to waste all their time bumping into walls and burning through jetpacks to find all the secrets, easter eggs, and crazy loot? So do yourself a favour: use this official strategy guide, with all its excellent walkthroughs and maps, to make those alien bastards pay for shooting up your ride.
This is a fun guide, with some extra developer commentary packed into the Appendix, and the obligatory CD-ROM on the back cover, stuffed with level maps, shareware, the entire first episode of Duke Nukem 3D, and other goodies.
The CD-ROM isn't a part of the .cbz archive, but you can download your own ISO of The Exclusive SYBEX/3D Realms Duke Nukem Companion CD to play around with, because your Retromags Goddesss loves you and ripped her copy so you could have the complete experience.

What are you waiting for, Christmas?
Enjoy! ❤️

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! ❤️

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! ❤️

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! ❤️
 

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.

There were multiple versions of this guide published and updated by BradyGames over the years. This particular edition is keyed to the Lord of Destruction expansion pack which came as part of the Diablo II Battle Chest boxed set. Since the guide makes no references to skill synergy bonuses but it does reference "the first patch", it likely corresponds to v1.08 of the game. Given the game's current edition is v1.14d, much of the information in this file will be outdated and inaccurate except to someone playing a pre-v1.10 copy in a solo campaign.
Enjoy! ❤️

Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation was a grand and confusing piece of art, with some excellent ideas and some utterly brain-wrecking puzzles which were clearly put there to pad out the play time and prevent people renting the game and beating it over a weekend. This was the first Tomb Raider released on the Sega Dreamcast, but aside from slightly better graphics than the PlayStation edition, it and the PC incarnation are all the same game, so this guide can walk you through any incarnation.
Much like Tomb Raider III, Last Revelation absolutely screamed for a strategy guide due to the aforementioned hair-pulling puzzles and some generally obnoxious gameplay elements which made things far more difficult than they should be. It's the most difficult of all the "classic" era entries, even harder than picking Nevada last in TR3, so if you managed to complete it without resorting to a walkthrough at any point, hats off to you. It's also the longest single entry in the franchise, comprising 42 stages in total, although some of these are re-visits to older stages with some minor tweaks due to story progression. It's the first Tomb Raider game to feature no hidden levels or special bonuses for collecting all of the in-game secrets (of which there are 70), although the British paper The Times teamed up with Core Design to release a special, PC-only downloadable level which celebrated the 75th anniversary of Howard Carter's excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb. Interestingly enough, this level wasn't just DLC, it was a full-fledged mini Tomb Raider game all on its own which didn't require the full version of Last Revelation in order to run, and came with two other TR-themed puzzle games to mess around with. This guide doesn't cover that bonus level, but if you're interested in playing it, you can find it at Stella's Tomb Raider Page. Both the GOG and Steam versions of Last Revelation come with the Times bonus content, just FYI.
Anyway, at nearly 180 pages, this is also the longest classic-era Tomb Raider game guide Prima ever made.
Enjoy! ❤️

This book totally rules! Heh, heh, heh...
Yeah, so, you can, like, totally play the Beavis and Butt-Head game normally. Like, that's what Mr. Van Driesen would do. He'd call it "self-learning" or "acshulization" or some other stupid word that probably isn't, like, real and stuff.
Or you could use this book to, like, totally score with chicks and stuff. Like chicks, this book has nice tips. And it works with, like, all three different games. But, like, if you only have one or two of them, that's, like, fine too. You probably needed to save your money for, you know, GWAR tickets.
GWAR rocks!
But, like, if you need to beat the game--
(Heh, heh...I said 'beat'...)
--like, fast and stuff? Like, cuz a chick said she'd show you her boobs, but you had to, you know, beat the game first? I guess you could, uhhh, read the book and, I dunno, use the passwords and maps and things to see GWAR. And then score. Or at least, like, play with your butt-ons and stuff.
Beavis is into that. He once played with his butt-on so much that Mr. Buzzcut made him do pushups until blood came out his nose. That was cool! Huh-huh-huh...
Yeah, yeah, anyway, like, just read the book, uhhh, you know, FOR us. Cuz we're busy. Scoring. Yeah, scoring! With a chick! You, uh, you don't know her. She's from, like, Canada or some other state.
Enjoy! (Bungholes...) ❤️

This is a version of the original Totally Unauthorized Guide to Resident Evil pocket guide, adapted by David Cassady and Debra McBride for use with the Director's Cut of the game. It's based on a pre-release edition of the software, but like its predecessor it contains walkthroughs for both Chris and Jill's playthroughs, along with maps, enemy descriptions, and item and weapon locations.
Gone from the previous edition is the "speed run" text in red, so you'll have to figure out the optimal strategies for that sub-one-hour time yourself.
No mention of the terrible mess made of the soundtrack in the Director's Cut version either, but you don't buy a strategy guide to learn about the music, so that's not surprising.

Wow! So ultimate! Such strategy! Many unauthorized! Much Nintendo! Oh no!
So, yes, this is the third volume in Sandler and Badgett's series devoted to NES games. I don't know if this was just my copy or what, but the printing on this was some of the worst I've ever seen, with some pages printed at an angle, and some margins running straight to the bleed with seemingly little rhyme or reason. But, you know, back in the day, you paid your money and took your chances.
If you like these books, and their bizarre cover artwork, then you'll want this one in your collection, no doubt. If you don't? Then don't download it, I guess... You do you, Retromags peeps.
My final complaint? They rate the difficulty of Castlequest at "Apprentice", when it's one of the most punishingly brutal NES cartridges ever made. Seriously, the game comes with its own map showing you exactly where you need to go to rescue the princess, and also gives you fifty lives. Then it sits and laughs at you as you lose them all, one by one, and have to restart the game. What the hell were you smoking, Corey Sandler? Explain yourself!
Enjoy! ❤️

A great Sega Genesis compilation guide from Prima: full-colour, tons of excellent games, just an ultimate walk down nostalgia lane. For $15 back in the day, this was a solid book. As the name implies, this is a newer, more up-to-date version. I don't own the original release sadly, so I can't tell what all is new or updated about this version. Maybe someone else can provide that info?
My copy had a printing defect with the pages dedicated to Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, where the print portion pulled deeper into the gutter than on other pages. This means some of the text got cut off when the book was de-bound--it's still usable, and it affects only 2 out of the book's 112 pages, but I wanted to point it out, since this is a defect with the book itself, not my own scanning incompetence. I'm not a good enough graphical wizard to fix this, but if someone else out there wants to take the time, that would be awesome.
Enjoy! ❤️

Another solid game compilation guide, this time from Prima, who seemed to do better at these kinds of things than Brady much of the time. This covers a slew of great games that most people would be interested in playing: top-notch stuff like Link's Awakening DX, Donkey Kong Country, two Wario Land titles, and even contains a bit about the Game Boy Camera peripheral. It's nothing mind-blowing, but the production value is high, there are plenty of full-color screen captures, and the writing for the walkthroughs is on point and descriptive. Well worth the download, IMO.
Donated by ModernZorker.
Enjoy! ❤️

Prima's official guide to making the Empire look like a bunch of scruffy-looking Nerf-herders (at least until the sequel) makes its Retromags debut!
Probably what's most impressive about this book is the amount of artwork taken from the movies which is packed between the covers. There are sidebars galore, with all kinds of info on the major players from A New Hope, sprite rips of all the various enemies you will face in the game, and some huge, multiple-page-spanning composite maps of each level. Oh, and the cheat codes. Because, trust me, you're going to need those to get anywhere in this merciless game.
All in all, this is a pretty cool book which can be expensive to find in good condition. Even if you don't care for the game itself, it's something every fan of the Original Trilogy can flip through for a little nostalgia hit.
As Old Ben Kenobi might put it: "An elegant guide from a more civilized, pre-Special-Edition age."
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! ❤️

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 most excellent paper doll was included as an exclusive bonus for people who purchased the Tomb Raider I and II Official Strategy Guide from Prima back in 1999. The doll herself was printed on thick cardstock, with scoring lines, while her clothing came on high-gloss paper stock.
I've done a high-resolution 600dpi scan of the doll by herself, so you can print her out, dress her up, and take her on all sorts of adventures outside of her video games. Where will you travel? What treasures will you discover? It's all up to you!
Enjoy! ❤️

Third book in the series, which is shorter even than volume 2. Though that's not surprising, since volume 3 came out a whopping three months after volume two was already on store shelves. When on earth did DeMaria and Meston sleep?
In any case, this might be my favorite volume of the NES series, since it covers a whole slew of games you almost never see mentioned in other books of the day. Seriously, where else did you find coverage of Pirates!, Faria, Hillsfar, The Last Ninja, The Rocketeer, Bill & Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Beetlejuice, or The Uninvited?
Despite promising a continuation of the comic begun in the pages of volume 2, that never happens. I guess we'll never learn everyone's ultimate fate. Oh well. We bought these for the tips and strategies, not the fan fiction.
Enjoy! ❤️
 

A 1989 NES book published by Bantam, likely pushed out to capitalize on the success of Jeff Rovin's How to Win at Nintendo Games from St. Martin's Press. This is mostly text with the occasional screenshot or box artwork thrown in, but either their screen capture tech was too primitive, or Bantam's monochrome printing process wasn't set up to handle pictures, because the screenshots from this book look awful.
Also, the margins in my copy of this book are seriously wacky. You'll see text running almost straight to the edge of the page in some sections, while others give plenty of space for the text. This is an issue with the printing of the book, not me being a klutz with the cropping tool, but I still apologize for how the text waffles and flies all over the place as you're scrolling through.
That said, the book is amusing for Sandler and Badgett's witty asides and commentary on the games they are covering. It's one of the very few books from this era to cover Friday the 13th, and it also features write-ups with mock artwork for several NES titles which never came to fruition. I've never seen these games mentioned in any other publication of the era, so it's an important historical artifact from that perspective alone, confirming that Matchbox at one time was working on creating NES software (or at least paying someone else to do so).
In any case, this kicked off a successful series for Bantam, who followed this up with three additional volumes on NES games, along with books related to Game Boy, Genesis, Game Gear, and Super Nintendo hardware, many of which went through multiple print runs and editions.
Enjoy! ❤️