Since somebody shared this nice comic about manuals in games in another community, I was thinking about them myself.
My most cherished game manual was the Diablo 2 one. The way they created a little story for each single ability was such an atmospheric wonder and probably started my fascination with lore instead of story. They were also probably the main reason why I took the necromancer and started to feel bored, when necromancer are automatically evil in a setting. Get creative!
My father had Falcon 4.0 and that was “just” a technical manual in itself. 5+ cm thick and full of schematics of the cockpit. I was in awe as a child about the complexity of that thing.
Not necessarily my favorite, but a nostalgic memory I have is my game manual from my Sega Genesis game “Mickey’s World of Illusuion”. Just like in the comic you mentioned, you couldn’t save your progress, but you could put codes in to jump to different levels. You got those codes by playing to the end of those levels. I was just a little kid, and played with my dad. My mom wrote all the level codes in the booklet for each level as we beat them together. I distinctly remember she wrote one of the later levels down wrong and we had to beat it from scratch, and from then on there was a patch of white out in the booklet where she corrected the code. I remember this SO vividly ! I remember her handwriting, and the texture of the white out spot, and the little pictures of Mickey and Donald that she doodled in the margins.
Hey thanks for the sweet memory, and for the space to share it :')