>>6002494Unironically game guides, in fact, it was pretty much an easy way for cryptic games to get a lot of additional sales via publishing agreements with game devs. Games like early DQ, Legend of Zelda 1 and 2, Milon's Secret Castle, Super Pitfall, Castlevania II (even the original Japanese dialogue was extremely cryptic), Startropics with the infamous paper-dipping-in-water code that came with the game, and so on all had a huge number of sales dedicated to a secondary guide market. There's an especially egregious example in Gabriel Knight 3, where
you had to put tape on a hole in the fence, make a cat try to go through the hole, then you need to attach the tape with hair on it to your face using maple syrup. All so you can disguise as another person who actually doesn't have a mustache, so you draw one on the passport and use the mustache you made to disguise as the faked passport. There are also many games that came with manuals that were less how to play the game and more guides to actually beat the game. Phantasy Star immediately comes to mind for this, since they printed out whole maps of the dungeons because they were so massive and convoluted. Then there's games like FFX2 where you have to do dumb shit like NOT open specific chests in the game so you can get the Zodiac Spear, which was actually done on purpose in order to sell guides.