Check Out the Manuals for All the NES Classic Edition Games

Got mine already, but it's going to have to wait until tomorrow. Shame that these weren't included on the console, I don't see any reason why they couldn't be on there.

@shaneoh I wonder the same thing with the Wii U, which also loads old manuals from a website. Maybe there's some copyright reason?

I was reading some of these last night. They're great, most are in colour with loads of artwork and stories. I so miss old school manuals with games, a great loss for gaming in my opinion.

The Metroid manual is of particular interest. The story reads like it's writtten for a child (which I suppose it was) but they keep referring to Samus as "he"! I love the manuals for the two Zelda games as well, great artwork.

I'll be downloading all these 30 PDFs to my laptop today, so they're never lost.

@MitchVogel
Dunno about copyright, these manuals are stored on the Nintendo website as PDFs, easily saved to the hard drive. Having them on the Mini NES would prevent them being used without permission.

My NES mini arrived yesterday. Will be trying it tonight after work. The manuals are a welcome addition. I'll be sure to read them before playing each game just like I did in the olden days.

@samuelvictor mine arrived yesterday from the Nintendo Store, and that's precisely how I've been feeling after trying it out last night. Looking forward to 2 player Bubble Bobble and Dr Mario with my wife too. I've downloaded all the manuals onto my phone already and have been enjoying reading them.

For some reason I am enjoying the games much more than I have when I've tried some of them on the Wii U VC. Not sure if it's the real pads, the improved emulation, or simply the whole nostalgic feeling it's giving me. I just hope it lasts until the SNES Mini comes out!

@samuelvictor enjoy! That's what it's all about, your comment made me even more excited about mine arriving! I'm 35 and never had an NES, can't wait.

Finally! I was suspecting that both the NA and Japanese manuals of Super Mario Bros. 3 would have been hosted on Nintendo's site, and they have! The latter is particularly important as the Encyclopedia Super Mario Bros. last year removed a word from its SMB3 story so that the Koopalings weren't anymore explicitly stated to be Bowser's children, now finally even Nintendo hosts the scans of the original Japanese manual revealing that they were indeed explicitly stated to be his children!

@samuelvictor funny I had a MasterSystem too! Never had an N64, though I rented one, or the original GameBoy but I've had a SNES, GBA, DS lite, GameCube, 3DS, New 3DS, couple of 2DS for my kids, a Wii and Wii U. We asked for an NES for Christmas one year but we got a C64!

jealous of people who have there mini already! mines been dispatched this morning. Hoping it may arrive tomorrow but Saturday is when it says it will get to me.....

There's more nostalgia in these manuals than the games for me, probably because I've not seen most of them for about 25 years.

Love Bubble Bobble! There's a lot going on for what initially seems a simple game.

Look at that, the awesome Metroid manual assumes Samus is a guy.

I miss the manual. There was art work involved. If you were stuck in a game the manual gave you hints or clues. As a matter of fact, the really cool artwork on the box is missing on the physical copies in many of the games today. Back in the day, the box art is what we had to gage if the game was good or not because of no internet. The manual also told a story of the game. Back then the games were on the 8bit. It had to be left to the imagination. The story in the manual is what set the stage for the game you were playing.

Oh sweet, these are great scans. Startropics even includes the letter. Someone needs to print it out and see if it works.

This is actually pretty cool, especially when you get to some of the colour printed manuals like the ones for Super Mario Bros. 3 and The Legend of Zelda. I honestly can't wait until Nintendo does a SNES version of the Classic along with digital manuals like this—and it's surely going to, right.

Wow, the Final Fantasy original manual scan actually does include the map/enemy poster.

@Asaki Pretty sure it wouldn't work. The message being revealed in water was probably due to special ink used in printing the physical letter. The "electronic manual" has a scan of the wet letter.

Nice extra, I loved reading through those original manuals.

@impurekind I'd say a mini SNES is a safe bet, as it would be easy to sell. I do think it will be slightly harder for them to choose the 30 or so games compared to the NES mini for various reasons. It seemed like everyone played the same games on NES moreso than SNES. But Mario World and Zelda are strong enough to carry it along with something like Street Fighter 2 which I think would be a sure thing.

@sdelfin Yeah, I hope they look to lists and places like this for their source of which games to pick:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=top+100+snes+games&oq=top+100+SN&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0j69i60l3j0.6083j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 (top of the page)

http://retro-sanctuary.com/Top-100-SNES-Games-Page-1.html

http://www.sydlexia.com/top100snes.htm

http://uk.ign.com/top/snes-games

Honestly, I wish they included 'em in the system like the GBA VC scans, as I don't have a smart phone, and it'd be nice to access 'em without the internet.

@lemonjellydude

Me too.

@KingMike I know, I just wanted to see if anyone would fall for it

Didn't realize they did have a scan of the "wet" version, though.