Sorry, someone else had suggested that a manual that was necessary to knowing how the game works was some sort of way to try and prevent piracy. Which is just not sensible. Pirates gonna pirate.
They are right, it was used for that. Sometimes some key information for progress would be in the manual or on the box. Luckily it wasn’t super popular on consoles, due to the notion that it wasn’t as easy to pirate on consoles as it was on home computers, where you could just copy the floppy/CD.
Which also proves the point that a manual isn’t preventing anything.
I’m not sure I understand. What point?
Sorry, someone else had suggested that a manual that was necessary to knowing how the game works was some sort of way to try and prevent piracy. Which is just not sensible. Pirates gonna pirate.
They are right, it was used for that. Sometimes some key information for progress would be in the manual or on the box. Luckily it wasn’t super popular on consoles, due to the notion that it wasn’t as easy to pirate on consoles as it was on home computers, where you could just copy the floppy/CD.
I think that was really more in the Atari days, right? Some of them have technical steps like jump switches.
I’m aware of some DOS games that did it. For example 1989 Prince of Persia had to enter the exact character (page, line, word) from the manual.
On PS1 you’d probably never complete Metal Gear Solid (1998), cause you need to call somebody on the codec, but the frequency was on the box cover.