This vault of SNES manuals is an amazing resource for fans of gaming history

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

In the console generations of the past, game manuals were an important part of the reading process. Compared to the small pack-ins that come with games today, those vintage instruction manuals were on a completely different level in terms of care and detail.

The last English-language game manual for the Super Nintendo has been uploaded by a community project led by Peebs. The entire collection can be found here. Peebs was motivated to assemble one central resource for manuals during an eight-year quest to play and beat every game for his twitch viewers

Perusing through random instruction booklets can be a fun dose of nostalgia for 30-somethings like myself, but this can also be a helpful resource for anyone working through the various SNES titles that are available with a subscription to Nintendo.

We couldn't have done this without all of the help from everyone else.



On twitter, discord, reddit. Spreading the word and helping track down manuals here and there.



In 2 years we went from 52% of manuals available, to 100%

— Peebs - SNESManuals.com (@PeebsSNES) July 1, 2022

This is a much more comprehensive vault of gaming history than the online manual Nintendo provides for each game. The manual for Chrono Trigger is an example of how extensive 16-bit games could be. You can find similar archives for Nintendo 64 and Virtual Boy.

The owners of rare or difficult-to- find titles contributed scans to the archive. According to Peebs, nearly 100 people stood up. You can help fill in the last piece of the puzzle by posing for the PAL manual for the German release. I will be skimming through old favorites like Saturday Night Slam Masters and Home Improvement game that I didn't know existed. A physical manual with a notes section at the end isn't the same as an in-game one.