Games with the biggest manuals

[Canadamus Prime]

The SimCity 3000: Unlimited manual was piratically a frickin' textbook.

 

[bobmd13]

I just had a look in my Baldurs Gate box and the manual is 157 pages long.

I also have a lovely map of the Sword coast and Baldur's Gate itself.

Even better it plays on windows 7 with no problems .

If I remember correctly MOO2 had a large manual as well.

 

[6_Qubed]

Last game manual I got was for Oblivion. You could club goats to death with that thing.

 

[Chiasm]

Hands down Fallout 2, I brought the game over 10 years ago and still have the manual. It's so large it has a spiral binding. Plus after all the game info, in the back there is cooking recipes that are themed for the game like "wasteland pancakes".

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Falcon 3.0. The game manual was hundreds of pages long and it also shipped with additional reading regarding theory of aerial combat. Falcon 4.0 had only a single manual, but it was longer than most university textbooks.

 

[Fishehh]

DCS A-10C Warthog, the manual is over 670 pages and is the actual manual for a warthog that you have to study of you want to fly the real plane.

 

[Pegghead]

Biggest one I've ever had was with World of Wacraft, the size of a small novel it was.

 

[onewheeled]

If it can be counted as an instruction manual, the biggest ones I've owned were the strategy guides that came with the Starcraft Battle Chest. Granted, over half of the manual for both games consisted of a guide for each and every mission (though I still can't beat the fucking Norad II mission...), but there is still a hefty bit of informational text on the units, general strategies, etc. In total, it's 212 pages of reading for both games, in two softcover books.

If those don't count, then the manual for Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 was insanely long. The manual itself is about 100 pages, with no guides or anything, just stuff about how to play the freaking game. Come to think of it, though, that game deserved it, I never played it to its full potential: It's a huge game, with a lot you can do.

 

[ColeusRattus]

I laugh at the puny brochures the OP calls "thick manuals"

Me too being of the rare breed of old school PC gamers, I have to share a few tomes of game knowledge:

Eurofighter 2000 (man, back in those days [the mid to late nineties], 2000 looked like a futuristic time, and every game sequel was either a "soandso 2000" or "soandso 3D")
Falcon 4
Any Civilization game

But back then, even better than the thick manuals, were the gimmicks that came with regular games, which nowadays are reserved for collectors editions:

Crusader Series: mot only an extensive manual, but in universe security instruction handbooks with notes of game characters and in universe printed newspapers (that extended the universe to the System Shock games)

Cybermage came with a comic book that acted as the prologue of the story.

ETC...

 

[TheLoneBeet]

I remember the manual for Horizons being really big, and that was a good thing because younger credit-card-less me didn't realize that the manual was about as close to playing the game as I would get.

Also, I usually don't read the manual. For the most part I either play the tutorial or if there is no tutorial I figure it out on my own.

or RAGE-QUIT!

 

[Tiger Sora]

Thickest "game manuel" I have is the 'Total Annihilation Exclusive Strategy Guide' that came with the game. Over 275 pages of units, level guides and battle strategy. Not to mention the game itself kicks any other RTS game in the teeth. Except maybe the original C&C, which was what inspired the developers to make this game.

 

[Rabish Bini]

Warlords Battlecry II, had a complete bestiary of all the units and structures available in game. And a great game.

I seem to recall Dark Reign having a thick one

And also Mechwarrior 4 Vengence's