The books that taught us how to play — Nintendo Power, Prima, Brady, and beyond
Nintendo Power's landmark coverage of Super Mario Bros. 3 — spread across a special issue and supplementary guide — was the definitive English-language resource for the game and set the template for magazine-format strategy guides for years.
Nintendo of America's official player's guide for A Link to the Past was a lavishly produced full-colour volume that documented all dungeons, overworld secrets, and items in a format that became the gold standard for official SNES guides.
Brady Games' Final Fantasy VII guide was a massive reference volume covering the game's sixty-plus hours of content and became one of the best-selling strategy guides ever published, with sales driven by the game's unprecedented mainstream crossover success.
Jonathan Mendoza's 1994 guide to the original Doom, published by Sybex — one of several books that appeared that year as Doom turned from a shareware hit into a publishing category of its own.
Nintendo of America's official Pokémon guide accompanied the landmark 1998 North American launch and became one of the best-selling strategy guides in history, carried by the franchise's explosive entry into Western popular culture.
Nintendo of America's Super Metroid player's guide was a production landmark in the strategy guide format — artistically designed with in-world photography and environmental atmosphere that matched the game's isolation and mystery.
Nintendo of America's EarthBound Player's Guide is the most distinctive strategy guide ever produced for a console RPG — packaged in a box with a scratch-and-sniff insert and designed in a tone of knowing suburban absurdism that matched the game's irreverent personality.
Nintendo of America's Donkey Kong Country player's guide documented Rare's graphically revolutionary SNES platformer with full-colour production that attempted to capture the game's pre-rendered 3D visual style in print.
The official Street Fighter II Turbo guide for the Super NES covered the full character roster's moves and combos in a format that became the template for fighting game guides through the 1990s — a move list compendium with strategic guidance for each matchup.
A 128-page companion to the most acclaimed game ever made, opening with a signed preface from Shigeru Miyamoto and closing with a fold-out map of Hyrule — the Player's Guide line at the peak of its powers.
A plain-text archive of volunteer-written walkthroughs, founded in November 1995, that gave away for free what publishers were charging twenty dollars for — and quietly dismantled the printed strategy guide industry.
Japan's Ultimania books treat games as subjects worthy of scholarship — dense volumes of artwork, developer interviews, and lore that have sold over 12 million copies and put Western strategy guides to shame.
Prima's Myst guide sold over 1.25 million copies — the company's first bestseller and proof that a strategy guide could reach an audience far beyond the people who normally bought games.
Mario Mania was the first official Nintendo Player's Guide devoted to a single game, pairing full Super Mario World coverage with a retrospective on Mario's entire career — a guide that doubled as the franchise's first history book.
Versus Books was founded when a GameFan editor pitched a strategy guide line, was refused a cut of the profits, and quit to build it himself — producing "Perfect Guides" that enthusiasts rated above the official competition.