Hi guys, Anyone know some online resources for PAL game manuals? I picked up some cartridges and I am looking at buying some universal covers for them, thing is I would like to print out some altered manuals to suit also. I can't justify some of the ridiculous prices for games these days, especially Sega & N64 originals in their boxes (Star Craft, Kolibri, Darxide etc.) so where possible I'm hoping to pick up the original cartridge and manual, and get a replacement cover & case. Being a student I can't sit there and drop $500 a game. Unfortunately sometimes you can't come across an original manual. I'm trying to find some online resources which have these manuals so I can either print them here at home just for completeness sake (I realise they won't look anywhere near as good) or have them altered and then printed to suit the new cover and case. Kind regards, Paul
Damn, that sucks. I guess they pretty much would be the same though, maybe I can alter them so they don't say NTSC haha
Another difficulty with the pal manuals (notably 8 and 16bit sega stuff) is that they fold out llike a paper map so it can be a pain to scan them. Although if there where a website where people could submit scans of manuals a bit like the folks over at the cover project i think id be willing to submit a few. @shifted what games are you looking for manuals for? If theres anything i have i might be able to get a scan to you. In fact i think a manual scans thread could be quite handy for a lot of people on the Assembler forums. EDIT: Now that ive actually harnessed the power of google for good turns out there already is such a thing http://www.replacementdocs.com/news.php
I was kinda just looking for any PAL manual really, across the board (Nintendo, Sega etc.) and in particular, a Kolibri manual as I had just picked up a cart. I managed to buy a complete Kolibri not long after that though so I ended up selling the cart anyway I'd happily scan up some of mine too though! I came across that replacementdocs website before too - but they put that stupid watermark on it, which to me is just retarded.
there's a fair few sms ones on www.smspower.org We've been planning to scan megadrive booklets for ages on guardiana but it's simply too much work for too busy people T_T
@shifted yeah those wartermarks are a bit of a pain, and on a second look it seems like most of the uploads are not Pal ones either ohwell. @cyberguile thanks for the hads up on the sms ones good to know since loose carts are pretty common in ebay AU. I think youve called it right though the problem always comes down to time I dont have a huge MD collection (oh but i will "rubs hands") but im always happy to take part in community projects like scanning if I can help.
Yeah one thing that kinda annoyed me was the severe lack of pal scans online I was making a hyperspin theme and needed cart scans for snes but the downloaded tool only has NTSC scans, then I realised the problem with getting the pal scans is that you actually can't get a clear scan of a snes pal cart or famicon for the same reason which is the curved shape means the scans are out of focus on the edges of the label, only solution I could come up with was taking pictures and cropping them so its clear all over, lets just say I never finished that little project think really there's just very few people interested in scanning pal material, probably due to the mentioned more languages = more pages problem one thing that makes me hesitant to even share any efforts I put towards anything like this is the douch bags who will just take all the stuff that took people hours doing and start selling crappy repro boxes and manuals on ebay, so in many ways I'm glad some sites are watermarking stuff if only to make it harder for the people selling repos as originals or just claiming they "don't know" if its a original to scam collectors and profit off others hard work and effort, also kind of dilutes the value of people's collections especially with people going to extreme lengths to create very authentic looking boxes and carts, its a shame really that they can't just be happy getting money by "stealing" content from the companies that made the game but they now have to steal from the collecting community as a whole by using peoples scans and cleaned up images and passing these things off as originals to some less aware collectors or hobbyists I know there's many other reasons for wanting and using scans and home made covers but having it all there for idiots to just come botch up a case and manual for the sole purpose of getting more money on ebay just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Good luck anyways and glad to hear you got a boxed copy of one of the game you where after in the first place
To be honest, reproduction items don't concern me so much as the ones I have come across have always stated they are reproduction, and you can actually see the difference in quality too. For example, I'm not prepared to pay $2200 for Darxide on the Sega 32X - the reproduction item I have you can clearly tell isn't original and the PAL game is on a Genesis 32X cart - clear indication - obviously opening it up would show you it isn't original either, the manual and box have a different reflection to them too than the original if that makes sense. To me, it seems the person who made it purposely has altered it slightly to clearly indicate it is a reproduction which is nice. I don't think it would dilute the value of originals when you can clearly see it is a reproduction - originals will always be worth more. There'll always be people trying to dupe others - if reproductions were to go ahead it would be nice to see the original artwork altered maybe to show it - say the removal of the barcode for instance. Unfortunately not everyone is so honest and there'll be bad eggs out there, some games I have are missing the manuals, I wouldn't mind reprinting the manual for myself or even having an altered manual to reprint (rather than a watermark) so it can clearly be seen it is a reproduction. Games on SNES/N64 I just grab as cartridge and manual now, too expensive for complete and the universal game covers make a great option.
