Physical strategy guides are still around, but generally speaking they are around for people who are already big fans of the games. With the guide being more niche now with the internet being a thing, their prices often come at a premium too. It always is neat though to be able to flip through the pages of a physical book showing all the secrets that a game has to offer.
It's a shame that they don't really make guides like that anymore. I remember finding out so many alternate ways to play certain games from guides and they were honestly just a joy to read.
Yeah, but with the internet we don't need anymore strategy. But it would be cool to have strategy guides as some fun "Collector's edition" of a game (if it already isn't, indie game have nice collector's edition)
Yeah, it's kinda sucky the internet makes it so games don't really have secrets anymore. Even if something is absurdly hidden way, someone can always just datamine everything to find it. I guess the closest modern day equivalent we have are ARGs which some games have opted go the route of for secrets. Not really my thing, but if it floats your boat then more power to ya.
It’s nice that games include that information in the games themselves these days and if you want more info and stuff, pretty much every major series comes out with a guide book or art book that chronicles development and gives you world lore with beautiful art and stuff. So stuff ppl loved about guides never really left. It just migrated.
@@s0smaster At the same time, publishers making devs make certain parts of old games super difficult or very obscure to find just to sell guides was just an archaic form of pay to win DLC in a way since if you weren’t a kid with tons of time on your hands, some stuff is just impossible to find without a guide. Not to mention the crappy translations of games back then (Castlevania 2 anyone?) made stuff even harder.
"Tartaros" is the greek and original spelling of Tartarus, from what I understood the Japanese version of both the game and therefore the guidebook opted to use the original spelling for every foreign word a choice that was not evidently followed by the western release of the game. Anyway guidebooks are so fascinating to me, in my head the picture of a Japanese store from the 90s selling the guides on a dusty shelf runs wild with colours and imagination, it has a sort of vaporwave aura to it, truly something imho.
11:53 Um... okay. That's an... interesting guide cover. 12:47 Woah, I never realized Cerberus looked so cool in Soul Hackers! They basically took the boring one-head SMT design and gave it the actual three heads, plus fire breath. I like this take better than Koromaru's. 15:49 I found out recently that Nocturne's Hard doesn't increase damage, Normal just lowers it. Classic Nocturne. The Nocturne guide looks pretty meh honestly. Cheap-looking visuals and English that I can instantly tell is a very rough translation. (The graphical maps of the Vortex World are great though) The Radou guide looks much better. lol Nyx getting 2 pages. I like the idea of a Persona guide that lists every mandatory event each month. I might try making my own some time. 24:20 The information on the Social Links here is kind of the same information I give in my videos, but that's a complete coincidence. I guess TH-cam videos, GameFAQs and Reddit have pretty much taken the place of these guides. lol Yosuke can't catch a break even outside of the game. Of COURSE the intro missing would be his. Glancing at the interview, you've got a fan asking if same-sex romances will be included, and Atlus' answer confirms the Jun romance in Persona 2 was only added to appease Yaoi fangirls. I KNEW they went on record saying that but now I have a source. I've got an old Spyro 3 guide, and a couple of Pokemon ones, but that's about it.
Funny about the Soul Hackers guide, if you buy it new (or used but 100% complete), it's actually kinda censored because it comes with an OBI strip that wraps around the front and back covers and it hides both Nemissa and Hitomi's stomachs.
I actually have the Soul Hackers guide that you go through in this video. I got it earlier this year for like $5 from Japan. It's actually a really beautiful looking book because the front and back covers are a dark blue holographic foil that has a white outlining of a Algon Krypto chip behind Nemissa and Hitomi. There's also a red cover version too, that just has Nemissa on the front. Definitely worth getting if you can find it for cheap!
Even though official strategy guides are less of a thing nowadays since you can just find a free online guide, there's a certain charm to the official guides with all the art, graphs & extra stuff.
@@DragonKingX78 The combat is a little clunky, even when you get the hang of it, I admitted. But the art direction and Shoji Meguro's soundtrack are out standing, and the fact that they pass the sensation of a crowded city on the PS2 in 2003 is amazing. Big props to Atlus and the production team
I laughed so hard at the decision to make all the p4 social link portraits sad. I don't know why it's so funny. It's just like, what even was the thought process of doing that?
Heck the english SMT IV guide that you got if you got the pre-order bonus that had the CD just stopped at one spot when there was a LOT left of the game...it was weird
I had this video waiting in my Watch Later for a few days and I watched the thumbnail change about 3 times, I hope you found a thumbnail you and the algorithm were happy with
yeah. prolly not gonna change it again. what i’m getting is probably the best it’s gonna do and that’s fine. shouldn’t be surprised, not many people are gonna be interested in a bunch of old books that don’t exist anymore.
I own Nocturne's - still helpful for that effing puzzle game because its easier to follow than a GameFaq (and the correction for the last puzzle is easily found)
Man this is so interesting to me. Here in Brazil we didn't get most of these guides, if any, we only had gaming magazines as help when we got stuck, and they were unreliable at best. It's also sort of rare for people to know english, especially kids, I only started being able to understand most of a given text in english at like 14yo. I think as of 2020 5% of Brazilians know some english and only 1% are fluent, or something like that. My friends who loved JRPGs would just fumble through the games, sometimes in japanese, learning the menus by trial and error. I catch myself thinking on how resilient kids are. Sorry for the ramble lol
Oh, yeah! Raidou's story is super good, even if the actual combat mechanics are lacking. Imo, I haven't beat it yet, but Raidou 2 is much better because it delegates encounters to dangerous areas in addition to heavily improving the flow of combat.
Rip strategy guides you will be missed. Btw do you think you could do a video about indies inspired by megaten since after watching your megaten fan games video I’m wondering if you could do a video researching and showcasing a few indies inspired by the franchise
Awesome stuff my guy. It's a shame though how these days we don't get stuff like this. Really let's you get more absorbed into the game world if it's not just text. Also, do you have any idea where I could find scans for the smt 4 strategy guide? It looks really cool, but all I could find was a preview.
The Soul Hackers guide that refers to it as Devil Summoner 2 is actually Chinese lol. But that is really cool since the game probably made it over to Taiwan or something via imports
Thanks for the links! Awesome stuff! Is there a way to get these guides to not show up in Chinese (for Soul Hackers)? Japanese is fine, but I can’t read Chinese 😆
this is the last time. i tried changing it a few times to see if i could salvage the video's click-through rate to no avail so i just changed it back to the one i liked the most out of the bunch.
@@bubbletea_ that’s fair, I still think regardless this video is absolutely fantastic and you have the best aesthetics out of all the MegaTen content creators
support me on patreon because more money is always nice
www.patreon.com/bubbletea_
Is there a guide on Shin Megami Tensei 1? Recently just starting the game.
Physical strategy guides are still around, but generally speaking they are around for people who are already big fans of the games. With the guide being more niche now with the internet being a thing, their prices often come at a premium too. It always is neat though to be able to flip through the pages of a physical book showing all the secrets that a game has to offer.
I remember a recent Zelda one, I think BotW, had a hardcover and was marketed more as a collector's item and artbook than as a guide.
It's a shame that they don't really make guides like that anymore. I remember finding out so many alternate ways to play certain games from guides and they were honestly just a joy to read.
Yeah, but with the internet we don't need anymore strategy. But it would be cool to have strategy guides as some fun "Collector's edition" of a game (if it already isn't, indie game have nice collector's edition)
Yeah, it's kinda sucky the internet makes it so games don't really have secrets anymore. Even if something is absurdly hidden way, someone can always just datamine everything to find it. I guess the closest modern day equivalent we have are ARGs which some games have opted go the route of for secrets. Not really my thing, but if it floats your boat then more power to ya.
It’s nice that games include that information in the games themselves these days and if you want more info and stuff, pretty much every major series comes out with a guide book or art book that chronicles development and gives you world lore with beautiful art and stuff. So stuff ppl loved about guides never really left. It just migrated.
@@s0smaster At the same time, publishers making devs make certain parts of old games super difficult or very obscure to find just to sell guides was just an archaic form of pay to win DLC in a way since if you weren’t a kid with tons of time on your hands, some stuff is just impossible to find without a guide. Not to mention the crappy translations of games back then (Castlevania 2 anyone?) made stuff even harder.
"Tartaros" is the greek and original spelling of Tartarus, from what I understood the Japanese version of both the game and therefore the guidebook opted to use the original spelling for every foreign word a choice that was not evidently followed by the western release of the game.
Anyway guidebooks are so fascinating to me, in my head the picture of a Japanese store from the 90s selling the guides on a dusty shelf runs wild with colours and imagination, it has a sort of vaporwave aura to it, truly something imho.
11:53 Um... okay. That's an... interesting guide cover.
12:47 Woah, I never realized Cerberus looked so cool in Soul Hackers! They basically took the boring one-head SMT design and gave it the actual three heads, plus fire breath. I like this take better than Koromaru's.
15:49 I found out recently that Nocturne's Hard doesn't increase damage, Normal just lowers it. Classic Nocturne.
The Nocturne guide looks pretty meh honestly. Cheap-looking visuals and English that I can instantly tell is a very rough translation. (The graphical maps of the Vortex World are great though) The Radou guide looks much better.
lol Nyx getting 2 pages. I like the idea of a Persona guide that lists every mandatory event each month. I might try making my own some time.
24:20 The information on the Social Links here is kind of the same information I give in my videos, but that's a complete coincidence. I guess TH-cam videos, GameFAQs and Reddit have pretty much taken the place of these guides.
lol Yosuke can't catch a break even outside of the game. Of COURSE the intro missing would be his.
Glancing at the interview, you've got a fan asking if same-sex romances will be included, and Atlus' answer confirms the Jun romance in Persona 2 was only added to appease Yaoi fangirls. I KNEW they went on record saying that but now I have a source.
I've got an old Spyro 3 guide, and a couple of Pokemon ones, but that's about it.
Funny about the Soul Hackers guide, if you buy it new (or used but 100% complete), it's actually kinda censored because it comes with an OBI strip that wraps around the front and back covers and it hides both Nemissa and Hitomi's stomachs.
I actually have the Soul Hackers guide that you go through in this video. I got it earlier this year for like $5 from Japan. It's actually a really beautiful looking book because the front and back covers are a dark blue holographic foil that has a white outlining of a Algon Krypto chip behind Nemissa and Hitomi. There's also a red cover version too, that just has Nemissa on the front. Definitely worth getting if you can find it for cheap!
Even though official strategy guides are less of a thing nowadays since you can just find a free online guide, there's a certain charm to the official guides with all the art, graphs & extra stuff.
Am playing Raidou Kuzunoha right now and am totally in love. Might just search for this guide you showed off. Thank you man!
I remember enjoying the 2nd one more.
@@DragonKingX78 The combat is a little clunky, even when you get the hang of it, I admitted. But the art direction and Shoji Meguro's soundtrack are out standing, and the fact that they pass the sensation of a crowded city on the PS2 in 2003 is amazing. Big props to Atlus and the production team
I laughed so hard at the decision to make all the p4 social link portraits sad. I don't know why it's so funny. It's just like, what even was the thought process of doing that?
"they said persona 4 was too happy. so we made everyone sad."
13:42 I never thought I'd see the Spider-Man font on a Persona game manual.
I knew the early SMT strategy guides deliberately didn't mention the fiends, didn't know the nocturne strategy guide mentioned that
Damn, I'm actually sad companies never do any of these things anymore.
I miss strategy guides.
Heck the english SMT IV guide that you got if you got the pre-order bonus that had the CD just stopped at one spot when there was a LOT left of the game...it was weird
That Is strange!! Where did it stop?
0:23 Virgin “Bare Minimum” vs the Chad “Clothed Maximum.”
I had this video waiting in my Watch Later for a few days and I watched the thumbnail change about 3 times, I hope you found a thumbnail you and the algorithm were happy with
yeah. prolly not gonna change it again. what i’m getting is probably the best it’s gonna do and that’s fine. shouldn’t be surprised, not many people are gonna be interested in a bunch of old books that don’t exist anymore.
LMAO at the Eternal Punishment guide using the Reimi Spider-Man movie logo font
I'll use this video as base to the whole MEGATEN games, specially the P4 Golden that it my first time on the series
the strategy guide is for persona 4 for the ps2, NOT persona 4 golden.
I own Nocturne's - still helpful for that effing puzzle game because its easier to follow than a GameFaq (and the correction for the last puzzle is easily found)
Man this is so interesting to me. Here in Brazil we didn't get most of these guides, if any, we only had gaming magazines as help when we got stuck, and they were unreliable at best. It's also sort of rare for people to know english, especially kids, I only started being able to understand most of a given text in english at like 14yo. I think as of 2020 5% of Brazilians know some english and only 1% are fluent, or something like that. My friends who loved JRPGs would just fumble through the games, sometimes in japanese, learning the menus by trial and error. I catch myself thinking on how resilient kids are. Sorry for the ramble lol
Google is never your friend, just wanted to comment and make that clear.
Oh, yeah! Raidou's story is super good, even if the actual combat mechanics are lacking. Imo, I haven't beat it yet, but Raidou 2 is much better because it delegates encounters to dangerous areas in addition to heavily improving the flow of combat.
Rip strategy guides you will be missed.
Btw do you think you could do a video about indies inspired by megaten since after watching your megaten fan games video I’m wondering if you could do a video researching and showcasing a few indies inspired by the franchise
I still have that Persona 1 strategy guide. I might have the Persona 2 one as well.
The Radou games are fun. You’ll enjoy them
Great video as always. As for the ideal way to play Raidou, my personal advice is
I have the hardback guides from Prima for FF7-15 and KH 1.5 also Disgaea D2.
13:52 that’s the Spider-Man/PlayStation 3 font, isn’t it?
Awesome stuff my guy. It's a shame though how these days we don't get stuff like this. Really let's you get more absorbed into the game world if it's not just text. Also, do you have any idea where I could find scans for the smt 4 strategy guide? It looks really cool, but all I could find was a preview.
9:36 if only they knew how over done the school setting would become
ty smt cybershell, very cool
The Soul Hackers guide that refers to it as Devil Summoner 2 is actually Chinese lol. But that is really cool since the game probably made it over to Taiwan or something via imports
i was made aware of this after i had already recorded all the voice narration, but now it's out in the open i guess.
@@bubbletea_ Ah lol. Oh well
Thanks for the links! Awesome stuff! Is there a way to get these guides to not show up in Chinese (for Soul Hackers)? Japanese is fine, but I can’t read Chinese 😆
(in Chinese) perhaps?
15:11 what song plays here? pls tell me
Labyrinth of Amala's theme, from Nocturne
@@Rylaine thank you
How many times will you change this thumbnail lol
this is the last time. i tried changing it a few times to see if i could salvage the video's click-through rate to no avail so i just changed it back to the one i liked the most out of the bunch.
@@bubbletea_ that’s fair, I still think regardless this video is absolutely fantastic and you have the best aesthetics out of all the MegaTen content creators
It's always a shame when you don't knowhow to READ!!!