So I bought the X-Com pack on Steam this weekend, but I couldn't really get a hang of the gameplay so I had to look for a manual. Since Steam didn't have one, I looked on the internet and found a pdf of the original. It is FREAKING HUGE. The game's from back in 1993, and the manual back then is a monster compared to our flimsy 10-pagers today. It's 137 pages, and almost acts like a strategy guide. Take a look for yourself if you're interested.

http://www.xcomufo.com/x1manual.pdf

The game manuals of Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings and SimCity 2000 are around 400 pages each.

Omg, some dictionaries aren't that thick ><. I guess me thinking 137 is huge shows my age (or lack thereof).

A lot of older games have really big manuals.  Those two that I previously mentioned I still have the manuals to, so I only know those two at the moment.

I hate how thin manuals are, i love to read them :) nothing beats the excitement of cracking open a new game and seeing a big ass manual you get to read :D

I remember when I got Pokemon Red, I thought that manual was huge.  Also makes me laugh @ SimCity2000.  You can read that or a Harry Potter book, same number of pages.

Man I wish manuals came back. I'd like at least a good 100 page manual with strategy games. Civ IVs manual was a pretty good size. A small but thick little manual explaining everything necessary and a GIANT FUCKING WALL-SIZE TECH TREE poster. 

"Also... Steam does have the manual.  It's the link down the right side of the game page that says "view the manual."  It's best to right-click & save link as.

(Oh, but maybe it wasn't there a month and a half ago?)"

I agree with the sentiment most of you have posted in this thread... I laughed when I saw that the "future" world the X-com universe took place in 1998... though the biggest laugh came when  I saw the memory requirement was one and a half megabytes.  We've come so far since then with our hardware yet attempts to recreate X-Com have all met with miserable failure.  Some of the games released weren't bad but none even close to this good.  I'd be happy if someone even just released a mod that let you run the game in higher resolutions... some day.
 
I figured I'd add a little something to the discussion too to get this post back on topic.
 
Manuals back then often served a dual purpose.  First to inform users about the game and second to act as DRM.  In the X-Com manual, starting on page 19 you see two sets of numbers formatted XXXX-XXXX in the bottom left of every odd numbered page.  Every time you started up X-Com (the original boxed retail version) a screen would pop up prompting you for the numbers on a random page numbers.  This worked surprisingly well given that the pdf format was also invented in 1993 and 200 page pdf files were a bit bigger than a lot of people could fit on their hard drive much less download with their 28K modems.