In October 2020 I made a feature about a project who tried to find every existing Super Nintendo manual, scan it and upload it to the internet. I am pleased to announce that in July 2022, the project has now completed a significant – and for many of you reading this, the most important – milestone.
When I released this featurethe team (including Arachness, BuffaloJoe, Timber, SNES Central and Grant Kirkhart) working on the project –led by streamer and archivist Peebs– had uploaded around 600 scans and only had around 100 manuals left by the time they scanned the instructions for every game ever released in the West during the console’s lifetime.
That was good progress, but the deeper they searched the SNES library, the harder it became to find booklets for the weirdest and rarest games in the collection. Then last week:
That means the project’s archives now have an English manual for every single Super Nintendo game ever officially released in the language. Sometimes that’s the North American version, sometimes the PAL (European/Australasian) version, sometimes both when there are differences beyond the cover artwork, the spelling, and the postal address in the background (like the way Against 3 was called Super Probotector in PAL regions).
It’s not quite every game that’s ever been released in the westas some games might get different unique releases depending on language market, but as this is an English language site I thought this is an important milestone for our readers!
And it still is very close. The team shy away from the feat of “every western handbook ever” for a single release by just one game: an original scan of the unique German-language version Drowsiness before Christmas (although they have a translated version of the rare English language Mega Drive release in case anyone needs the info).
After that, however, their work never seems to be done. Even when every manual was scanned and uploaded, some games – including many RPGs – had important information written elsewhere, such as on separate maps/posters, so try to upload and scan those as well if possible. you also have a Super Famicom manual section to work through as well.
If you want to take a look at the complete library or just bookmark it for future reference, it is available herealthough you might as well Search the Internet Archive for a specific game and it will come there too. And for something more action-packed, in addition to collecting their manuals Peebs is also working his way through the SNES library, trying to beat every single game on Twitch (at last count he only had 47 left!)