The Paper Trail, Part 2: Player's Guides and Strategy Books

Every good game once came with a secret weapon, and it was rarely on the cartridge. It lived on paper. Long before a walkthrough was a quick search away, the way you beat a stubborn boss, found a hidden warp or squeezed one more life out of a level was to reach for a printed guide, thumb-worn and sometimes pricier than the pocket money that bought it. The collection keeps a modest shelf of these companions, and together they tell their own story about how the Game Boy was actually played, one dog-eared page at a time.

The shelf splits neatly into two families. On one side are the official Player's Guides that Nintendo published to cover a whole system or a whole series. On the other are the strategy books built around a single game, most of them Japanese. Both did the same job of getting you unstuck, yet they went about it in very different ways.

Some of the books cost more than the games they explained.

The official Player's Guides

Nintendo understood early that a good guide sold more games, so it put its own name on the best of them. The oldest here is the Game Boy Player's Guide (USA), published by Nintendo of America in 1991. Across 178 pages it introduced players to the young system's library and gave detailed level guides for a selection of titles. It set the template so well that the later German books openly followed its lead, right down to the mix of enthusiastic game introductions and step-by-step solutions.

Before the internet, this was the internet.

That German lineage begins with the Game Boy Player's Guide (Germany) from 1992. Its almost 150 pages introduced games, walked through solutions and explained the hardware, clearly modelled on the American guide from the year before. Two years later Nintendo of Europe followed it with the Game Boy Player's Guide 2 (Germany), another 144 pages covering newer releases in the same friendly style. That second volume had a much smaller print run, so surviving copies are scarce, making it the harder of the two German books to track down today.

Some of these cost more than the games they explained.

Some of these cost more than the games they explained.

The Super Game Boy Player's Guide (USA) from 1994 took a different angle. Instead of the handheld alone it focused on the games that looked their best through the Super Game Boy adapter, the cartridge that let you play Game Boy titles in colour on a SNES. Alongside tips, strategies and colour screenshots it took a close look at the adapter's own features. It was sold on its own and also bundled with the Super Game Boy itself, which is catalogued here too.

A guide book dedicated to the Super Game Boy

The most lavish of the group is the Pokémon Player's Guide (Germany) from 2000. Almost 120 pages cover Red, Blue and Yellow, laying out the games' maps and packing in solutions and tips, and it arrived with a large poster map and a sheet of Pokémon stickers. By the time it appeared, Pokémon had turned the ageing Game Boy into a worldwide phenomenon, and those generous extras show just how big the games had become. The three titles it guides you through are, of course, also in the collection.

The per-game strategy books

Where the Player's Guides tried to cover a whole system, the strategy books zoomed in on a single adventure, and most of them came from Japan, where companion books were a thriving corner of the hobby. Fittingly, the shelf starts where the Game Boy's Mario story does. The Super Mario Land Strategy Guide was published by ASCII in 1989, the very year the game launched. Super Mario Land was Mario's first outing on the handheld and was meant to be the system's showcase until Nintendo of America chose to bundle Tetris instead. It still sold more than 18 million copies, outselling even Super Mario Bros. 3, and spawned two sequels. The game and its follow-ups all sit in the collection.

From the same launch year comes the Super Mario Land + Golf, Tetris Strategy Guide, an official book published by Kodansha in 1989 that bundled help for three of the Game Boy's defining early games at once: Tetris, Golf and Super Mario Land. Each of those titles is catalogued here in its own right.

The Mario thread continues with the Super Mario Land 2 Strategy Guide from 1992. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins sold over 10 million copies, ranked among the highest-rated Game Boy games and, most importantly for what came next, introduced a greedy new rival named Wario. Nintendo published this Japanese book to steer players through the sequel's larger, more elaborate levels. The game is in the collection as well.

Wario promptly stole the spotlight. The Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 Strategy Guide from 1993 accompanies the third and final Super Mario Land game, the one that handed the controls to Wario himself as he hunts for a home of his own. It marks the end of one series and the start of the Wario Land line, and Nintendo issued this guide to help players through its trickier stretches. Five years on, the Wario Land 2 Strategy Guide from 1998 carries the story forward, as pirates led by Captain Syrup raid Wario's castle and flood it. That game is catalogued in both its Japanese and European versions.

Wario got a game, then he got a whole bookshelf.

Wario got a game, then he got a whole bookshelf.

Rare's apes get their own volume too. The Donkey Kong Land Strategy Guide supports Rare's 1995 handheld game, released in Japan as Super Donkey Kong GB, which shrank the SNES hit Donkey Kong Country down onto the Game Boy. It was ambitious and genuinely tough for its time, so Nintendo put out this Japanese book to guide players through the harder sequences.

Two Japanese curiosities round out the shelf. The Game Boy Victory Book is a Japan-only strategy and hint book from the system's early years, published by ASCII and Famitsu and, wonderfully, shaped like the original Game Boy itself, gathering tips, secrets and game information in a thoroughly stylised package. Beside it sits the Game Boy Strategy Guide 05/1990, a special edition from the Japanese NES Magazine that collected tips, tricks and reviews for ten of the most popular Game Boy games of 1990. Both capture the era when a printed companion was simply part of owning a handheld.

The Victory Book: a strategy guide cosplaying as a Game Boy.

Game Bo Strategy Guide (JPN) - 05/1990

Held together, these books map out a whole way of playing that has quietly disappeared, back when knowing a game meant owning the book about it. If you would like to leaf through the rest of the shelf, the guides and the games they cover are waiting at gameboymuseum.com.