Game manuals died a decade ago, and it wasn’t a slow death. From the 70s to the late 2000s, the game manual was a tent-pole element of the physical game release. Some manuals would be simple tutorials of the game, others would be filled with story and lore. Pokemon Red and Blue’s manuals were gorgeously designed as Trainer’s Guides, teaching the in-universe character Red how to become a Pokemon trainer.

Nowadays, manuals are extremely rare with only specialist releases like Limited Run Games, Super Rare Games or Lost in Cult release alongside their games. While offiical manuals may have gone the way of the dodo, one talented fan has been crafting gorgeous physical books to go alongside your favourite Nintendo games.

Growing up with the thick, rich manuals of the Nintendo 64 era of Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Rowan Fox-Noble of MBPUK was one of many disappointed gamers when manuals started to be phased out at the start of the 2010s.

“I think I got the physical Wind Waker and Nintendoland as well [on the WiiU],” Fox-Noble told us. “It was kind of juts opening up and seeing, like, a slip of paper in there. I was like, ‘Oh, it’s just this’. And it was just a bit weird, you know, they always put beauty and craft into creating their work.”

In 2017, when The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey released, Fox-Noble was disappointed at the lack of a game manual of any sort. As someone who grew up flicking through the manuals of every prior Mario and Zelda game to the point where the pages started to rip around the edges, it was a major blow, and they decided to craft their own manual for the games.

“I, more or less, just got a Switch, I was playing Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey came out,” they explained. “It was at this point where they came out and there was nothing at all and I thought, ‘Is there anything out online?’ There wasn’t. It was just for myself and my purpose. I was like, for me, I just fancy making something. I printed it out at home.”

Eventually, they opened up their Etsy shop for a single customer who wanted a copy of their in-depth Breath of the Wild manual (which has since been completely remade), and it spiraled from there. Focusing on Nintendo Switch and the new Nintendo Switch 2, Fox-Noble has made dozens of manuals with detailed lore, checklists for in-game items and more. For example, the Animal Crossing manual has pages dedicated to helping you track every item in the game, which I know I would’ve loved as a kid.

Every manual is different with their own graphical style. For Skyward Sword HD, the pages are obviously very inspired by the game’s original Wii release, and the Mario 3D All-Stars manual has sections for each game designed off their original manuals for Nintendo 64, GameCube and Nintendo Wii respectively. Most importantly, they also all fit in a Nintendo Switch case which Fox-Noble explains isn’t easy with a very unique size format and a maximum page count of around 60 before the thin plastic starts to bow.

Making manuals isn’t easy either. Without any direct line to the developers, Fox-Noble spends months on each design. When The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom came out, they spent weeks finding every Korok seed, a feat which was not only intensive for them, but also for their software with seeds taking ages to add as they crossed the 900 mark.

“A good chunk [of time] is the gathering side of things because it’s a manual at the end of the day,” they said. “I source [as many] assets and image resourcing information I can get becaause the struggle with games like [Donkey Kong] Bananza or Mario Kart World is, when it’s newly out, my idea would be like, oh vehicle stats, I wanna put that in… there’s no information of that. So it’s a constant battle on updates and talking with the community about what are these things or how does this work. And it can be very, very hard.”

There’s also the issue of game-changing updates which rarely occurs with first-party Nintendo releases, but still does on occasion. When Animal Crossing: New Horizons released its Deep Sea Creatures update, Fox-Noble had to release an updated Player Pass V2 manual so that players could continue to track everything.

“I feel like that, for people receiving it, I’m then giving them false information in a way If that makes sense [for games with game-changing updates],” he continued. “Or, you know, them for to get it and then I’d feel bad that they’re not getting the latest thing.” However, for the most part, Nintendo games don’t really change.

For Rowan Fox-Noble, making game manuals of modern games has given them a newfound appreciation for the art, and while they may not refer to themselves as a graphic designer, they have lovingly crafted a host of gorgeous manuals that allow ageing gamers like me to relive the past while continuing to move towards the present. Also, they’re just downright adorable.