Don´t know if it really counts as a Gimmick, but I love it when Guide Books sprinkle some of the stuff you would typically find in a "The Art of..." book into their design. I.e. the Grandia III Guide from Brady has some Artworks for the character throughout it, and even a few for locations. To me it adds a little bit of extra value to the book. And I also don´t know if I´m more surprised that they made a guide book for a Rugrats game in the first place or that they went the extra mile and added those random activities into it.
I'd say that's more fan service. Versus Books was CHOCK full of it in their fighting game guides. Their Alpha 1 & 2 books were love letters to the fans and players. And indeed! Rugrats surprised me as well. I recently just added the Hot Wheels one to the collection. Would have made a great reading project for a child. :)
These are some cool details and additions to these guide books. The fact that your ProjectUp1 made you aware that some of these codes were wrong and not double checked is crazy and kind of funny lol. But imagine back in the day you were looking through one of these books for a code for a game you were playing and tried the code out only for it to not work. At the time you'd think it would work if it wound up in the book. Oh man the frustration and disappointment.
i have several of my original strategy guide books but the one near and dear to me is the playstation survival guide volume 3 because the first guide i used for resident evil 2 and clock tower. i have never seen a clock tower guide book anywhere i think theres one for the second game but not first or ive never seen one. i miss good strategy guides.
From Sandwich Island Publishing, nice! I'm super close to having their full guide suite. And you're correct - CT1 did not have a stand-alone guide, but they did do one for CT2. A lot of PS1 games that shocked in sales ended up getting the full guide treatment with the sequels.
For more info, check out the full Breath of Fire III guide!...actually no. Don't. It's has several mistakes. LOL I agree though, if more publishers put out samples like that, it probably would have sold more guides.
