Part of the wonder of owning Nintendo's Super NES RPG classic EarthBound involves the full complete Nintendo Player's Guide that came with the game inside that really big box. There aren't many games that come with essentially the complete solutions to all of the adventure's puzzles, and it just goes to show how much Nintendo of America really wanted EarthBound to make it big in North America at the time. You had no excuse to give up the game in frustration since you had all of the maps and answers right there at your fingertips. These days it's difficult to acquire a used copy of EarthBound along with an intact guide for a reasonable price, but EarthBound Central has word that the old guide has been scanned as a high resolution PDF file by the team at Retromags. Relive the glory days of Onett, Twoson, Threed, and Fourside!
The guide was a big temptation back in the day, but I made a point of not relying on it too much. After clearing a major area I would refer to the guide to see if I'd missed any interesting side quests or special items. Basically, the guide was used to play clean-up on stray quirkiness. The speed and convenience of the Internet has rendered these kinds of books obsolete, but it's fun to refer back to them sometimes. In addition to the basic maps and hints, there are loads of fun character artwork (and you know how much I love classic character artwork) and trivia lurking on almost every page.
