Manual Misprint

It's what happens when you don't proofread your manual.

Since a game's manual is often written before the game is complete (and since nobody reads them anyway), a completely perfect game manual is a rare sight to behold.

Sometimes plans change before the game's release, leaving the manual as perfect documentation... of the game's beta version. The manual could have downright wrong stats, causing an uproar of confusion among the players. Maybe they forgot to remove that Dummied Out item or stage from the manual list, causing many an Urban Legend of Zelda as players try to track down the hidden secrets they suggest. Yet other times, it's just a crazy typo.

But whether the writer didn't research the game properly, or if the manual itself is just an incredibly Obvious Beta, it's hilarious to see just what made it through to print. These errors are usually cherished by the fandom as So Bad, It's Good.

Often a frustration of Read the Freaking Manual comments - since sometimes, people are asking because they read the manual. May overlap with Orphaned Reference, if the manual refers to something that was removed from the final game. When it's tutorials in the game doing this, it's The Computer Is a Lying Bastard.

Glaring errors are often fixed in updates, so these are more common in the first versions of the manual.

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Examples

PC

• The Age of Empires II manual was printed before the game was finalized, and as such contains a number of mistakes and references to Dummied Out features. Most notably is the whole section on 'Custom Formations', now useless since the feature was removed, along with several references to a 'horde' formation which no longer exists.^note Technically it still does: it's the formation a mixed group of military and non-military units automatically take while moving, but it's no longer manually selectable.
• In Caesar III, the manual's list of structures describes the effect of "Statue, Large" as "Prosperity rating up to 75%." "Statue, Medium" also had its effect given as "Prosperity rating up to 75%," and this duplication is probably what prompted someone to editorially annotate it with "what the hell is this shit." Incredibly, this annotation made its way into print. It was quickly re-printed and removed, but not before hilarity ensued. The PDF manual that comes with the GOG.com version actually retains this.
• The strategy guide for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has several screenshots of menus that were obviously pre-release screenshots. The Deathstreaks one, for instance, has an extra deathstreak and a different image for the copycat entry.
• The manual for Command & Conquer: Generals states that the Chinese soldiers have bayonets, when in fact, you simply deploy two of them instead. However, the bayonet part is ironically correct (they are on the character model) but irrelevant, as the the soldier units in question have no melee attack.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert has a few errors in its manual, such as saying that some multiplayer-only weapons were available in single player and vice versa. The Expansion Pack The Aftermath also said that the M.A.D. Tank is usable by both sides and the Demolition Truck is Soviet-only, when in reality it's the other way around.
• Command & Conquer: Renegade had a typo in its manual, claiming the game took place in 2020 (which is closer to Tiberian Sun than the original game), a mistake which many Wikipedia contributors took as intended despite all in-game evidence pointing at the developers meaning 2002, like in the original game's final missions. The enemies becoming Gas Mask Mooks didn't help.
• Diablo has never been translated in French, but a manual translating every dialogue and quest text have been published. It includes lines from a removed Non-Player Character named Tremayne.
• Doom 95, a re-release of the first Doom that ran under Windows instead of DOS, shipped with a manual that made many references to Doom II. Apparently, they just copied the Doom II manual, but tried (unsuccessfully) to remove all information irrelevant to the first game. For example, the Baron of Hell was described as "Like a Hell Knight, but worse," when the Hell Knight is a Doom II-only enemy. Done on purpose in The Depths of Doom Trilogy's manual, where the Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind are marked "in Doom II only" so as not to spoil their boss fights in Doom I.
  • Another one from the original manuals: while the Doom 1 manual correctly states that the berserk powerup lasts for the whole level (or until you die), the Doom 2 manual incorrectly states it only lasts for a finite amount of time, which is especially unfortunate as the powerup was already horribly counterintutive to begin with (specifically, it makes your view get all red tinted for about 20 seconds, leading most players to assume it only lasted until the red went away.)
• The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall: The UESP website recommends not to use the manual as reference since it was based on a pre-release version and contains information inconsistent with the actually released version.
• Epic's manual describes an Ion as "a particle of *FILL IN LATER*."
• KGB was retitled Conspiracy in Europe. The manual was thus localized by doing a search-and-replace to change all instances of "KGB" to "CONSPIRACY". This had... predictable results.
• The manual for King's Quest Collector's Edition incorrectly reproduced several of the spell directions which King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human required the player to type in correctly, though one could figure from context that one of them had "hither" and "thither" incorrectly switched.
• The manual for Messiah claims that machines, unlike humans, cannot be possessed. But the only enemy in the game which is referred to as a "machine" (Armored Behemoth) can be possessed, and in fact at one point it's necessary to do so in order to proceed.
• RollerCoaster Tycoon:
  • The manual for RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 encourages players to build drink stands next to stalls selling salty foods in order to increase drink sales. This is a likely origin for an Urban Legend of Zelda that different foods have different saltiness levels inside the game's code, but the truth is that no such gameplay mechanic exists, and all foods have a similar effect on a guest's thirst regardless of how salty they would be in real life.
  • RollerCoaster Tycoon 2:
    • The manual contains several statements that make the game sound like a more advanced simulation than it actually is. Examples include claiming that guests can see other areas of your park from the top of a tall ride when the truth is that guests can't use rides to get a view at all, or claiming that playing music will attract guests to a ride when the truth is that music has no direct effect on guests' intention to ride something.
    • The manual gets several technical details of the game wrong, such as giving the wrong formula for how the game determines the total monetary value of your park, or referring to the bumper cars as a member of the thrill ride group of rides when in the game itself they're categorized as a member of the gentle ride group.
• Serious Sam 2 lists an item that was Dummied Out from the game in the manual.
• StarCraft listed the beta versions of many game units in early prints of the manual (the errata files referred to the discrepancies as "last-minute changes"). For example, it claimed that Mutalisks shoot acid, and queens and defilers (and on the Protoss side, high templars) have attacks. Cutscenes still depict Mutalisks spitting acid clouds.
  • Some of the 'Upgrades' were incorrect as well, like the ground-attack laser for the Wraith being an 'upgrade' instead of standard equipment like it became.
• The manual for TZAR: The Burden of the Crown doesn't mention that you had to right-click to order units around. While obvious now, a person arriving from Command & Conquer or other left-click interface games will have trouble - especially when the only mention of the right-click interface is to state you don't understand how RTS games work. In other news, it listed every single unit, but didn't mention strengths and weaknesses of a unit until a small passage at the end (which was still an incomplete picture.)
• The instruction manual that came with retail copies of 2005's Star Wars: Battlefront II were obviously recycled from the previous game. For instance, it states that the sniper class carries a recon droid, which it could in the first game, but in the second game they carry auto turrets while only specific special units carry recon droids.
• Strife described the Reaver enemy as being "VERY fast," saying that saturation bombing may be the only effective way to destroy them. In game, they're faster than most enemies, but not by much. The Demons in the original Doom (which Strife uses the engine for) are a lot faster.
• World of Warcraft's manual states that dwarves can choose the mage as a class (differing from most depictions of dwarves). Guess what? They can't. (They could in early beta, though.) Moreover, the Cataclysm expansion fixed this. Manuals printed as late as 2006 contained references to Plainsrunning, a Tauren ability patched out before release. This was also done with Druids and the Polearm weapons up until it was patched, Druids couldn't use them but in the manual it said they could. It actually listed "Polearm" and "Spears" as different weapon classes, saying Druids could use Spears.
  • Of course with the constant evolution of the game, including a ground-up revamp of most Vanilla content in "Cataclysm", it would be hard to find much in the manual that is STILL accurate. Fortunately the ingame information has been expanded a lot as well, even including some easy-to find information about the latest gameplay changes for all classes for returning players.
• X3: Reunion had a manual full of Blatant Lies and completely wrong info. X3: Terran Conflict is much more accurate, but it's still wrong on some things; it has ships with the wrong picture, and it talks about several guns that do not exist normally in the game. X: Rebirth was the first X game with an accurate manual, but the copious amounts of bugs in the initial release made it seem like a misprint. Amusingly, reading the initial manual with the current game version can make it seem like a misprint, as the game was heavily reworked after release (with a mini-manual for each update); particularly in regards to ship crew and the user interface.
• Guild Wars has an example in the third campaign, Nightfall. In the manual one of the recruitable heroes, Razah, was described as having a variable class, that the player could determine. When the game came out, however, he could only be a Ritualist. This was averted three years later, when an update allowed him to change his class as stated in the manual.
• Nearly a quarter of the manual for the computer game adaptation of Twilight: 2000 consists of errata, including a long list of skills, equipment and options that have been removed. Then, the game itself contains a readme file which lists errata to the errata (and it's inaccurate in some spots—for example, listing "removed" skills that are still in the game.)
• The manual for the tie-in game Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron: Forever Free contains bios for all the human characters. However among them is a bio for one "Bill", who, according to it, is Snakefinger's lackey, and performs various tasks such as scouting out new herds of horses, and cleaning Snakefinger's cabin. Bill is nowhere to be found within the game.
• The Descent 3 strategy guide makes reference to enemy robots doing various odd things they don't actually do in the final game, such as claiming the tubbs robot will stop and stand there in gratitude if you drop an powerup as a "gift" (in the final game you can't even drop powerups), claiming the thief can kidnap your guidebot in addition to stealing your weapons, and referring to a certain robot having limbs that grow back unless they are blown off with a "level 4 or higher laser" (the final game doesn't have levels of lasers like the first two, instead just having a "laser" and a more powerful "super laser".)
• The Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness manual incorrectly claims that units with greater "stamina" (presumably Hit Points) can resist the Polymorph spell. The spell always works, even on hero units.

Nintendo Entertainment System

• Action 52's manual sometimes describes completely different games or features that weren't in most games. For instance, "Bits and Pieces" is described as a Falling Blocks game, but it's actually more like a ripoff of Altered Beast (1988). The description of "Sharks" promises "rare marine creatures" and undersea treasures to collect, and an "electromagnetic base" to hide from sharks in, none of which appear in the game.
• Adventure Island's manual refers to Master Higgins' girlfriend as Princess Leilani, despite the fact that she is called Tina in the game. The recurring boss of the game is referred by two different names in the manual as well ("King Quiller" and the "Evil Witch Doctor").
• Athena: Whereas some NES games were misleadingly advertised with screenshots from their graphically superior arcade versions, Athena's manual used some screenshots from the NES version... of Spelunker.
• Bionic Commando
  • The manual leaves out the command for aborting a mission, which is done by pressing A, B and Start simultaneously. This can be a problem if you enter an area that requires a certain item to proceed (such as the beginning of Area 6, which requires the rocket gun you get from clearing Area 5 to destroy a gate), since you can't exit a stage simply by walking back to the starting point as one would expect.
  • In the weapon section, it also lists "Player" with the description "Shoots in 8 directions, waves wires" and a picture of the main character. You can only fire in eight directions in the overmap stages, and the picture was from a 2D stage. That, mixed with its odd location in the middle of a list of collectible items, led some players to think it was a hidden item.
• Castlevania's manual makes reference to an alternating 2-player mode that doesn't exist in the game. This is actually leftover text from the NES Gradius manual, which did have an alternating 2-player mode, as both manuals were written with the same basic template.
• Contra's manual claims that the player must destroy a "diamond-shaped sensor" to clear the Waterfall stage, which would've been true... if this was the arcade version. On the NES the Waterfall boss is a giant Xenomorph Xerox whose weak points are the tips of its two tentacles and its mouth when it's open. The stage descriptions were written with multiple versions in mind (as Contra was also released on Commodore 64 and DOS at the same time in North America and Konami used the same stage descriptions for the PC versions), but the NES version differs significantly from the arcade game and other versions in this respect.
• Double Dragon's manual provides no explanation on how the game's leveling system, listing all the moves that the player can perform in the main game (Mode A) while neglecting to mention that the player has to reach a certain level to perform each of them. On top of that, the input for the elbow punch and spin kick are completely wrong, as neither actually required any tapping motion (the elbow punch is perform automatically by pressing A when an enemy is approaching from behind, while the spin kick replaces the roundhouse as a combo finisher with the B button). On the enemy descriptions, Lopar's name is actually spelled differently from how it appears in-game (Rowper), Abobo is described as being capable on throwing bombs, despite the fact that he never wields any explosives in-game (in reality, this is a mistranslated reference to his cut genbaku nage or atomic drop move from the arcade version, in which he grabs and tosses the player around), and Chintai's name was inexplicably shortened from the original Chin Taimei used in the Japanese manual (on the other hand, the misspelling of Linda to Rinda was corrected).
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest III had an item chart/map included in the initial release, which mistakenly claimed that the Iron Shield was cursed due to the description of the actually cursed Noh Mask accidentally having been used instead. What makes this even more notable is that this led to the Dragon Quest IV item chart repeating the same mistake, complete with unique text.
  • Dragon Quest IV has got quite a lot of misprints in its manual. For example, it is claimed that Maya and Meena's (Mara and Nara's) father was "Loro", a weaponsmith who "died of unknown causes" ("Loro" was actually alchemist Mahabala/Edgar who got murdered by Balzack); that the Powder Keg/Gunpowder Jar would have the Chancellor "lead [the player] to Keeleon" in a castle (the castle was already named Keeleon Castle/Palais de Leon, and the "boss" is not Keeleon, but rather Balzack); and that Tom Foolery/Panon is a "she" who is "a brilliant star" and "is good to have in dark places" (Tom/Panon is not a woman, but he's rather a comedian, and we don't know if he's "good to have in dark places" or not, but he is more of a Joke Character than a helpful person).
• Ghoul School: The manual depicts the Spinal Zap weapon as looking like a syringe, instead of the stun-gun like sprite used in game. This is likely a holdover from when the weapon used to be called the Spinal Tap.
• The Goonies II's manual claims that the B button is not used in "Adventure Scenes", the game's first-person mode inside the rooms. In fact the B button is used to access the second page of the item menu, where the Glasses and Wet Suit commands are.
• Mighty Final Fight's manual describes Abigail as asking trivia questions and attempting to kiss you if you answer wrong. This is actually true, but only in the Japanese version, where he would ask you a series of trivia questions before the fight and award you with a continue if you answered them all correctly. The quiz was removed in the North American version, which simply has a pre-fight banter between the player and Abigail.
• The manual for the NES version of Karnov says you can only continue three times. The Famicom version did limit you to two continues, but the NES version allows unlimited continues.
• Kid Icarus (1986): The instructions manual makes reference to a high score table. There is no such thing in the NES version. The high score table was only present in the Famicom Disk System version which allowed for the saving of data.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The manual claims that Pol Voices hate "loud noises." This was intended to be a clue to their weakness in the Famicom version, where they can only be killed by yelling on the built-in microphone on the second controller. But because the NES controller doesn't have any microphone functionality on it, they can only be killed by firing arrows at them in that version. However, the clue to killing them was not changed to reflect this difference and many players mistakenly assumed that Pol Voices could be weakened by playing the flute (or "recorder" to use the in-game term), which actually has no effect against them.
  • The manual states that the whistle will take Link to Level 9's entrance after completing the first eight. It has no such ability; instead, as the Japanese manual said, using the whistle can transport Link to the entrance to any dungeon he's already completed.
• Life Force had the names of the bosses Cruiser Tetron/Tetran (the core boss with the four rotating arms) and Intruder (the fire dragon) switched in the North American manual.
• The instruction manual for the first Mega Man game says that pressing up on the + Control Pad will make Mega Man jump (the A button actually does this) and that pressing down will make Mega Man crouch (something Mega Man wouldn't be able to do until Marvel vs Capcom).
• Strider's manual says that Hiryu retired from his organization "after eliminating the sister of a mad A-grade Strider." In the tie-in manga that was published in Japan, it is made clear what really happened was that Hiryu killed his own sister (Mariya), an A-grade Strider who went mad. Also, Dragon Fiend is mistakenly called Dragon F'r'iend, when he was far from friendly.
• Super Mario Bros. 2 switches the names for Birdo and Ostro in some versions of the manual. This may be due to their names being switched in the end credits as well. The mistake was kept in the Super Mario All-Stars version of the game, but was eventually corrected in Super Mario Advance. The manual also states that entering sub-space in the right area can get you a heart to extend your life meter. This is false because mushrooms are the items that boost the life meter. The heart that the manual was referring to was from Doki Doki Panic, which is what Super Mario Bros. 2 was before becoming a Dolled-Up Installment. Likewise, the manual shows the wrong sprite for Phanto, where it uses the Doki Doki Panic version (neutral face) instead of the Mario version (sinister grin).
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
  • The manual for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game lists the Stone Warriors as mooks, and shows a picture of General Traag. In reality, Traag is an end-stage boss, as is the only other "Stone Warrior" Lt. Granitor.
  • The manual for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters NES version just says to press B to pick up the "Fireball" that gets dropped onto the stage. The real control is to hold Down and press B. The throwing control is mostly correct; it's basically quarter circle forward + B.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Not the manual of the game itself, but on the official Top Secret Passwords strategy guide, "Marvin Acme" and "Acme's Will" are repeatedly mislabeled as "R.K. Maroon" and "Maroon's Will", even though the will clearly was Acme's and Nintendo Power wrote the name of the wrong dead person.
• The instruction manual for Zelda II: The Adventure of Link helpfully warns you that some experience-giving "P" bags are hiding enemies inside them. The opposite is often true, in that vanquished enemies can drop the bags, and some Ironknuckle statues may disgorge a real one when struck, but there are no "P" bags in any version of the game that behave this way.

Super NES

• Chrono Trigger's manual mistakingly calls the Slasher the Fleaver.
• While the North American manual for Contra III: The Alien Wars went with newly made-up names for almost all of the game's enemy characters, its European counterpart (Super Probotector: Alien Rebels), uses very rough translations of the Japanese names from Contra Spirits, revealing that two of the enemy characters listed in the North American manual actually have their names swapped with other characters. The giant tortoise at the end of the first stage is known as Beast Kimkoh in the North American version and Vicious Slave Hawk in the European version, while the winged xenomorph-like sub-boss from the final stage is called the Vicious Slave Hawk in the North American version and the Metal Alien in the European version. This is because "Vicious Slave Hawk" is actually a mistranslation of "Slave Beast Taka", the creature's name "Taka" being pronounced the same way as the Japanese word for Hawk. It seems at some point that the author for the North American manual was working with the same translated names used for the European manual and decided they didn't make sense, hence the name swap. Incidentally, Beast Kimkoh is actually the name of the final stage boss from Super C (the NES port of Super Contra), who shows as a sub-boss in the final level. The first form of the Wall Walker sub-boss from Stage 3 is also listed separately under the name of "Chrome Dome", which was likely a name that was intended for another enemy character.
• EarthBound (1994)'s strategy guide mentions that the Gutsy Bat is located in the Sea of Eden, randomly dropped from a Kraken. This is totally untrue; the Gutsy Bat is found in the final dungeon of the game (past the Point of No Return) from a different enemy, the Bionic Kraken. Made even worse in that the guide explicitly states how rare it is, and there only exist three of those Krakens in the area. An unsuspecting player might try in vain to obsessively reset the game, hoping in vain that one of these three Krakens drops the bat. Of course, it will never happen.
• Earthworm Jim's manual jokingly claims that pressing X "Turns off Mrs. Schultz's porch light in Germany. So quit pressing it!" (The X button is unused because the game, having been developed first for the Sega Genesis, only requires three face buttons.) This even becomes a Brick Joke in the sequel — one of the trivia questions in The Villi People is "Where does Mrs. Schultz live?" The manual also claims that one way to earn a continue is to find a can of worms. In the second game's manual, they concede that the first game had no such pick-ups (instead you had to earn them by beating the Andy Asteroids Bonus Stages between levels by winning against Psy-Crow), but that this game does (which is true).
• Final Fantasy VI (a.k.a. III) - For as otherwise accurate it was, the Nintendo Player's Guide has a ridiculously terrible Lore list. Many of the descriptions either leave out important details (such as Exploder/Self-Destruct killing Strago), or are just outright wrong (Sour Mouth/Bad Breath is listed as curing status ailments, and the descriptions of the level-based spells suggest that they hit your characters as well). Nearly half the descriptions are incorrect or vague in some way.
• Mortal Kombat listed erroneous controls for the Test Your Might minigame. This was remedied with an included note that stated that Shang Tsung's minions had dishonorably tampered with the manual to hinder your progress and included the corrected controls.
• Plok's manual has the pictures for the enemies Shprouts and Gershwin reversed.
• Saturday Night Slam Masters has the artwork for El Stingray and Scorpion switched on the manual.
• The whole manual for Secret of Evermore seems to have been based on a prototype version of the game, as numerous differences exist. The Magic Gourd is shown as a trade item (it's a relic in the actual game), the Queen's Key is called "White Castle Ke" (yes, "Ke"), a Mad Monk enemy is shown as a "Wily Rogue", and most interestingly, a few spells are listed for Queen Bluegarden and Professor Ruffleberg that don't actually exist... including one that supposedly drains MP. Which the game does not have.
• The manual for Super Mario All-Stars claims that the player dies when "all [their] hearts turn white" in Super Mario Bros. 2. Definitely a leftover from NES colors; the SNES version has depleted hearts turn blue. This page has more Mario examples.
• The Super Game Boy Player's Guide features an overview of the icons in the System Window. However, most of the descriptions are paired with the wrong icons. Thus, we get the Border, Controller Set-Up, Custom Color, and Graffiti Icons being described as the Custom Color, Border, Graffiti, and Controller Set-Up Icons respectively. Later in the guide, towards the end of the Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 section, a screenshot is shown depicting Wario confronting Captain Syrup right before she summons the Genie. Nothing wrong here... except for the caption describing the scene: "Wario has succeeded! He triumphed over the pirates and stands in front of the Genie. He is now going to get his reward, but what will it be?" Either the wrong screenshot was used in this instance, or the writer has mistaken Captain Syrup for a genie, since she's standing next to the lamp in the screenshot.
• The manual for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time SNES version is inaccurate about the Box of Hard Knocks. It claims it's "so strong, it takes one of your extra lives". It doesn't; your extra lives are safe. It's also described as a "red box with a black ball"; that's a Cartoon Bomb design with a tiny fuse.

Nintendo 64

• The official strategy guide for Gauntlet Legends seems to be based off the arcade version. For one example, it claims that the Scimitar deals great damage to one of the Chimera's heads, and that you need only kill one head to defeat it - in fact, it cuts off the lion head, and all three heads must be killed to bring down the Chimera.
• The manual for Mario Party 3 states that Thwomps have an attack power of two, but since they're designed to be a Stone Wall, they don't actually have any attack power. The back of the box also hints that Daisy and Waluigi can be unlocked by playing Story Mode, but they're actually playble from the get-go. Hacking the game to bypass the file select screen will have them locked, which hints them being unlockable was removed fairly late in the game's development.
• Turok 2's manual describes a leaping enemy called a Hunter that does not appear in the game, but may have been a prototype of the Leaper.

Nintendo GameCube

• Bomberman Generation's American manual has an example on page 10, which covers the game's worlds. While describing the first world, Tentasia, the manual mentions the ability to use boulders as makeshift river dams (which you need to do at certain points to progress through the level). Unfortunately (and rather hilariously), the writer must have been half-asleep as they let this typo slip through (a video showing this off, complete with music and the typo as a reveal can be found here).
  This is a Stage full of greenery. Use Bombs to damn rivers with boulders or create bridges using fallen trees in order to move forward through the Areas.
• Page 30 of Luigi's Mansion's American instruction booklet shows Professor E. Gadd speaking in Japanese.
• Mega Man Network Transmission appears to have suffered a "Blind Idiot" Translation from the Japanese version, at the hands of either Altavista Babelfish or someone given a Japanese-English dictionary without knowing any Japanese nor anything about the game. This is particularly evident in the character descriptions. They managed to misspell several characters' names, mention names of other supposed characters who don't actually exist (common nouns in the Japanese text seem to have been misinterpreted as proper names), and use a picture of Bug Style Mega Man for Chaud. And Bug Style doesn't even appear in this game.
• Mega Man X: Command Mission also features a name error that may or may not have been Fridge Brilliance by the makers of the manual. The name of X and Zero's commanding officer is spelled in the manual as "Rideps", but is later shown to be spelled "Redips". The Fridge Brilliance comes from the end of the game, when Redips becomes the Big Bad and reveals he has been party member Spider the entire time. Redips is Spider backwards.
• The Nintendo Power strategy guide for Super Smash Bros. Melee has a few elements left over from beta versions of the game, including listing Ditto as a Pokémon available in Poké Balls, and referring to the Totakeke (K.K. Slider) trophy as "Arlo".

Game Boy

• Donkey Kong Land series:
  • Donkey Kong Land does not provide level names in the actual game due to limitations (which were overcome by the time the sequels were made), but are All There in the Manual. Two of these levels got their names mistakenly switched — "Construction Site Fight" and "Balloon Barrage". The level that it labels as the former does not use the construction set piece and predominantly features balloons as its main gimmick, where the latter not only uses this set piece, it's the only level in the entire game to do so.
  • The manual for Donkey Kong Land 2 is largely copy-pasted for Donkey Kong Country 2's manual and as such makes occasional references to features that do not exist in Donkey Kong Land 2 (for example, stating that "Even old Cranky charges for his words of wisdom" when Cranky Kong is not in the game).
• The manual for the Game Boy version of Double Dragon recycles the same plot description from the manual of the NES version, which changed the story from the arcade version by turning Jimmy Lee, the player 2 character in the arcade, into the final boss. However, in the actual Game Boy game, Jimmy never really shows up in the main story mode. Once you defeat Machine Gun Willy (who was the main antagonist in the arcade version and the final enemy before you fight Jimmy in the NES version), Marian is set free and the ending sequence starts. The sibling battle between Billy and Jimmy still occurs in this version, but only in a separate 2-player versus mode that has no story to speak.
• Pokémon Red and Blue (and Yellow):
  • In a rare example of the manual (and all other media, for that matter) being correct and the game being wrong: The type chart in the Red and Blue manual states that Ghost is super-effective against Psychic, as the developers intended; the anime even had a short arc involving Ash's attempts to catch a Ghost type for his battle against the Psychic gym leader. However, a typo in the games' code rendered Psychic types immune to Ghost moves instead, contributing to the game-breaking status of the Psychic type. The Pokémon Yellow manual adjusted the included type chart to match the bug, while Pokémon Gold and Silver would finally fix the bug as part of a larger overhaul of the type chart.
  • The manuals have a fishing screenshot that reads "Ho! It's a hit!" The message in the released games is "Oh! It's a bite!".
• The Simpsons: Bart Simpson's Escape from Camp Deadly: Not the manual itself, but Nintendo Power's guide for the game misnamed Madman Mort as "Madman Krimmel Krogan", and also mislabeled Mount Deadly as "Mount Milehigh", all in one issue.
• Super Mario Land: Not a mistake per se, but the English manual used direct translations for the names of the enemy characters from the Japanese manual. This included enemies (namely the Chibibo, Nokobon and Gira) that were derived from existing Super Mario Bros. characters (the Kuribo, Nokonoko and Killer) and were given similar names to reflect this. The problem is that the enemies in Super Mario Bros. had different names in the localized version (Goomba, Koopa Troopa and Bullet Bill), so the play on names got lost between languages. When Super Mario Land was re-released on the Nintendo 3DS's Virtual Console, the derivative enemies were given new localized names (Goombo, Bombshell Koopa and Bullet Biff).
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers jokingly claims that the Select button "was used to shoot missiles, but Shredder's goons broke it so it no longer works".

Game Boy Color

• Mega Man Xtreme 2 uses utterly wrong transliterations for the names of every character mentioned except for X and Zero. In particular, Iris was an established character from Mega Man X4, and her name is both a real name and a real word—there was really no excuse for mangling it into "Aillis."
• Some versions of the Pokémon Gold and Silver manual claimed that happiness could be decreased by storing the Pokémon in the PC, and increased by just using any beneficial item on it. These are actually relics from Pikachu's happiness system in Pokémon Yellow, and have no effect whatsoever on happiness in the Generation II games.
• The manual for Moomin's Tale (based on The Moomins) has a character list which erroneously labels Snufkin and Little My as "The Hattifatteners". This is a strange mistake to make, as these two have no connection to Hattifatteners, and are major characters who anyone vaguely familiar with the Moomins would recognize.

Game Boy Advance

• Mega Man & Bass's manual has many Dub Name Change holdovers, like calling Auto "Lightot."
• Mega Man Battle Network 4: Red Sun and Blue Moon occasionally forgets the Dub Name Change and reverts "Mega Buster" back to the original "Rockbuster". The manual for the Red Sun version also has several pictures of version-specific elements from the Blue Moon version while the text still describes the Red Sun counterparts, leading to mismatched pictures and descriptions.
• Mega Man Zero's manual had a page dedicated to explaining that 'these characters' are Zero's fellow Resistance members. It also had a page full of art of some of the game's bosses. If you think those two pages should probably not be one and the same, then congratulations! You're officially smarter than whoever put that manual together.
• The instruction booklet for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past & Four Swords calls the Magic Cape from A Link to the Past "Roc's Cape", which is an item from Four Swords with a completely different function (jumping instead of invisibility).

Master System

• Captain Silver had content removed from the North American version of the game, which include two whole stages and most of the enemy characters. Despite this, the game's manual still list most of the missing enemies and makes references to the removed stages.
• Double Dragon's English manual has the names of Jeff (the Lee brother head swap boss of Mission 2) and Willy (the machine gun-toting final boss) switched (here's the Japanese original for comparison). Some of the point values given in the manual for performing certain moves are also inaccurate (the correct values are listed here).
• Sonic the Hedgehog's manual had official artwork of the Roller enemy on one page. Rollers appear in the Genesis/Mega Drive version of the game, but not here.
• Wonder Boy's manual switches the functions of the attack and jump buttons.

Mega Drive/Genesis

• The manual for the Genesis port of Double Dragon has a rather peculiar misinterpretation of the game's plot. While the game itself is a direct port of the arcade version, the author for the game's manual ended using the plot from the NES version for reference resulting in a disconnect between the manual and the actual content of the game similar to what happened to the Game Boy version as described above. While the original arcade game had twin martial artists Billy and Jimmy Lee working together to rescue their common love interest from a street gang, the NES version made Billy Lee into the sole hero by turning his brother Jimmy into the gang's leader. Apparently the presence of a second player character who looks identical to the first player was enough to clue in that something was different with the Genesis version, but not enough for him to actually make the correction. As a result, Machine Gun Willy, the game's actual antagonist, is incorrectly identified as Jimmy himself, while the actual Jimmy becomes a non-related ally of Billy named Jake.
• Elemental Master's English manual incorrectly transposes the screenshots of "Ultimate Elements," switching the ones for Fire and Wind with the ones on the facing page for Earth and Water.
• Golden Axe's manual identifies the boss of Stage 6 as Death Adder's son and the final boss as Death Adder himself. In the actual game, Death Adder Jr. is the final boss in Beginner mode, Death Adder is the Stage 6 boss and Death Bringer is the True Final Boss.
• Sonic the Hedgehog makes reference to a removed item that would've featured in the special stages: an orb that granted an extra life.
• Because some of Sonic the Hedgehog 3's content was removed and added to Sonic & Knuckles to meet Christmas demands, some of the enemies listed in the Sonic 3 manual don't show up until Sonic & Knuckles.
• Traysia - The English manual has the icons for battle commands (e.g. fight, defense, escape) and exploration (e.g. status, equipment, trade) switched. Likewise, the "how to start" page refers to the game's title as Ys III (another game published by Renovation).

Sega CD

• The manual for the North American version of Snatcher uses the wrong artwork for the character of JUNKER agent Jean-Jack Gibson. The character represented in the illustration is actually that of Freddie Nielsen, a murder suspect in the game's first act. The European manual corrected this. However, both versions of the manual used a screenshot of the wrong building for the Konami-Omni Building (the building they used was actually the place where Gillian sees Jaime off before joining JUNKER in the game's prologue).
• In the manual for Sonic CD, Amy's name was listed as Princess Sally (who was a character in Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM)). The PC version and all other ones after it got it right.

TurboGrafx-16

• The manual to Double Dragon II makes references to the steel pipe, a weapon featured in the NES version of the game. However, the enemies in the game are actually armed with shovels, which is the weapon they used in the arcade version. Likewise, the manual makes no reference to the wrecking ball, which is a weapon that was in the arcade version but not on the NES.
• Pop'n Magic's manual includes a picture of the title screen, where the copyright line misspells the name of the publisher as "TELENEENET JAPAN." Thankfully, this typo is corrected in the actual game.
• Monster Lair's English manual takes a few liberties with the story, stating that alien invaders have acquired the "Legendary Weapon of Complete Destruction", when actually it's the Legendary Sword and Armor from Wonder Boy in Monster Land that they stole; it also refers to the hero as Adam instead of Leo.

PlayStation

• The manual for Battle Arena Toshinden 2 prints Eiji's special move list twice: once on his own page, and again on Sofia's page. This had the odd habit of moving the move lists of all of the odd-numbered characters back two pages, leaving newcomer Chaos without a list to call his own (his page shows Gaia's moves).
• Breath of Fire III has an infamous misprint in the official guide by BradyGames that claimed that Balio and Sunder, an early pair of Hopeless Boss Fight, could be defeated. Cue much, much hair-ripping as it turned out to not be true.
• The English manual for Mega Man Legends 2 lists Von Bluecher and Klaymoor under their original Japanese names (Von Muller and Bancosus, respectively).
• Mega Man X5's American manual lists the bosses under their Gratuitous English names (Dark Necrobat, Spike Rosered, etc.) instead of the Guns N' Roses-inspired Theme Naming (Dark Dizzy, Axle [sic] the Red, etc.) used in the actual English version. The Compilation Re-release Mega Man X Legacy Collection uses these names, with some being cleaned up a bit (e.g. Spiral Pegasus instead of Spiral Pegacion).
• Silent Hill's official strategy guide was based on a beta version, as it remarks on the sneakiness of the lizard-like enemies that populate the sewers and tells you to "rely on that lovely sound coming from your radio" to help avoid them. It'd be pretty good advice for the finished version too, if only the radio still worked in the sewers.
• Suikoden's manual makes references to Magic Points for spellcasting. It doesn't; it uses Vancian Magic, where each spell can only be cast a certain number of times, independent of any other spells you might still have available. The character of Kuromimi is also listed under the name of "Black Ears", which is a literal translation of his name.
• The Prima guide for Tecmo's Deception mistakenly measures the hold duration of the game's Damage Traps and the first Confusion Trap, rather than their attack power and confusion duration, respectively. It also suggests that the Carpenter class of invader "don't appear often" during the story, which is technically true — Carpenters never appear in the plot; they must be specifically summoned by luring a Merchant and a Pirate.
• The manual for Resident Evil 2 points out that the highest rank you can obtain from completing the game is S. This was only true for the Japanese version of the game, as the localized versions removed the S rank and left A as the highest.
• The manual for Twisted Metal 4 mentions an option to have a CPU ally, which was available in the previous game, but not this one.

Sega Dreamcast

• The North American manual for the first Aero Wings accidentally left in an editor note ("I suggest changing 'behind view' and 'rear view' in the Excel files to 3rd-person view") on page 9.

PlayStation 2

• The BradyGames guide for Dragon Quest VIII was hilariously bad in a number of ways: It outright omitted some recipes, contained numerous typos throughout, omitted at least one chest location, and (most damningly for a "comprehensive" guide) gave no guidance for the postgame questline, including what might be the second most tedious dungeon in the game. It mentioned it existed, it just didn't actually tell the reader anything about the area, the items, or the bosses.
• The BradyGames strategy guide for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is based on a pre-release version of the game, it lists the locations for all the adrenaline pickups although they do not feature in the final product. Additionally, the locations for some of the collectibles don't match up to its corresponding description or their markers on the map are off, and the names for some of the weapons on these maps are not consistent.
• The BradyGames guide for Kingdom Hearts mistakenly called Sephiroth's signature attack "Sin Harvest" instead of "Heartless Angel" ^note  Sephiroth's voice line for the move, "Descend, Heartless Angel," does sound a bit like he's saying "Sin Harvest". It wasn't until Kingdom Hearts II that this mistake was corrected.
• The BradyGames guide for Kingdom Hearts II mentions a chest in the Hundred Acre Woods that was moved to a different part of the area. Not a large error, but enough to freak out the completionist who can be made to think there's an invisible chest.
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence comes with a bonus disc that includes, among other things, a port of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. At one point in that game, the player must decipher a series of tap codes using a chart in the manual in order to decipher a certain character's frequency number in order to proceed through a certain part of the game. However, the manual that actually comes with the game (at least in the North American version) doesn't come with any chart, but instead recommends you to download an online manual on their official website. This by itself is already bad enough if you have no internet connection, but the online manual didn't even had a tap code chart either. Konami later uploaded a revised manual to their site, but instead of actually adding the tap code chart, they simply gave you the number with no context of when to use it.

Nintendo DS

• The manual for Super Mario 64 DS lists the character's stats for speed, power, and jump. They aren't exactly accurate.
  • Mario is given 2/3 in every category. He's actually the fastest character by a fair amount, and jumps as high as Luigi.
  • Luigi is given 1/3 in power, and 3/3 in the other two categories. His strength is equal to Mario's, as is his jump height, apart from his extremely high backwards somersault. He's slower than Mario, but still faster than Wario. However, he can glide, run on water, has more control over his momentum in midair, and is the fastest swimmer by far.
  • Yoshi is given 0/3 in power, 2/3 in speed, and 3/3 in jump. He's the weakest character and shares his speed with Luigi. His flutter jump can get him a lot of height, but his jump height without it is lower than Mario's, and he can only do it from a normal or double jump.
  • Wario's given 3/3 in power, and 1/3 in the other two. This is actually completely accurate.
• The early instruction manual for the first New Super Mario Bros. contains a picture of the beta World Map on page 12, easily distinguishable by its solid green background and early map icons. The final game's default screen has a white brick look to it, and all of the backgrounds for sale in the Blue Toad House have a different appearance, none of them matching the green. Later versions of the manual (including the one hosted on Nintendo's official site) rectified the bottom screen's picture, making it match how it looks in the final game.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • One edition has an image with the caption "hammer, dwarf thrower".^note It was supposed to say "dwarven thrower" (i.e., a magic weapon that gave special bonuses to dwarves when they used it as a missile weapon a la Thor). An actual "dwarf thrower" appeared in a list of gag magic items in Dragon Magazine #156.
  • The 3.5 Complete Divine handbook lists Tharizdun's favored weapon as a "check toee." What it means is "Check Temple of Elemental Evil", a note to check the book to figure out what it is then update the section. Until it was clarified, gamers wondered and joked about what a check toee was.
  • The 3.0 Oriental Adventures lists the school of one spell as "alteration". No such school exists in 3rd edition or later. They obviously meant "transmutation", which was called "alteration" in previous editions.
  • The 3.5E Drow of the Underdark book introduced the vril, a goblin offshoot that had rules as a playable race, including racial feats. However, the book failed to include a baseline vril statblock, which meant DMs couldn't run them as an enemy encounter, while vril PCs had no idea what their "shriek" and "skinshift" abilities did, since the racial traits list referred to that missing statblock for those abilities. The missing stats and rules were later released in an online errata article.
  • The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons supplement Encyclopedia Magica Volume 1 had references to people taking points of "dawizard", or something about "iwizards"; this was obviously the result of a Word find-and-replace gone wrong that tried to substitute the more generic term "wizard" for "mage".
  • Spelljammer had a few mistakes (space tons, Viper ship) copied from one sourcebook to another.
  • One of the early manuals (from before the split between D&D and AD&D) listed "% liar" instead of "% in lair" for the chance a monster would be encountered in its home. Amusingly, an unofficial supplement (the Arduin Grimoire) copied this spelling error in its own section on monsters.
• The shortlived EverQuest d20 pen and paper game had a mistake similar to the page image: on page 140 the terror carver monster has an ability called "blood frenzy". At the end of the description for how the ability works one can find the following: [Steve: if this is similar to a 3E barbarian's rage, should there not also be a penalty to ac?]. Presumably this was a note from the editor that was never noticed or removed.
• Pathfinder splatbooks have their own version of this problem, usually as a result of multiple design teams and lack of correspondence. It's not uncommon for an early chapter to mention a feat or spell that was later renamed or dropped entirely.
• 7th Sea characters can take a "destiny spread," an optional set of rules that grants them some character background and either advantages or drawbacks, depending on the mood of the Random Number God when the character is created. One of the Destiny Spreads from the Avalon sourcebook grants a "1 point Druidic Secrets Advantage," despite the fact that no such Advantage exists.
• An early version of Werewolf: The Apocalypse had a reference to see page XX. This page was later included in the first Malkavian as an in-joke. Malkavian vampires are each cursed with being a Mad Oracle.
• Warhammer 40,000's 6th Edition rulebook calls Boltguns 'Rapis Fire' weapons. s is next to d on a keyboard, but it's surprising they let this slip, especially since it's the single most ubiquitous weapon in the game. Actually, a lot of Games Workshop rules and sourcebooks have these, you can find a full list of errata here.
• Wraith: The Oblivion second edition makes several references to regaining Pathos, the energy that lets wraiths fuel their powers. Except in the original printing, the editors forgot to actually put in the rules for regaining Pathos. Lampshaded in subsequent reprintings with "Appendix One (a.k.a. "Help, how do I regain Pathos?!)"

Miscellaneous

• It's hard to get worse than the Action 52 example, but not impossible. There's a video on YouTube showing someone leafing through a manual, every page of which reads "This Page Intentionally Left Blank."
• Parodied in Stinkoman 20X6, which describes the Level Nine boss (a robot gangster) as a "speedy squid". There actually is a squid enemy in that level, but its picture is missing from the manual altogether.
  "This description is all wrong!"
• Happens from time to time in scale models. Most common are schematics whose forced perspective makes it impossible to tell which direction a part is supposed to be oriented, but early Revell mid-00s Ford Mustang kits had the interior schematic printed twice and another major assembly not at all.
• The Official Pokémon Handbook contains so many errors (some bordering on Cowboy BeBop at His Computer) and typos that listing them all would be a waste of time. To give on example, Lickitung's entry says "It will daze and confuse its opponent with its Wrap technique and attack a maximum of five times in a row with Supersonic." Anyone who's actually played the games will know those two descriptions should be swapped.
• Some early CodeMasters games had their manuals lazily recopied with each system a game was ported to, even if some of those ports were radically altered. Captain Dynamo on Commodore 64 was a big offender for misinforming players of the high-jump controls and Goomba Stomp abilities which were omitted from that version to make it Nintendo Hard. Crystal Kingdom Dizzy had an oddity where the manual mentioned having to walk through a set of doors to load games, when that never happens in any version of Crystal Kingdom Dizzy, though it was used in Wild West Seymour.
• On a related theme, since the Airfix model kit construction company was bought out and revamped, several new kits (and others originally marketed by other firms, but re-released on licence by Airfix) have been introduced into the range. At least one, (the Higgins Boat, used by American forces in WW2 as a light landing craft) has an instruction leaflet which shows illustrations and kit parts which do not physically exist in the kit. This suggests there was a certain amount of confusion as to which of several production versions of the vessel was actually being released as a kit, and the person doing the illustrations was depicting the wrong one. Or that the original production plan was to market a model of a later production version with additional armour for the protection of boat and crew, and when this specification was changed, nobody bothered to brief the artist who was working to the original plan.
• The Resident Evil Archives, an English edition of a reference guide that covers all the mainline games from Resident Evil 0 to Code: Veronica, had most instances of the word "biohazard" (which is both, the Japanese title of the series and an actual term) replaced with "Resident Evil" - even when the context didn't warrant it. As a result, there are many mistakes in the plot summaries for the games such as a character being described as a member of the "Umbrella Resident Evil Countermeasure Service" or "a Resident Evil outbreak has been detected". The book also has other goof-ups, such as listing deceased characters as living and vice-versa, the use of unlocalized terms from the Japanese guide that are hardly used in English fandom (such as describing the series' control system as "radio control" when the common term in the west is "tank controls") and two separate glossaries (a main glossary and a supplemental glossary) for what really should be one glossary (the Japanese glossary simply had all of its terms ordered in Roman alphabet first, followed by the Japanese alphabet or gojūon).
• The instruction sheet for the ZX Spectrum game Soft & Cuddly claims that the player "must find the eight spirit keys" and take them to the fridge. The fridge exists, but the keys don't; they might have been taken out of the game prior to release.
• The manual for Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) mentions items and features not accessible in the game, such as the series's classic shield item.
• The manual for the Wii game Anubis II states that you can throw bombs by moving the Wii Remote in a throwing motion while holding B. You actually need to hold the A button. Perhaps more egregious is the manual from the extremely similar Ninjabread Man, by the same company. It states that you can throw bombs by moving the Wii Remote in a throwing motion while holding A...which would be fine, except that bombs do not exist in this game.
• The manual for all versions of Blazing Angels II: Secret Missions of WWII states you can play the skirmish mode in single player (you can't) and describes several multiplayer modes that are not present in the final game.
• A recipe book for an air fryer has some recipes that either have listed ingredients that are never used or the instructions calls for ingredients that is not listed in the recipes. One chicken recipe has the instructions calling for a turkey.
• And now to change the mood here for a second - this trope was partially the reason why a Honda-brand gas-powered generator was recalled by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in 2014. The product's owner's manual had a chance of having missing or duplicated pages, running the risk of users missing important information about using the product. Whoops.
• The European manual for the MSX2 version of Metal Gear uses a drawing of a SPAS-12 shotgun to represent the sub-machine gun you can acquire in the game instead of the Ingram M11 actually featured in the game.
• The first Blu-Ray and DVD of Puella Magi Madoka Magica was recalled due to misprinted lyrics in the book that came with the discs.
• The Simpsons soundtrack album "Testify" has several Cut Songs featured as bonus tracks. The first of these songs, "Hullaba Lula" is clearly meant to have been played in "Day of the Jackanapes" given the lyrics and the presence of Kelsey Grammer as Sideshow Bob singing the song; However, the album's booklet says that it was recorded for "Simpsons Tall Tales".
• The CD release of Nurture by Porter Robinson has some alternate lines for the song "Musician" in its lyrics booklet. They're from an earlier draft of the song, and the books were printed before the lyrics were changed.
  Final lyrics:

  Then they say, "Fine
  Well, do what you need to
  But I don't wanna see you wasting your life
  Now isn't it time you get a job?"
  Booklet:

  Then you sigh,
  “You know I love you, so I think I should tell you, Porter,
  This ride: isn’t it time that you get off?”
• The official lyrics included with the Drive download of "Rift" by SCONE have some of the lines wrong. The lyrics video does have the right ones. In particular, "no need to play pretend" and "this isn't right" incorrectly become "there's no need to pretend" and "this isn't real" (the latter is said later in the song, though).
• Jhariah: Multiple lyrics sites list the words of "PRESSURE BOMB!!!!" as "pressure bomb in a goddamn gunfight." This was the original line, but Jhariah "thought it was dumb" and replaced it with "goddamn knife fight" later in development, but accidentally published the original lyrics.

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