That's what I called them growing up. I hear they're called instruction manuals. It was easier to preserve them once things moved to CDs (Playstation) and DVD (Xbox onwards). In the cart days I trashed the box (dumb... imagine having a mint Mario RPG cardboard!) but always kept the BOOK. I never wrote in it either if it had like a notes section. Trashed all the Nintendo spam that came with it, but I'll admit in the Gamecube/Wii era it having more "stuff" inside the box always made it feel different from the other guys.

Sega of course had a DVD esque case for their Genesis. Sega always ahead of the game.

Never understood how people would lose their shit. You got the book? Nah I lost it. Don't lie bruh, you trashed it because you didn't even read it like the uncultured swine that you are. That's one aspect that's been mostly dead minus gimmicks as we moved to a more digital world... no more "stuff". Damn dude I just can appreciate a good BOOK.

Yep. Book(let) was the preferred nomenclature here as well. I'm not saying we kept every single booklet. I'm sure a few disappeared, especially during our younger days. But they could sometimes be crucial. You're not getting very far in Dragon Warrior III without the map that came with the game. The Dusty Diamond's booklet was a godsend. Intellivision booklets were a great place for recording high scores and NES booklets for passwords when applicable. Yeah, we wrote in ours. Sue me. Speaking of writing, Intellivision writers were the best in the business. Reading their work always got one HYPED to play some of that sweet, sweet Intellivision.

I read the booklet religiously as a young 'un, then gradually started reading them less and less. Nowadays the retro games I acquire are missing the booklets so I don't even have the chance to read them.

They were such an integral part of the game as well.

Tutorials? Who needs them, it's all inside the book.

In fact the book usually covered the story, told you what the enemies were and even gave you a sense of direction to get you going. The gold standard for me were the DKC manuals, where Cranky Kong would give you a running commentary on how to play the game and give you all the vital deets. I used to bring those everywhere, either as reading material or just as a reference point to draw.

One thing I've been getting into the habit of lately is downloading a manual whenever I go back and play through an old game. I'll actually read through it first, like I'm sitting in the backseat of the car on the ride home, making sure I'm good to go. I find it more rewarding than looking up YouTube vids.

I've hoarded just about every game I've ever bought, but when it comes to manuals/boxes there's a few missing from the SNES/N64 era. I didn't take good care of them when I was younger, so a lot of the manuals just had so much wear and tear. Still, I have a full plastic containers worth of boxes and I was able to preserve boxes like Super Mario World so I'm reasonably happy with myself. I made a point when I was slightly older to delicately tuck them away in a drawer and it's one of the few choices I'm happy with - I just wish I had some foresight with those Pokemon cards!

I regrettably trashed almost all my N64 boxes (little did we know) but kept the instruction manuals. Reading through the manual in the car impatient for the 20
minute drive to get home and play, as opposed to waiting all night for a game to install.

The last one I remember being noteworthy is for World of Warcraft.
I should still have it somewhere but it was a work of art.