I keep the directions to all of my transformer toy along with the Lego set I've collected over the years.

I used to love going out on a payday to my local game store, grabbing a game and then spending an hour in pizza hut reading the manuals. Sometimes I would buy a guide book just to read about what I had missed. Today, anything that passes as a "manual" is a two page leaflet if you are lucky. Never thought I would be nostalgic for a manual!

*steals the Pac Man & Atari Force Comics!* gimmies!

The art of the manual sure has gone the way of the Laser Disc album art cover. Why, I still recall the time I picked up a Sonic game for one of the Nintendo handhelds. It had a manual that covered "Legal issues about health" & "Warranty information". Super thin. I think it had like one sentence for game play. Something along the lines of "It's Sonic. You know what to do."
And now, we've even entered the era where a physical box may contain little more than a slip of paper on where to DL the game at. Feels even shallower than getting a physical CD that contains little more than the Data Key to specify that this is a paid copy. And soon, I do expect that the physical machine will vanish in place of an app on the device of your choice. (Streaming exclusives.)