Brady Games EGuides--PDFs of your favorite guide books

[rbudrick]

Dunno if this has ever been brought up before, but I was cruising through the web looking for some help with Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins when I noticed that BradyGames offers cheaper versions of their guide books ($9.99) if you download the pdf of them.

I guess it makes sense to do this nowadays, but wouldn't they be worried that piracy of the guides would become rampant? Do you see the possibility of people hoarding such pdfs as they do roms? Or have people already been doing this and I just never noticed?

-Rob

[OldSchoolGamer]

You've never noticed. Enough research will show you just about anything/everything is already available for free especially by utilizing Newsgroups/Bittorrent etc. I go to GamFaqs and just downloaded the fan made guides but I have come across several scanned commercial guides.

[carlcarlson]

doublejump books released their disgaea guide for free. that's a $40 guide, so I'd say that was pretty generous (and awesome).

[§ Gideon §]

doublejump books released their disgaea guide for free. that's a $40 guide, so I'd say that was pretty generous (and awesome).
This is awesome, but at the same time it makes me nervous: How do these people stay in business? Aren't they the same people who publish Hardcore Gaming and offer free PDF versions before the real ones even make it through the postal system? On top of that, they give free subscriptions through online offers.

I guess they live up to their name... These guys are pretty hardcore.

[rbudrick]

Tis reminds me of the other thread where people are scanning the entire archive of magazines like Nintendo Power. Cool, but sounds like a huge pain. The same treatment for OoP guide books would be awesome.

-Rob

[Push Upstairs]

Seems kind of pointless to put a guide in PDF.

If you want to use the guide while playing to have to fire up your computer to use it, and if your game system is in another room that just won't work.

If you want to print it out you either have to pay someone to print it out or you have to pay to replace your ink cartridge (if it runs out).

Why not just save yourself a lot of trouble and just buy a physical guide? You only Pay for it once and its portable.

[kainemaxwell]

I'd rather have the actual books whenever possible, especially with rpgs. For other games I usually just save and print out what i need when I need it. Besides, I enjoy looking at the artwork in the strat guides as well as the ones that have interviews with the developers. Plus some strat guides eventually become as valuable as the games themselves.

[Xizer]

This has been done for a while - guides would be obtained from an official source or scanned and put in a PDF - I've been getting guides from my torrent sites for years now. It's way better than GameFAQs.

I highly recommend it. GameFAQs guides are so...boring. Plain text, pfft.

[RegSNES]

The 'net is fine but there are times when it just doesn't cut it, and for me strategy guides are among those things. Guess there are somethings computers just can't replace.

[Lady Jaye]

The thing with strat guides in my case is that I'm a visual person. So, Gamefaqs walkthroughs may be ok (not always), but I know that if I consulted the same walkthrough in a visual guide (like the Brady guides), it'll often take me a fraction of the time to get and apply the same info.

And since my computer is located next to my TV, I don't care if the guide is in pdf format or in print format.