i do remember from back then. many games came with fun packaging/etc. DRM, I remember. Infocom games - early iterations had great packaging.

This SimEarth manual is just on a different level, imo. Perhaps SimCity had something similar - I would see copies of it around school, but never saw a manual for it.

I do remember some 'larger' games. Populous was one... that was rather complex, and had a 'tutorial' IIRC, but no manual anywhere near the size of that SimEarth one.