[Update]: The Gold Box RPGs have now arrived, and it's looking like they do come with the manuals!
While they were well before my time, the Gold Box series of PC games represents a whole bunch of classic Dungeons & Dragons based RPGs. So if you're feeling a tinge of nostalgia for times gone by, or if you're just curious what made these games so popular back in the day, you might be intrigued to hear that the Gold Box RPGs will be making their way to Steam this March 29th, 2022.
However, instead of everything being crammed into one gigantic collection, the Gold Box games have been separated by series and are now a part of eight separate 'collections'. Here's a brief rundown of what these bundles are and what they contain:
• Forgotten Realms: The Archives Collection One (Eye of the Beholder I, II, and III)
• Forgotten Realms: The Archives - Collection Two (Curse of the Azure Bonds, Gateway to the Savage Frontier, Hillsfar, Pools of Darkness, Pool of Radiance, Secret of the Silver Blades, Treasures of the Savage Frontier, and Unlimited Adventures)
• Forgotten Realms: The Archives - Collection Three (Dungeon Hack, Menzoberranzan)
• Krynn series (Champions of Krynn, Death Knights of Krynn, The Dark Queen of Krynn)
• Dark Sun series (Shattered Lands, Wake of the Ravager)
• Ravenloft series (Strahd's Possession, Stone Prophet)
• D&D Stronghold: Kingdom Simulator
• Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse
As far as the improvements are concerned, the new collections come with a special Gold Box launcher that will make it easier to manage all of the different games, as well as allow you to simply transfer your parties between them. You can also expect to see enhanced DOSBox support to make sure everything runs well, as well as companion apps for the majority of the games to help with things like dungeon mapping and spellcasting.
While nothing has been said about the manuals for each of the games, I really do hope those will be included as well. After all, this is from an era in gaming where developers assumed players would have the manual by their side at all times, so some of the gameplay elements can be downright impossible to comprehend without one.
Whatever the case may be, I'll make sure to let you know once the Gold Box collections land this March 29th.
