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Anyone remember the days when games came with nice thick manuals? Those manuals had no more errors in them than the Prima Guides do today.
*sniffs sadly* Yes. Like the one Civilization came with (that's Civ1). Roughly the same size as a TS2 Prima Guide, or possibly slightly bigger. It was also on the floppy disks in a text file.
I think the reason nobody minded if the manuals had errors back then was because they were included with the game. Part of the reason we're so quick to criticise the Prima guides is because we now have to pay for something that used to be included when we purchased a game, and we resent paying extra for something with errors. People figure that if we have to pay separately for the manuals then those manuals better be as close to error free as possible and unfortunately that's not the case.
It wasn't just Civilization; anything that MicroProse put out had a great manual. Silent Service and the original Railroad Tycoon had fantastic (and *heavy*) manuals with lots of play tips, and historical background that was both interesting to read and helped to provide a context for the gameplay. Unfortunately, those days are long gone, and usually the manuals provided with the game are simply documentation of the game functions; you can almost see "For more information and gameplay tips, see the official strategy manual, available at fine retailers everywhere" lurking in the docs for the game.
As to the errors in the manual, I don't have too much heartache with one or two oopsies, but seeing "Refridgerators" as a table title made me flinch, and feel pity for the copy-editor who signed off on that (yes, I checked the manual to find her name). There are often last-minute changes in the game which may make the hint book wrong, but errors like that are simply unprofessional.
