Prima

Here's two scans from an old Prima guide from the mid-1990s, back in the days when Prima was not a division of Random House:



To me, Prima guides were always a step down from "official" guides (unless, of course they WERE the official guide, in which case they were very good). Nintendo published Player's Guides for many years that were far better than the Prima ones (maps, strategies for certain areas), Prima's often had simpler maps and had walls of text. Unfortunately, this is more the case than ever. In most guides, they tend to force you to go in a set path, spoiling everything, and not allowing you to do things at your leisure. This brings them down to the level of what things like GameFaqs have done for years: walls of text (of course, with some pictures). You'd be better off printing off a bunch of HTML from places like StrategyWiki and VGMaps and binding your own, really.