[jessaustin]

I definitely encountered other games for which you had to look up stuff in the manual, and maybe it wasn't done as well because I always hated it.

[hnick]

I enjoyed it for Ultima VII, where the manual was written as a holy book / biography of the main religious figure (antagonist) of the setting. You needed to answer questions from the book to be allowed out of the starting town.

[nitrogen]

I think in King's Quest it was looking up some specific code word in a random grid or something, before it would let you launch a boat?

[npongratz]

King's Quest 5's copy protection (floppy version only) was enforced with a requirement to use a magic wand to cast a "spell" at various points in the game, where the "spell" is a series of letters that the player matches to symbols in the printed manual. Launching the boat was one of the points in the game where this was required.

https://kingsquest.fandom.com/wiki/Crispin%27s_wand#Behind_t...

[IggleSniggle]

Yup, CotL was uniquely well done.