Strategy guide

A very popular strategy guide.

A strategy guide (also called a hint book, clue book, or simply guide) is a video game publication which includes information for players to succeed at video games. They typically include tips for making it through levels, directions to hidden areas, maps, statistics of enemies, and various other spoilers about the game they're describing. Strategy guide often have a lot in common with gaming magazines, but they typically have a much narrower scope and focus on a single game or subset of games. The term "hint book" usually refers to a booklet which just lists hints, a style which has fallen out of favor, while a "strategy guide" is usually more comprehensive. Sometimes a game's manual includes a strategy guide as well.

Personal

I really enjoy strategy guides. Not only because they reveal secrets of the games I enjoy, but also because, by their very nature, they help describe how the games work at a more technical level. In my youth, I only ever had a scant few, but, over the years, I have collected a decent sized collection of them. My favorite strategy guides are those which are written as though they exist within the game world they describe (as was common for Origin Systems guides), after that, I like the ones that add a lot of additional information and illustrations not directly related to beating the game (which is common for Nintendo guides). The ones I like the least are those which just give a list of actions the player must take to beat the game.