Prima official game guide
Guide cover for The Sims 2: Seasons.
Prima Games, a division of Random House, is a publishing company for video game strategy guides. They normally feature in-depth walkthroughs to completing the game and the characters. To date, guides have been released for The Sims, The Sims 2 and The Sims 3.
Separate guides were released for the base games and all expansion packs for The Sims and The Sims 2. Guides for The Sims 2 were written by Greg Kramer.
Guides for the The Sims 3 base game and the first three expansion packs (World Adventures, Ambitions and Late Night) were released as normal. It was then announced that the (much shorter) guide for Generations would only be available as part of a boxed set containing pocket-sized versions of all four previous game guides and a guide to the forthcoming Pets expansion, and which would also include an item catalogue listing the contents of the first four stuff packs (High-End Loft Stuff, Fast Lane Stuff, Outdoor Living Stuff and Town Life Stuff), making this the only occasion when Stuff Packs were given official guides. With The Sims 3: Pets Prima resumed releasing separate, print copy editions of guides for each expansion pack, continuing with Showtime and Supernatural. However, the print release of the guide for The Sims 3: Seasons was cancelled shortly before the expected publication date, and the guides for Seasons and University Life were released in eBook format only. Prima later announced that there would be no separate guide to Island Paradise (similar to the earlier case with Generations), and there has been no official comment on whether they will release a guide for Into the Future, although since it has been several years since Prima has created a Sims guide (and the fact that physical guides are fairly extinct), new guides seem all but impossible. According to the website SimsVIP a "compilation" print guide has been announced, rumoured to contain the "missing" guides for Seasons, University Life, Island Paradise and Into the Future, though this is most likely never happening at this point.
Guides for all of The Sims expansions and the guide to The Sims 2: University include a section which re-prints the base game guide in full. From Nightlife onwards this was reduced to a brief (one- or two-page) chapter on the basic features of the base game and features carried forward from previous expansions. Guides for The Sims 3 expansion packs feature a basic "primer" chapter on the base game, which re-prints heavily edited sections from the base game guide.
The guide for The Sims 2: Pets covers both the PC version and both standalone console versions of that game; however, all other guides exclusively cover the PC versions.
Prima Games has also published a number of guides on Sims spin-off games, including The Sims (console versions), The Sims Online, The Sims: Bustin' Out, The Urbz: Sims in the City, The Sims 2 Castaway (console versions) and The Sims Medieval (base game only).
Guides for titles in The Sims series will often list new objects and interactions, as well as new premade Sims and lots. It is not unknown for details to change between the time a guide goes to press and the time a title is released, so the information in a Prima guide is not always 100% accurate.