[The Unofficial SNES/Super Famicom: A Visual Compendium]

I finished a review of The Unofficial SNES/Super Famicom: A Visual Compendium (and I only got it two days ago, on Friday!  What a weekend)!   Yes, timely content - it comes out on February 1!  Check it out!

[bustin98]

This is actually a couple days late, but there were a few days earlier this week when the forums were down.  There's a possibility most of you didn't even notice.  But regardless, I have to give a really big thanks to bustin98 for fixing it.  Other than truncating a couple decade-old and somehow "incomplete" posts, it doesn't appear like we've lost anything.  I did backups (or so I thought) regularly since the last time there were forum issues, but now I'll make the habit of backing up the whole "forums" folder and via the webhost's tools to be absolutely sure.

Also, very briefly a few days ago, the site itself was down for a short while, like a few hours.  That was just a server migration thing.  May have been related to the forums going down.

It seems there're no issues now, but I still wanted to make a post to thank bustin98 again, and in the off chance that any maps/pages on the site are missing, to please let me know.

Six Degrees Of Super Mario!  Someone's got to find this interesting, right?

Quo Vadis

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to KingKuros's Quo Vadis (C64) maps.

Quo Vadis finally gets its long-overdue recognition for Maps Of The Month, an honour somehow missed until now (though it did make it onto the "VGMaps's 15th Anniversary - 15 BEST MAP SETS!" video.  This large, single map also got published in Retro Gamer issue 81!  What's notable about this game, you ask?  Why, it was the biggest game at the time, the first to be over a thousand screens in size!

Its other claim to fame are the real riches someone could have earned.  Has anyone claimed the £40,000 in prizes for solving the riddle within this game?   It is now 400 months since its release, and as far as anyone can tell, it hasn't been paid out.  There are six clues within this game - five found in this labyrinth and a sixth as you exit.  Being the first to solve them and mailing in the correct answer should have won somebody £30,000 and a scepter worth £10,000, but that probably never happened.  But at least here, KingKuros finally gets something for scouring this entire cavern!  Okay, a Maps Of The Month recognition isn't the same as £40,000, but it's something.

So to recognize the effort put into mapping the first game to be over 1000 screens large. KingKuros's Quo Vadis (C64) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for January 2018.

I wouldn't be opposed to hosting 3D maps on VGMaps; would love it, actually, as VGMaps could then get closer to modern...

But is there a common/standard file format for 3D maps now?

Yes, this is VGMaps, not "VGAllGraphicalAssets".

Of course it's up to the mapper how to handle them if at all, but I wouldn't be opposed to including titles and cut scenes and anything else as long as they are neatly arranged and part of an image that is still mostly a map.  Like opening sequence shots with the map of the first stage/area, that kind of thing.  Though it could be considered spoileriffic to include end stuff with the last stage/area... hmmm.  In any case, just like the maps themselves, anything else added should all be kept as neat and simple as possible.

I only mapped the first couple areas of Totally Rad (NES), but I always felt that if I were to redo them or request that someone do them, that the cut scenes could be included in the maps, since the '80s/'90s surfer slang is amusing to me.  But as with any game I would be quite pleased with just the maps, as that is the point.

Funny that you should mention "11", Revned...

Seven years since Mega Man 10.  Well, it will be eight, since this will be out late next year.

Do we like the new look?  As always, what I care about is... who are the Robot Masters?

Looks like the mysterious artwork found in Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 might actually be from this, as Mega Man appears to change forms (not just colour) when using different weapons!

Mega Man ZX Advent

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to X GOD's Mega Man ZX Advent (DS) maps.

A girl named Ashe is searching for treasure.  A Reploid named Grey awakens with no memory.  Whoever's story you choose to follow, they will both find themselves aligned with the Hunters, and soon find that they are able to "Megamerge" with the sought-after Biometals, which means transforming into a "Mega Man".  Will they be able to fend off the Raiders, defeat the Mavericks and Pseudodroids, and stop Master Albert from accumulating the pieces of the Model W Biometal which he hopes to use to become the ultimate "Mega Man" and "reset" the world (by destroying everyone)?

A hundred years after the Mega Man series is the Mega Man X series.  A few hundred years after the Mega Man X series is the Mega Man Zero series.  Another hundred years later is the Mega Man ZX series.  I bet you didn't think the Mega Man series would lead up to all this way back when Mega Man first decided to take on Bomb Man back in 200X...  (Though Mega Man Legends/64 supposedly takes place thousands of years after this...)

As vast as the timeline may be, at least you won't get lost in this underrated DS game, thanks to maps by X GOD.

So for mapping the relatively-obscure almost-end of the Mega Man continuity, X GOD's Mega Man ZX Advent (DS) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for December 2017.

Another game book review, this time of the Nintendo 64 Anthology, which SHOULD be of interest to people here, I would imagine.

(I posted this last night, turns out yesterday was one year and one day after getting the book...  I will make more effort to be sure these reviews are more timely, though in this case I believe the Special Collector's Edition is still available.)

As mentioned in the first post, the NES Game Atlas is simply a book I really like; it was the first Nintendo Power Player's Guide, which featured full maps of many of the most popular NES franchises.

This topic encouraged mappers to essentially make that book obsolete, which we did, by not only mapping the same games covered, but the sequels that were not out at the time of the original book's release.

We extended the idea to create a topic/request for a hypothetical "Super NES Game Atlas" - while the book doesn't exist, it was simply to map the same series' continuation in 16-bits, which was also completed.

The idea was also brought to the Game Boy in a topic/request for a hypothetical "Game Boy Game Atlas", but after five years and a month, it's still missing one game - Super Mario Bros. Deluxe still isn't complete.  Ironically, you'd think it would be the most popular game to be mapped, since it's a remake of the most popular game in its day.  Even Nintendo hasn't forgotten about it, as it made an appearance towards the end of the Nintendo World Championships 2017.  Strange, eh?

So, just like any other maps, these aren't to "play", but to view.

I wonder - after all this time - have people been misreading "recreation" in this topic header as in "recreational" instead of as in "re-creation"?  I intended the latter, as we are recreating something, not necessarily having any more fun (as in recreational) than any other mapping project.  I leave out the hyphen here because that doesn't seem consistent - after all, we say "redo", "react" and "refund", not "re-do", "re-act" or "re-fund", so why not "recreate" instead of "re-create"?  At work the other day, I used the word "reask" in an email which I wonder if it caused confusion...

I recall Peardian saying somewhere or somewhen about the nostalgia behind this game being the reason for it being mapped.  Not every game featured for the Maps Of The Month have to be the best-looking game ever made.  And in my research it seems this game did have a fair following, it isn't just Peardian who likes it.

Personally, I'm a fan of a game from Everett Kaser Software called Hero's Heart, which is a very similar type of top-down puzzle game.  There is an enhanced version called Hero's Heart Gold (sounds like Pokémon) though I may be remembering incorrectly and it may just be called Hero Gold.  (Just did some Googling (quite limiting at work, especially looking up anything about games) and it seems there was a 1998 sequel to Hero's Heart called Hero Defiant.  Hmmm.)

Chip's Challenge

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Peardian's Chip's Challenge (PC) maps.

The nerdy Chip McCallahan wants to gain membership into the exclusive Bit Buster Club, led by Melinda The Mental Marvel.  To do so, he must pass through 149 levels of Melinda's "Clubhouse", full of hazards, creatures and puzzlish scenarios.  Do you have the brains to help Chip survive this virtual nightmare and take Melinda to the E-Prom?

Mario game mapper Peardian actually gives us maps for a non-Mario game (and last month featured a Mario game not mapped by Peardian)!  There may have been a number of top-down view puzzle games on the PC at the time, but Chip's Challenge had some renown.  It was originally developed for the Atari Lynx, and despite (or maybe because of) the Lynx's unpopularity, it was ported to a few other platforms.  It found some popularity on Windows 3.1 by being featured on Microsoft Entertainment Pack 4 and Best Of Microsoft Entertainment Pack.  But it would take 26 years for a sequel, also made by the original creator, Chuck Sommerville.

What makes Chip's Challenge particularly challenging is its limited view.  Peardian's maps show you each whole level, giving Chip a better chance to clear these challenges and meet up with Melinda.  Thanks, Peardian!

So for mapping a real Windows classic (that's not Solitaire or Minesweeper), Peardian's Chip's Challenge (PC) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for November 2017.

Funny, I expected some response from the 15th best map sets.  Ah well, it's a month old, but here's my vlog of the recent Edmonton Expo.

The maps have been up since yesterday evening.  They look great.

If only more of the Goemon games had left Japan...

According to the apparently critical Famitsū magazine, only 28 games have gotten a perfect score of 40/40 (10/10 from four different reviewers).  How many of these have you played?


(Click for full size.)

This image shows up briefly in my recent YouTube video about the 15 best map sets, but I thought more use could be made out of that very brief shot of this image.  Discuss!

Ripped from Wikipedia, the games are:

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998, Nintendo, for Nintendo 64)
Soulcalibur (1999, Namco, for Dreamcast)
Vagrant Story (2000, Square Co., for PlayStation)
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2003, Nintendo, for Nintendo GameCube)
Nintendogs (2005, Nintendo, for Nintendo DS)
Final Fantasy XII (2006, Square Enix, for PlayStation 2)
Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008, Nintendo, for Wii)
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008, Konami, for PlayStation 3)
428: Fūsa Sareta Shibuya de (2008, Sega, for Wii)
Dragon Quest IX (2009, Square Enix, for Nintendo DS)
Monster Hunter Tri (2009, Capcom, for Wii)
Bayonetta (2009, Sega, PlatinumGames, for Xbox 360)
New Super Mario Bros. Wii (2009, Nintendo, for Wii)
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (2010, Konami, for PlayStation Portable)
Pokémon Black and White (2010, Nintendo, for Nintendo DS)
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011, Nintendo, for Wii)
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011, Bethesda Softworks, for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3)
Final Fantasy XIII-2 (2011, Square Enix, for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3)
Kid Icarus: Uprising (2012, Nintendo, for Nintendo 3DS)
Yakuza 5 (2012, Sega, for PlayStation 3)
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle (2013, Namco-Bandai, for PlayStation 3)
Grand Theft Auto V (2013, Rockstar Games, for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3)
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015, Konami, for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017, Nintendo, for Wii U, Nintendo Switch)
Dragon Quest XI (2017, Square Enix, for Playstation 4, Nintendo 3DS)