Goemon games look great.  That said, I'm surprised we don't have more of The Legend Of The Mystical Ninja for the Super NES than we currently do...

Another book, and hey, some VGMaps maps in print!

Someone just emailed me about this game.  I guess people really do notice these monthly recognitions after all!

Hey,

when I was a kid I saw picture in a magazine of a really good looking GBA game before the GBA was released and it was part of the reason I wanted the thing. But I never found out what the game was and if it belonged to an even released game and now I open your site and on the top I see some pictures of "Magical Vacation" and thought "wait a second, isn't that? omg it is".
And it never left Japan, so no wonder I never found it.
And there is an English language patch for it.
And it's kinda connected to Secret of Mana, no wonder I liked the look!

Thanks for "telling" me!

Is there a way to sort image files in a folder by the ratio of their widths to heights?  Like the aspect ratio?

One of my favourite image browser programs no longer compatible in the post-XP world was CompuPic Pro, which among many other things, was able to sort by "orientation" (tallest to widest, or vice-versa, by ratio).  I haven't seen anything like that for the more modern Windows.  Unless I'm blind I don't see anything like that in Windows Explorer, other than individual width/height fields, or together as "dimensions" (like "1920 x 1080"), but not divided to give a ratio.

This is I'd like to easily identify images that are at 16:9 (widescreen), 4:3 (standard), 1:1 (square), 3:4 and 9:16 ratios, and anything that doesn't fall into any of those.

Anyone?

EDIT: Yes, I know how to use Google, and any search for "sort by aspect ratio" leads me to "Dimensions 2 Folders", which is only semi-useful.  I can easily find things with those ratios or close to them so I can crop and resize as necessary, but ultimately it would be more handy to be able to sort by or at least see the aspect ratios of new images that are added without going through a big folder shuffle using that program every time.

Magical Vacation (J)

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Tropicon's and eishiya's Magical Vacation (J) (GBA) maps.

School's out!  It's time to go on a vacation!  How about...a MAGICAL vacation?  Like going to Valencia Beach, where you and your summer school classmates (from a MAGICAL school) can enjoy a view of the ocean, beautiful sunsets, and a creature known as Enigma that might capture some of your friends!  Or check out the Plane Of Light, where you can check out the market at Pippurusu Town, and marvel at the wondrously cheesy La Roche Tower.  Or the Plane Of Darkness, with its way-cool Icy Island, or take a trek through Riginio Jungle.  And then there's the oh-so-welcoming Plane Of Death...maybe?  (Okay, maybe not.)

The first game by the Nintendo-owned studio Brownie Brown (now 1-Up Studios, orginally comprised of ex-Square staff) is Magical Vacation (J).  This gorgeous game is reminiscent in look to the Mana series, which they also worked on (as they did Sword Of Mana and Heroes Of Mana).  This picturesque, yet often labyrinthine game - which is also underappreciated, as it didn't see a release outside of Japan - is a great choice for recognition here.

So for taking us on a magical RPG vacation, Tropicon's and eishiya's Magical Vacation (J) (GBA) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for July 2017.

[MAPS FOR THE 21 GAMES OF THE SUPER NES: CLASSIC EDITIONO Contra III: The Alien Wars- Donkey Kong CountryO EarthBoundO Final Fantasy III (actually VI)O F-Zero- Kirby's Dream Course- Kirby: Super StarO The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The PastO Mega Man XO Secret Of ManaO Star FoxX Star Fox 2 (previously unreleased)O Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper FightingO Super Castlevania IVO Super Ghouls 'N GhostsO Super Mario KartO Super Mario RPG: Legend Of The Seven StarsO Super Mario WorldO Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's IslandO Super MetroidO Super Punch-Out!!]

The Super NES Classic Edition was announced yesterday!  Time for another "let's map them all" request topic.

MAPS FOR THE 21 GAMES OF THE SUPER NES: CLASSIC EDITION
O Contra III: The Alien Wars
- Donkey Kong Country
O EarthBound
O Final Fantasy III (actually VI)
O F-Zero
- Kirby's Dream Course
- Kirby: Super Star
O The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past
O Mega Man X
O Secret Of Mana
O Star Fox
X Star Fox 2 (previously unreleased)
O Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting
O Super Castlevania IV
O Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts
O Super Mario Kart
O Super Mario RPG: Legend Of The Seven Stars
O Super Mario World
O Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
O Super Metroid
O Super Punch-Out!!

It comes as not much of a surprise, given the success of the NES Classic Edition last year, and the natural progression of moving on to the next console.

But this will also be crazy popular as it has some great games (even if "only" 21) including some of the greatest games of all time, plus the previously-unreleased Star Fox 2, and it comes with two controllers, and Nintendo plans to make more of these than the NES Classic.

As before, most have been fully mapped on VGMaps.com already, but not all.  At the time of writing this, all of them DO have some maps for them, with the exception of Star Fox 2.  This topic will track the progression to finishing these off, hopefully before its release date of Sept. 29.

Took long enough, right?  I finally got my vlog of the Calgary Expo up last night.

Well, 63 today.  That's a surprise...

Jill Of The Jungle

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Will Mallia's Jill Of The Jungle (PC) maps.

Jill, an Amazon woman and apparently of the jungle, travels underground and rescues a prince in the Jill Of The Jungle trilogy.  She can throw daggers and transform into animals to traverse 50 levels of classic 1992 platforming action with VGA graphics!  What a wonder woman!

In the early 90s, games (mostly platformers) were popular on PCs via shareware.  Popularized by Apogee, games were encouraged to be copied and shared, with the idea being that if you like the game, you would buy additional episodes.  Epic MegaGames's major foray into shareware platforming was Jill Of The Jungle.  It was fairly successful, and allowed Epic MegaGames to create other classic games such as Jazz Jackrabbit and One Must Fall 2097.  And Epic would go on to make the Unreal Engine, a game engine now in its fourth iteration, which powers many video games today.  So this 25-year-old game may be, at least in part, responsible for some of your favourite video game memories.  And, hey, it's a decent game on its own, and a classic!

So for jumping into the jungle with Jill, Will Mallia's Jill Of The Jungle (PC) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for June 2017.

Two of three Calgary Expo 2017 videos - the third will be an actual vlog of the event.

What really surprises me most in terms of what we're lacking is that we don't have ANY maps for games from my first video game console, the ColecoVision.

I'm not sure how popular it was at the time (nearly all of my friends had Ataris at the time) but I do know that it had some of the most arcade-accurate games at the time, like the best home versions of Donkey Kong (my first game) and Donkey Kong Jr.  I recently perused the full list of 150+ games and found that I "only" had 17 games, but gosh, those had some of my greatest gaming memories (even if it's only because I was very young and rarely got very far in any of them).  But nope, zero maps so far on VGMaps.  Then again maybe I could do a few one day; it's often mostly single-screen stuff anyway...all the more reason it's surprising that we haven't gotten any by now though...

Also still have only one Xbox map, which was contributed very early in VGMaps' life, for Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (which is grainy and could just as easily be a PC map).  I guess that means it was even within the time of the original Xbox.  Back then it was all about showy graphics, probably Microsoft wanting to get into the market with guns blazing, so there probably aren't many 2D games, also there wasn't much to speak of on the indie scene.  Personally, I've never been a fan of the Xbox(/360/One), as everything I want to play ends up on the PC, but I'd like to think one day we'll get a map of some Xbox-exclusive game.

[Donkey Kong Country]

In doing promotional stuff for Nintendo Quest, I ended up making posters of all the box art for the NES (and eventually did SNES and N64 as well).  I also did a thing where I tweeted six NES games a day counting down to the Edmonton screenings of it.  Plus, I've read the Ultimate Nintendo Guide To The NES Library and am currently reading The Unofficial NES/Famicom: A Visual Compendium.  So even through those, despite my involvement in retrogaming already, I still definitely learned of, or got reintroduced to, many official games that are lesser known.

And I can tell you that the NES and SNES listings here are still far from equal to the full listings of those game libraries.  Definitely a huge number of the most popular and representative games are mapped; after all, it's been 15 years, plus that there would have been ample time, interest and opportunity for someone to map these even if someone wasn't doing it specifically or originally for VGMaps.  But some games have somehow eluded us, and I don't think it's entirely for technical reasons.  And they aren't all uninteresting (in my opinion), or even that obscure, either.

For the NES, some games have not been mapped at all, or have very few maps, including Déjà Vu, The Flintstones: The Rescue Of Dino & Hoppy, The Jetsons: Cogswell's Caper, Kiwi Kraze, Legacy Of The Wizard, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Nightshade, Panic Restaurant, Rockin' Kats, Shadowgate, Skate Or Die 2: The Search For Double Trouble, Snow Brothers, Totally Rad, and Uninvited.

For the SNES, the same could be said for The Addams Family, The Addams Family: Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt, Aero The Acro-Bat, Aero The Acro-Bat 2, Animaniacs, Ardy Lightfoot, Battletoads & Double Dragon, B.O.B., Brandish, Bubsy In Claws Encounters Of The Furred Kind, Bubsy II, DinoCity, Donkey Kong Country, The Flintstones: The Treasure Of Sierra Madrock, Harley's Humongous Adventure, Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures, The Jetsons: Invasion Of The Planet Pirates, Joe & Mac 2: Lost In The Tropics, Kirby's Dream Land 3, The Legend Of The Mystical Ninja, Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures, Plok, Robotrek, Shadowrun, Skyblazer, SmartBall, Soldiers Of Fortune, Super Bomberman, Super Bomberman 2, Super Star Wars, Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Super Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi, Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose! and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.

And that was just from a quick(ish) glance at the official North American library - certainly with a more thorough perusal, and with other regions, you could find some more.  I just chose some of the ones that I thought were interesting; your considerations may vary, but I'm pretty sure we're still a ways from being done with mapping those popular consoles.

And then of course, sticking to the "main" gaming platforms of the primarily-2D era, there are still also the Master System, Sega Genesis, Game Gear, Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance...

Happy birthday, VGMaps!  This site is now 15 years old!

I didn't have a chance to prepare something in time for today.  Maybe I'll make a YouTube video about it in a little bit (as in, a few weeks), as I now have a YouTube channel.  Look me up!

For the 10th anniversary half a decade ago, I wrote a piece, which was mostly about the origins of VGMaps.  As, obviously, the origins would not have changed other than being longer ago, it might still be worth a read here.

I did notice that for the 10th anniversary article, I mentioned that we were just shy of 20,000 maps.  I'd have to do a count again but I believe we are currently just shy of, or at least in the vicinity of, 40,000 maps.  That's another 20 thousand in half the time as it took for the first 20 thousand!  And that's even with the slowed-down numbers of submissions in the past year...  Will we get 20,000 in the next five years?  Or maybe another 30,000 or even more, considering the exponential growth?  Time will tell...

I honestly don't know how long I will keep running this.  I see no reason to stop, though.  But just running VGMaps.com isn't the impressive part, it's the maps that all you guys have put together!  So thank you all!  Whether you've only just found this place or have been around since Spring 2002, whether you submitted half a map or a few hundred, I am grateful for your contributions to this site.

Maybe I'll try to come up with something more to say soon, but regardless of what sentiments I come up with, I think we can all be proud of what we've got here. 

RollerCoaster Tycoon

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to RoberTime's RollerCoaster Tycoon (PC) maps.

It's May!  Now that it's late spring, the theme parks are opening up - so it's time to get on those coasters!

There are many simulation games on the PC, but only a few of them really stand out.  One of them is MicroProse's RollerCoaster Tycoon, where one can manage a theme park, and build some attractions, which include roller coasters (of course).  The track editor has a great variety of configurations, so from slow simple rides to speedy death-defying loops, you can build pretty much any kind of coaster you can imagine.

Various scenarios have you managing an already-existing park, whether already booming, or failing and in need of revival, or, of course, building one entirely from scratch.  Including the "Corkscrew Follies" and "Loopy Landscapes" expansions, you have 86 such areas to work with.  RoberTime has captured all these areas, and if not primarily navigational (while one can easily get lost in any theme park, you can't really get lost here, from this perspective), they are certainly quite nostalgic, for anyone who has enjoyed this theme park simulator on the PC.  Either way, you won't have to buy these maps at any kiosk - all these maps are here for your perusal!

So for taking us for a ride down the tracks of nostalgia, RoberTime's RollerCoaster Tycoon (PC) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for May 2017.

For some reason I've noticed there's some kind of overall "downed"ness with everyone around me lately.  And yet from different groups of people.  Whether it's all my real-life friends being too busy or not in the mood to do stuff, my own general apathy, or a number of "regular"/consistent VGMaps mappers having very decreased outputs in the past half-year or so, there's something going on.  Or maybe it's a huge coincidence since I can't imagine why everyone would be affected simultaneously by any one thing.  I could understand if it was seasonal, but we're a full month into spring!  (Except around here, where the Edmonton area's been hit with lots of winter-level snow this past week.)

Not to downplay your own personal struggles, but we're all human, and we have our ups and downs.  Know what's important and deal with that.  VGMaps should still be around when you get around to more maps, if you do.