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I did not know about this game, very good that you chose Jazz Jackrabbit as maps of April.
Interesting to note on objects, taken from Sonic's game: springs, item box monitor and final signpost.

I also wanted to talk about how I mapped the whole thing "as close to perfectly as it could be" to quote myself.

You see, Lilly Looking Through is a game made in flash and the vast majority of its graphics are accessible from the get go. Basically, each of the ten areas has all of its static graphics laid out in one or two .png files; that includes the various background/middleground/foreground layers as well as every large and small static objects. This was great because the game uses a lot of alpha transparency across various layers, which would have been impossible to capture accurately while playing. I was basically able to reassemble every screen in GIMP from it's individual components, transparency and all, using the perfect source graphics instead of the very slightly altered version that Flash displays using subpixel rendering.

There were a bunch of animated effects that were trickier, like the animated reflection of the sun in the ocean that was partly hidden by several foreground objects. Thankfully, the game doesn't care if you edit or otherwise mess with its graphics files. So for the example above, I just went and deleted every graphic from the .png file except the ocean. When i got back to that area in the game, I could then see the background layer with the animated effects without any of the foreground objects in the way. I repeated that same process for every screen where a particular animation, lighting or color effect had to be captured in-game.

Hopefully, the result were worth the efforts.

Well, it's been a while since I've posted anything. More than a year in fact, and that wasn't even a full project, just two orphaned maps. But I never really stopped mapping you know; I just grew so obsessed with perfection that I became unable to live up to my unrealistic standards...

...or some stupid stuff like that.

Anyway, this single map has been a long time coming. I'd pretty much mapped the whole game as close to perfectly as it could be about two years ago, but then it all sat untouched until last week because I was never satisfied with my ideas for the overall presentation. Thankfully, I managed to get over that and it's at least functional if not that great-looking. It'll have to do.

Lilly Looking Through is a pretty small and somewhat unremarkable game. It's more or less a classic point-and-click adventure/puzzle game like those I used to play as a teenager, one where you have to "solve" the current area/screen before moving on to the next one. As a game, it's nothing great mind you; the puzzles are somewhat easy for the most part although they can get tedious, and there are some puzzles with color addition and subtraction that can get quite annoying if not outright frustrating toward the end. All in all, it's pretty short with only ten areas and the story, such as it is, is barely a prologue for something bigger that was never made.

HOWEVER, the game still manages to present an intriguing world through its visuals and ambient music, one I would have loved to explore further in a much longer sequel. The title of the game refers to the player's character, Lilly, finding a pair of magical goggles early on that, when worn, allows her to see but more importantly, to interact with her surroundings but in the past. What's more intriguing, you eventually realize that these past versions aren't all from the same time or era; in one location, you get to see it during the last ice age while in another, it's probably just the night before.

Here, then, is the whole thing in one single map :



DON'T save this one, as Imgur seems to convert any .png over 1 MB into a .jpg. I'll be sending JonLeung a link to the full quality file (~35 MB) as an official submission and you can grab that one then if you like.

Another "Games About Games" video, where my friends try to distinguish between Metal Gear and Mega Man X characters.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?  Remember April Fool's Day twelve years ago?  Yes, I mention Revned, bustin98, osrevad and Grizzly in this video...

Jazz Jackrabbit CD

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Zerker's Jazz Jackrabbit (PC) maps.

The mid-1990s were an interesting time for PC gamers. Shareware was a way of distributing games (essentially, free demos, legally allowed to be copied and shared, in an age before the Internet), CD-ROM technology was emerging, and PC gaming started to take on more cues from game consoles, including gamepads without joysticks, and the platforming genre as a whole. And for 1990s gaming in general, regardless of the market or platform, anthropomorphic animal characters seemed to be popular.

Jazz Jackrabbit is at the center of all that. Jazz Jackrabbit was distributed as shareware, soon republished with more content as "Jazz Jackrabbit CD" on CD-ROM, advertised within the game itself that the Gravis PC GamePad was the official controller of the game (and popular enough at the time to almost be considered standard for PCs), and at the time, there weren't many big-name platforming games for PCs (though certainly Apogee Software/id Software's output, including the Commander Keen series, made its mark before Epic MegaGames's Jazz Jackrabbit). And this was indeed big, kickstarting the career of Cliffy Bleszinski, the force behind Unreal and Gears Of War. Even if Jazz Jackrabbit may not have been as big as Sega's Sonic The Hedgehog, he certainly was, for a short time, the mascot for Epic MegaGames, and made a cameo appearance in another of their games, One Must Fall 2097 (another "must-play" from that era).

An interesting thing to note is that since these map rips go well beyond the normally playable area, there are some interesting features in those outlying areas. An interesting thing to point out - though also a warning - is there are some features that spell out some words, even some rude and crude statements. In particular, see (or beware of) the Guardian areas, since those are boss stages that don't take up much room, and hence have a large canvas for developers to play around to test things - or just to be testy. Zerker's included all of this in these Jazz Jackrabbit maps, as well as the special "Holiday Hare" episodes - this is the complete Jazz Jackrabbit package!

So the recognize the effort put into mapping this '90s PC icon, Zerker's Jazz Jackrabbit CD (PC) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for April 2018.

I just submitted everything that was ready to go for Magic Knight Rayearth. It covers about the first 1/3 of the game.

It looks like Yabause doesn't handle the water graphics very well. I had to leave some effects out of the Great Whirlpool where the sun was hitting the water, and some of the rooms in the Eternal Ice Cave were so bad I had to swap the water out with the water from other rooms. I've played through the whole game and know there's at least a few more places where i'll have to replace water backgrounds.

I spent a long time thinking about what to do with all the chests and hidden items. Since everything in this game has it's own icon I just put the treasures on little white cards so all of the hidden Rainbow Amulets would be easier to see.

So helpful, thanks so much 

Just noticed this! Thank you for featuring my map, and I'm really glad to see this game get more recognition.

Good choice of preview

[Is it possible to add those maps to your database? or hack database please? and how?]

Hi,

I am new to this forum and I'd like to share 2 maps I've made from a Nestroid Metroid hack I did in the summer of 2000.
I hope I created this topic in the right forum area.

Is it possible to add those maps to your database? or hack database please? and how?

I have 2 maps: 1- Technical with walkthrough by numbers
                     2- Artistic map

This is a link on Romhacking where you can download Pitoid: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2988/
This is a link on Youtube where you can see ShyGuyExpress play Pitoid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjvSJfSKmQE&t=1605s
Maps temporary on Google: https://goo.gl/photos/RckYowjz5VjWW8oi7

(I must say that is such an honor) * NOTE and necessary hints: There was a flaw on his file in Norfair though / There is a tunnel you can access and I made it on purpose that it requires the Long Beam / The top secret passage on the surface can be accessed with difficulty by freezing a bug at the right place.

Thanks for reading and if you liked the Original Metroid, this one will be a long challenge because at the time and with the limited editor, I have used all of the space I could. Therefore, the repetition of rooms in early Brinstar was inevitable, but I thought it would bring a spirit of lost caverns before you found something.

Enjoy! (and please don't forget my question in green on top!)

Fred

If no one here knows then dose anyone know where I can ask for the answer to my question?