Recent Posts

Pages: 1 2 [3] 4 5 ... 10
21
Map Gab / Re: I found Rayman Maps through one site...
« Last post by Cyartog959 on November 05, 2025, 01:23:11 pm »
Quote from: yangyin on November 05, 2025, 01:24:43 am
Really appreciate the research you put into this. Do you think Ubisoft will ever revive the series properly? It’s wild how long it’s been dormant.

(SIGH...)

Given Ubisoft's... recent, negative decisions and prioritization changes towards their IP treatment and heightened negligence of said IPs, not to mention the series' creator, Michel Ancel previously leaving the gaming industry to dedicate his time preserving wildlife, and the series' complete lack of canonical cohesion with each game, in terms of art style, gameplay formula, and character personality changes, I feel uncertain about that series' future...

I'd honestly feel that if it's actually getting a proper revival, anybody would've thought of saving enough money to commence any video game IP rights transfers from one holder to the other.

Not saying its impossible, but that can be pricey, depending on the matter. ...I'm no expert on this.
22
Gaming / Rayman Mapping Appreciation Thread
« Last post by yangyin on November 05, 2025, 01:30:42 am »
Hey everyone!
With Rayman’s 30th anniversary coming up, I thought it’d be great to celebrate the amazing maps from this series. From the hand-drawn worlds of the original to the energetic stages in Origins and Legends, Rayman has always stood out for its creative level design and atmosphere.
Which Rayman maps or levels do you love the most? Let’s share our favorites and appreciate how much artistry went into them!
23
Map Gab / Re: I found Rayman Maps through one site...
« Last post by yangyin on November 05, 2025, 01:24:43 am »
Really appreciate the research you put into this. Do you think Ubisoft will ever revive the series properly? It’s wild how long it’s been dormant.
24
Gaming / Re: Mini-Bosses... Favorites?
« Last post by Cyartog959 on November 02, 2025, 03:21:55 am »
I guess I do have another miniboss favorite group to say, anyway...

We've seen many powerful robots that became mini-bosses, but I feel the more collective group I'm referring to are Dr. Robotnik's Super Badniks, a branch of his ever growing Badnik army that are more powerful than regular Badniks, even going far as not needing animals to power them in most cases, their power sources are self-made.

Technically, Super Badniks did debut in Sonic 2's 8-Bit version, but the batches seen in that game, Sonic Chaos, and Triple Trouble were classified as regular bosses, because Robotnik's been busy dealing with Sonic, and later Tails, to deal with them. Rather, he created and sent Super Badniks to try to destroy them or slow them down while his scheme goes along in his bases.

Archie Sonic did label Antlion Mecha as a Super Badnik in Issue #268, so I stood to realize that those robots from those 3 Sonic Game Gear games ARE indeed Super Badniks. I think their former labels, "Master Robots" and "Boss Robots", are kinda rendered unnecessarily needed, because they have a proper robot line name now, and it contradicts these former labels they had.

Their more prominent appearances and additional role as minibosses came to be in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and continued onward. Their designs are all original and well-made as more robots Sonic and his friends can demolish.

Well, I can say one of the more favorite Super Badniks is Red Eye, the final miniboss of Sonic 3, in Death Egg Act 1. That was the most powerful Super Badnik in that game, as it's the Death Egg's miniature reactor core and internal defense system made in one. It was encased in its metallic, tall, cylinder-like housing structure that encompasses its outer body.

The weaponry I can still remember is its metallic spheres Red Eye controlled telekinetically to attack its intruders onboard the Death Egg, and upon each hit dealt to it, each sphere explodes to shoot out spikes loaded in it as a countermeasure.

Once its housing broke off, its actual body appears, a robotic pod with its singular eye-like core built into it, with hovering spiked platforms accompanying it, and serves as that miniboss' second phase. Dealing each hit makes Red Eye enraged and spins the platforms crazily as it fires its laser for a short time before calming down, though, more hits can leave its laser firing a bit more longer.

It still remains to me a favorite miniboss in the Sonic series, among others, like Fire Breath, Big Icedus, Uber Caterkiller, in both states of attack, Hey Ho, and of course, the most memorable Super Badnik, Gapsule!

Wonder what other Super Badniks are your favorite as minibosses?
25
Maps Of The Month / 2025/11: Scurge: Hive (GBA) - Spanettone
« Last post by JonLeung on October 31, 2025, 09:30:43 pm »

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Spanettone's Scurge: Hive (GBA) maps.

On the planet Inos, at a research laboratory, a virulent alien parasite known as "the Scurge" has breached containment.  As the Scurge infects organisms and machines, it transforms them into creatures and obstacles that our heroine, Jenosa Arma, will have to overcome.  She has been hired by the military to eliminate the Scurge while salvaging whatever equipment she can.  Good thing she has a special suit and is capable of upgrading her abilities along the way, but she'll have to stave off her own infection, which she gets after her first exposure to the Scurge.

Though comparisons with the Metroid series are expected, Scurge: Hive is more action-heavy, so Jenosa's survival will be very much a priority, that exploration of this isometric world won't be that easy.  It's fortunate that we have these maps by Spanettone to make getting around Inos easier.

Though this game was released on the GBA and DS back in 2006, it recently got rereleased - last month, in fact -  for the PC and all the major platforms, so it's easier to experience Scurge: Hive than ever before.

So to recognize the effort put into mapping this "isometroid", Spanettone's Scurge: Hive (GBA) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for November 2025.
26
Gaming / "10 Games To Get To Know Me..."
« Last post by JonLeung on October 31, 2025, 11:58:52 am »

I could've sworn I already posted this in these forums... but maybe I'm confusing it with the VGMaps Discord... or my X, Bluesky, Facebook, or Instagram... too many social media platforms to keep up with!

Anyway, if I haven't, here's my image as part of the "10 Games To Get To Know Me" trend on social media where people post an image of themselves, as well as box shots (usually, or some use screenshots) of ten video games that they really like, or define them, or whatever.

I couldn't settle on 10 so I took it up to 11 (like Spinal Tap).  Well, I had kind of settled on ten games a few days earlier, but noticed right after posting it that I had somehow forgotten the game with my favourite map on all of VGMaps.com, Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night!  (Thanks yet again, Revned!)

A bizarre thing to forget as it should have been high on the list to begin with.  As I saw others were breaking the "rule" (if there ever was one) and posting fewer or more games, and as it IS Hallowe'en, I was like, yeah, I'll stick Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night on there, it's fine.

Obviously, The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past is there, as the first maps I ever made for VGMaps.com are of that game.  But some weren't sure bets, at least not initially.  I hesitated on if I should include SimCity Social (a now-defunct browser game on Facebook that didn't even last a year) or specifically the arcade version of SoulCalibur II which I played when I worked at Playdium (especially the Risk-like "Conquest" mode not seen in any of the home versions).  Then my brother said those are EXACTLY the reasons why I should include them if I wanted my image to be personally unique, because others likely wouldn't have such strong and specific memories.

So, yeah, that's my eleven games.

(I guess.  In my over four decades of gaming, I've played MANY games, so this wasn't easy to choose in the first place... This might be a little different if you ask me about the most influential games in my life if you ask me on another day, if I remember something else... for me to even forget Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night in the first place... wow, maybe I am getting old...)

If you want to partake in this trend, you're welcome to share your ten (or however many you want).
27
Map Requests / Re: "Tom and Jerry: Frantic Antics"
« Last post by mechaskrom on October 29, 2025, 10:26:20 am »
Any progress on your Tom and Jerry maps kiddingfan? You seemed very committed to mapping this game, but have been worryingly inactive since your first post.
28
Maps Of The Month / Re: 2025/10: The Mummy Demastered (PC) - eishiya
« Last post by mechaskrom on October 29, 2025, 10:07:48 am »
Nice maps eishiya.

How did you map this game (tools, methods, etc. used)? Ripping the parallax layers separately in a PC game must have been difficult. It also sounds like you were able to rip the tiles from the game. How?
29
Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games
« Last post by JonLeung on October 27, 2025, 10:02:04 pm »

And so what we have here is the combination of the two previous wallpapers from my two previous posts... the 72 games Nintendo Of America published for the NES in North America.

Nintendo did things differently in Europe, so that might be interesting to look at later.  They published The Battle Of Olympus, Kickle Cubicle, Little Nemo: The Dream Master, and others.

Sorry for the North America-centrism, but if we compare the 72 games here to the listing on VGMaps.com...

Wow, we actually have maps for them all... except for Cobra Triangle.

I'm going to put that on my personal requests list now, as well.

That will be a milestone, wouldn't it?  Would be cool to be able to say that we have every Nintendo (of America)-published NES game here on VGMaps.com: The Video Game Atlas?
30
Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games
« Last post by JonLeung on October 27, 2025, 09:56:35 pm »
Maybe I will talk more about that, actually...

If you are curious, I also made a wallpaper of the 35 games published by Nintendo themselves that are NOT in a black/silver/blue box.


Nintendo wanted to get North American gamers into RPGs, so they chose to publish Dragon Quest (and rename it to "Dragon Warrior"), Final Fantasy, and Faxanadu.  They also chose to publish Mega Man 6 when Capcom didn't seem to want to do it.

But it's interesting what we have here...
Consider the black/silver/blue-box games (seen on the wallpaper in my previous post) to be when Nintendo was starting out, that is, the early NES era.
Then the games with red banners on the top would be the latest phase (because the Super NES was on the horizon or already out, like Kirby's Adventure, Wario's Woods, and the Yoshi puzzle games).
Then everything else in between is what you'd think would be the "peak Nintendo era".

But if you filter out the Zapper and Power Pad games, since no one remembers those (sorry, Super Team Games and To The Earth), the games from franchises that are not dependent on Nintendo anymore (as mentioned earlier, like Final Fantasy and Mega Man 6), then what are you left with?

Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3, both Zelda games, Punch-Out!!, and... that's pretty much it?

(I mean, I like StarTropics, but sadly, that's not really remembered after the NES era... wasn't even released in Japan... not even any Super Smash Bros. references, if I recall correctly...)

Arguably, The Legend Of Zelda would almost be a "Black Box" game due to the timing and that it almost had a black box... but that just means one fewer game for the "peak era" that we are discussing here!

I mean, sure, the Mario sequels and Zelda (even if it's "just" Zelda II) are certainly nothing to scoff at, and Punch-Out!! was insanely popular too.  Though big, nay, HUGE, that's really not many games at all.  But they didn't need to make many more, clearly.  Maybe Nintendo didn't NEED to release more stuff, lest it distract from the well-selling Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3.  Looking at this really goes to show how the "peak NES era" was probably heavily supported by third-party games, that is, Mega Man, Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden, even licensed stuff like Disney and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Certainly interesting to look at it this way, isn't it?
Pages: 1 2 [3] 4 5 ... 10