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Maps Of The Month / 2025/07: Legend Of Mana (PlayStation) - mechaskrom

« Last post by JonLeung on Yesterday at 09:08:12 pm »

Legend Of Mana

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to mechaskrom's Legend Of Mana (PlayStation) maps.

This is the 250th time we have recognized a set of maps as "Maps Of The Month"!  That's a quarter of a thousand beautiful games with great maps!  (If you include the five April Fool's jokes from 2005-2009, that makes this #255, but that's also a milestone number... in hexadecimal.)  A complete and fully-labelled map set for a truly gorgeous game would be ideal for the 250th selection, and we got that in mechaskrom's recent submission of maps for Legend Of Mana!

In the world of Fa'Diel, the Mana Tree is the giver of mana and life.  Recovering from an ancient war, the Mana Tree currently sleeps.  The hero - which is you - will set out for adventure, collecting artifacts that magically contain various lands and their residents.  By recovering and restoring these areas, you can freely shape Fa'Diel however you like, so venture out into your creation in this open-ended action-RPG in the acclaimed Mana series by Square.

Legend Of Mana is a visual feast, with beautifully-crafted 2D graphics (pixels placed perfectly, and this is on the original PlayStation, a platform that preferred to push polygons).  It's one of the best-looking games in a series already known for being stunning.  Shout-out to art director Kōji Tsuda and the many Square artists!  There are a couple dozen settings with varied environments, like the lush White Forest, the cozy Lumina, the cluttered Junkyard, the harsh Norn Peaks, and many others.  Longtime mapper mechaskrom has captured every pixel of every room and, while some areas do have a fair bit of repetition, that's all the more reason we need these maps!  While labelling treasure chests and room connections are essential for any good RPG map, mechaskrom made sure not to cover up any of the in-game graphics, so we can fully appreciate the magnificent pixel art.

So to recognize the effort put into mapping this incredibly beautiful action-RPG, mechaskrom's Legend Of Mana (PlayStation) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for July 2025.

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Map Gab / Re: Sonic Advance - Sonic Colors Maps' sizes

« Last post by G.E.R. on June 28, 2025, 12:30:39 pm »

I think this quick-way gameplay can may have a bad influence on people and lead to excessive haste in the live. I noticed one strange feature when I explore a tourist object or go through a forest route as soon as quickly not clear why. This is useful when it need to pass the distance in 16+16km from a bus stop through the forest to cave, exploring this cave and come back and 'finish' within 6 hours to catch the bus, but I noticed that in this mounth I thied to explore castles or river valley quickly/as soon as possible (is not clear why).

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Gaming / Re: Disappointments of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and What Not to Repeat

« Last post by JonLeung on June 26, 2025, 08:15:36 pm »

Have you seen the Nintendo Direct presentation specifically about Donkey Kong: Bananza?  Now THAT looks like a worthy killer app for the Switch 2!  I've always liked the launch games including a Mario or Zelda game.  Sure, Mario Kart World is a Mario game, and it has an open world now, with missions and stuff, but I want a real adventure, and Donkey Kong: Bananza looks it it should have been that "day one" game.  Still, it's only a few weeks away.

Anyway, what I am getting at, to tie it into what this topic is about, I've seen a few posts where some think that the villain, Void Kong, is somehow King K. Rool, maybe transformed and/or magically in disguise.

I personally think that idea is ridiculous.  It never crossed my mind.  I think there is zero reason to suspect that, as there is no hint or rationale why that should be the case.  Mario's faced other antagonists than Bowser, Link's clashed with other baddies than Ganon, and Kirby has tussled with more than just King Dedede.  There isn't an army of Kremlings around, VoidCo seems like it must be a whole thing, so... no.  Void Kong and K. Rool have to be separate.  Why should it be bizarre that Nintendo, who have created all sorts of characters, still wants to generate more new characters?

If anything, if there are more Super Smash Bros. incoming, at the rate they're going, they're putting in more characters than they can create, so I would think they would take literally every opportunity to make new ones.  I'm not saying that Void Kong, Poppy Kong, and Grumpy Kong necessarily have Smash Bros. potential... but heck, a Piranha Plant made it, so, anything's possible.

In the UNLIKELY case that Void Kong IS K. Rool or some previous character in disguise, we can all come back and laugh at me.  But at this time, a few weeks before released, based on what we know, I would really bet on Void Kong being a totally new villain.

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Gaming / Re: Disappointments of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and What Not to Repeat

« Last post by Cyartog959 on June 26, 2025, 06:19:05 am »

You’ve raised some fair points especially on boss variety and world depth. A quick question, do you think these design choices were aimed at a younger audience or just development constraints?

I don't think its either, even though Mario games are always light-hearted.

I don't actually know how the Super Mario dev teams' mindsets are, nor how they work, but I kinda feel its not from dev constraints. What I think is that with all their time spent on making new environments, enemies, and levels, they kinda not bothered with sparing time for making another new array of bosses in Wonder, intentional or not. All we got were Bowser Jr. and Bowser as the game's only bosses. That is what I find EXTREMELY disappointing in a new Mario game.

And, no, the Koopalings don't need to be constantly reused again. I mean, they're alright as bosses of their own, but new villainous talent should be made a bit more often.

I've seen more creative minds that employed lots more variety than that, and especially with loads more game storage space we already got in many outlets that doesn't warrant less bosses in any way.

What I always expect from any new installment are not just new enemies, but new bosses; not reskins, resizes, or recolors, just new, original bosses. And Wonder clearly doesn't have any. Period. Not even a single chosen enemy turned into one by any resource needed, even by a Wonder Flower.

Some past Mario games had them step up a bit in bringing new bosses, but that's been kinda lacking lately, and that can be very harmful for later, new games and other devs trying to seek new inspiration sources for theirs.

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Gaming / Re: Disappointments of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and What Not to Repeat

« Last post by Leoughan on June 26, 2025, 01:12:42 am »

You’ve raised some fair points especially on boss variety and world depth. A quick question, do you think these design choices were aimed at a younger audience or just development constraints?

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Map Requests / Re: Mega Man Maps

« Last post by JonLeung on June 24, 2025, 11:49:18 am »

Another Japanese-exclusive Rockman phone game has been preserved; this time it's Rockman: The Puzzle Battle!

It's a "match-3" puzzle game, where weapons have various effects.  Not too complex or surprising.  As a puzzle game, there's not much to "map", but there are backgrounds unique to each Robot Master, resembling their original stages.  That might be worth capturing, and the cartoony sprites.

Why is Ice Man (at 15:33) so cute with a frowny face?

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Map Gab / Re: Sonic Advance - Sonic Colors Maps' sizes

« Last post by Cyartog959 on June 22, 2025, 07:53:19 am »

You want to know about this one, small, minor disappointment about the larger Sonic maps?(no, its not that they're too large or long.)

There's no Super Sonic option enabled to breeze past them quickly.

Having all 7 Chaos Emeralds already won through Special Stages, there's no option to enable Super Sonic, or any playable characters' super forms, to zoom through the largest maps yet quicker than normal.

Through Sonic Advance and up to Sonic Generations' 3DS version(not counting Lost World's 3DS version), only Super Sonic has been reserved to play through the Extra Zones and defeat the true final bosses there, but nowhere else. I mean, for me, its kind of hollow not to get these chances for speedrunners across the world to partake in beating regular stages, nor bosses, as Super Sonic. I mean, its OK to speedrun them as normal, but to do them as Super Sonic, that would've been quite more enjoyable.

Well, using Boost does it, given that Sonic Rush does introduce it, but, its only speedrunning through them quite less the time that way, clever bypassing tricks in their layouts or not.

I mean, if another new 2D Sonic game could be made(not made in the likes of Sonic Superstars, mind you) with us enabling Super Sonic again, and its maps made larger and longer, even surpassing Asteroid Coaster Act 2's size from Sonic Colors DS as the longest yet, I could imagine speeding through all the dangers the larger levels can offer as Super Sonic, and speed right through the whole level in less than minutes time, giving the greater satisfaction of conquering them quicker than normal.

Can any of you imagine that? I can.

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VGMaps Social Board / Re: Are there any graphics apps that can remove backgrounds or compare pixels?

« Last post by JonLeung on June 19, 2025, 04:43:30 pm »

I have made a paint.net plugin that compares all visible layers below the selected layer. The result is drawn to the selected layer (transparent=same, magenta=different).
https://www.mediafire.com/file/1hititv1zm1uhon/DiffLayers.zip/file

Apparently I forgot to say thanks, as the tool did come in handy when making maps for Beyond Shadowgate (PC).

Thanks, mechaskrom!

Or rather, it came in handy to fuel my obsession with getting all the possible states that a room could look like, but maybe I won't actually show them all.

Context: while I rarely make my own maps, I did make maps for this game while putting togther my "Beyond Shadowgate: Unboxing & Review" video on my "JonLeung1" YouTube channel.

I do plan on releasing another version of the maps that would be marked, but I likely won't be indicating EVERYTHING on them, just some stuff of interest like missable rooms (of which there are only a few), where the branch for the best/worst endings is, that sort of thing.  It's more a question of wording and formatting.

I might also do an "Screens" collage with all variations of all rooms, similar to what zagato blackfist did for the NES versions of Shadowgate, Deja Vu, and Uninvited.

But perhaps it's ludicrous to show EVERY possible state that EVERY room could be in.  Maybe two will be sufficient.

Still, all my quitting-and-reloading and picking up items in a different order just to get every one of these combos was time-consuming.  I didn't use mechaskrom's plugin as much as I should have, as it worked well enough the few times that I did, to spot differences between pixels, if I needed to recreate a scene in paint.net by changing some items around, instead of trying to get it in the game just right.

Thanks again!   

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« Last post by JonLeung on June 19, 2025, 04:25:38 pm »

JonLeung (that's me!) has started maps for Beyond Shadowgate (PC), a point-and-click adventure game that is a sequel to the NES version of Shadowgate including keeping its gameplay and 8-bit visuals.  (Note that this is not the same as the Turbo Grafx CD of the same name from 1993.)

I made them while I was also working on this unboxing and review video:

The maps that are up now are the unmarked ones.  It started out with all rooms being in their "initial" state, but some rooms are not QUITE how they look when you first enter.  For example, there are a few "rooms" in Torlin Forest that are shown with the creatures you encounter there, though that's not the true "initial" state as some only show up when you move or try to do anything, but I opted to show the creature as that's the main point of the room.

I might also replace the dark rooms that need a lantern, as it might be more useful if they were shown when they are lit up. 

I do plan on releasing another version of the maps that would be marked, but I likely won't be indicating EVERYTHING on them, just some stuff of interest like missable rooms (of which there are only a few), where the branch for the best/worst endings is, that sort of thing.  It's more a question of wording and formatting.

I have screenshots of (hopefully) every variation of every room.  Some rooms have multiple things that can be in multiple states (like numerous items to take or not, or doors that can be open or closed) which led to some rooms getting like 60 or 72 variations just because of my insistence of capturing every combination.  Since you usually can't put items back down, that meant a lot of quitting and reloading and getting them in a different order to get all these permutations of possibilities.

As I do want to make a "Screens" collage featuring every variation of every room, like zagato blackfist did with Shadowgate, Deja Vu, and Uninvited on the NES, I should probably decide if all that was really necessary or just to show two variations (like every item not taken vs. everything taken, as opposed to ALL combos of some items being taken and others not).

One room in Themiere Mansion has a clock puzzle, with the hands having to be in a different position per playthrough, determined randomly.  I decided it wasn't worth the trouble to get every combination (in a room that already has many) multiplied by every possible combination of the position of the hands on the clock.  I could just show the clock combos separately...  but really, I might have overdone it.

I'll figure it out, eventually.

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VGMaps Social Board / Re: YouTube channel! (JonLeung1)

« Last post by JonLeung on June 18, 2025, 09:19:15 pm »

Here's my unboxing and review of Beyond Shadowgate for the PC!

(Note that this is not the same as the 1993 Turbo Grafx CD game of the same name.)

It's a sequel to the NES version, and looks and plays just like it!

And yes, you heard right, I do have maps of this game in progress.  Maybe I should put up the unmarked maps for now, at least...

EDIT: The unmarked maps are now up here.