VGMaps

As of 5:36 PM today, when ozderya submitted maps for Pop Breaker (J) for the Game Gear (https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/GameGear/index.htm#PopBreaker) over on the VGMaps Discord server, its "Stage 08" became the 50,000th map here on VGMaps.com!


We knew this was coming; Cyartog959 asked about this in November 2024 and started a topic about it (https://www.vgmaps.com/forums/index.php?topic=4163.0).  Earlier on in the year (January 6), I counted 48,189 maps, and based on the rate of maps we'd been getting over the past four years, I estimated that the remaining ~1811 maps would probably take another eight months, so, probably late September.  (Though apparently I didn't actually say that in the topic thread, hmmm.)  However, instead of the start of autumn, we got to 50,000 by today... spring literally just started!

Why was my estimate off by half a year?  Because, just shortly after we were talking about it in that topic in January, map submissions shot up through the roof!  Guard Master began regularly submitting maps from his massive hoard that he'd created before, though originally for GameFAQs.  Along with submissions from others, there was (probably?) a record made or broken here, as there were 17 consecutive days of submissions between January 19 to February 4.  As you can see from the news page on the front, the submissions have been very constant this year, including loads from MP83, gymzatan, VGCartography, and zagato blackfist.  And several other mappers, too, but those ones in particular stood out this year.  (I love your work, guys, and I shouldn't complain, but... maybe space things out a bit more?  Were you racing to 50k?)

The congratulations aren't just for ozderya, or just any of the recent mappers.  Because to get to 50,000, we of course need all the maps that came before.  Every single one of them.  So if you've ever submitted a map to VGMaps.com, and it's still up, it all counts towards this total (which is actually 50,042 now, since Pop Breaker has 50 stages).

I'd love to put up some more stats and interesting facts and pie charts and whatnot, but this will take a bit longer.

While I have a lot of data on hand, with some neat trivia (did you know that the PC section ALONE takes up ⅓ of the whole site in terms of file mass? Or that the NES section is largest by quantity as it has 8615 maps, the most of any section, but by mass, it only accounts for 1.8% of the actual bytes?) but I'd like to take some time to get things sorted and checked, including an audit on the games to make sure the number of game title image files equals the number of games actually mapped (a few might still be missing title images, some are linked offsite that I probably don't need to keep, etc.).

Maybe G.E.R. could do another count to see who's contributed how many maps?

Anyway, I should go mention this on social media before the day is over, look forward to some stats in this topic thread soon (if you're into that kind of thing).

But yeah, congratulations and thanks to everyone that's ever submitted a map to VGMaps.com: The Video Game Atlas!  (Now over 1/20th of the way to a million!)

Congratulations Jon on your site and here's to 24 more years and beyond hopefully.

https://youtu.be/WP10MXnUIpo?t=117

This is a productive community and everyone here should be proud of themselves.

I was planning on making a big infographic with all sorts of stats and figures and such, but it took me a while to relearn how to do graphs in Excel, and besides, it'd be better to stretch this out with one graph a day over the next few days, at least, especially on social media.

Today I made a pie chart showing how many maps there are per platform:

Almost half of the platforms have less than 100 maps... probably not surprising that the NES and Super NES are the most popular sections.  With both at about 1/6 of all the maps hosted on VGMaps.com, unsurprisingly (it's math after all), that's 1/3 of all of them.  With maps for PC (Windows/DOS) games, that comes to almost half!

Thanks for bringing up the time I asked for the total map count, Jon!

I knew VGMaps held many game maps, but hardly anybody until then asked about how many there are in total, and, well here we are! Ring the bells, and bake the ham, I'm feeling a bit festive today!  ;D

I felt excitement in my heart and mind when I just saw the amount was counted past 50,000, and it was that game to get that count solidified and sped past that! You previously thought the amount would be met by Autumn, but you never knew how quick that can come up, and boy, did it come up so quick; just in time for Spring to begin! What a way to start off another usual season!

I say this, Jon, you, the site, and everyone that contributed maps, now and before, are TRULY blessed to make this happen, and I'm truly hopeful for all this to keep on going beyond decades to come!

I see a good celebration for this! Prayers, blessings, protection, hope and peace to all worldwide and in the whole community! Yeah!  :D

I know there's still lots more games to be mapped, but, for this, I'm feeling the need to celebrate.

We are feeling very good about this! Let's keep this traction going!

Today, we see how much each platform's filesize contributes to the 47,600,318,154 bytes (44.3 GB) of VGMaps.

(Sorry that the colours of the wedges don't always make sense nor are they necessarily the same as they were yesterday.)

Interesting takeaways:
-The PC section takes up ⅓ of all of VGMaps.com ALONE!
-The Switch being second place is kind of crazy, it's a whole tenth of everything, despite having less than 1% of the maps.  It's all those massive Kirby and Sonic maps!
-Despite the NES having the most maps (17.3% of them as seen in yesterday's chart), it only takes up 1.8% of space!

Still celebrating VGMaps.com's 50,000 maps!
From the data seen in the last two days, we can see the average filesize per map per platform!
The largest maps on average are on the PSP, mostly due to G.E.R.'s Sonic Rivals (https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/PSP/index.htm#SonicRivals) and catacombs's Ultimate Ghosts 'N Goblins (https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/PSP/index.htm#UltimateGhostsNGoblins) maps.

The map that is closest to the overall average of 952,006 bytes (929.7 kb) is G.E.R.'s map of Volcano Valley - Stage 1 (https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/DS/Kirby-MassAttack-VolcanoValley-Stage1.png) from Kirby: Mass Attack (DS), which is 1631 bytes over.

The closest that is under, by 2094 bytes, is the map of the Entrance of Dracula's Castle (https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/PSX/Castlevania-SymphonyOfTheNight-Dracula'sCastle-Entrance.png) from Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night (PlayStation), by Revned, and thanks to mephea and TerraEsperZ.
Just wanted to mention this, as it's funny to think of this awesome start as an "average map".

This made me realize I never submitted the ~80 maps I made for Tomb Raider 4-6. We'll hit 100k in no time  8)

Quote from: VGCartography on March 25, 2026, 07:33:39 AM
This made me realize I never submitted the ~80 maps I made for Tomb Raider 4-6. We'll hit 100k in no time  8)

Yeah, but we'd need to hit about 75,000 first, and there's loads and loads of games to cover it.

More VGMaps.com facts: here are the 10 largest maps based on filesize (might do it based on image area later).
Two from Ori, two from Ultima, and two from Pokémon.
Funny how no maps are between 100-150 MB...

Here are the 10 smallest maps, by filesize.
These are mostly in-game maps, or dark/empty "rooms".
The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time has the smallest in-game map: The Lost Woods!

VGMaps.com: The Video Game Atlas got to 50,000 maps a week ago! Still more stats!
After the 10 largest/smallest maps, here are the 10 "middlest" maps by filesize.
Not overworlds or in-game mini-maps, but actual individual game areas!
The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past's Kakariko Village is one of the first maps I ever made; so cool to see it so close to the center!

Still celebrating VGMaps.com: The Video Game Atlas having over 50,000 screenshot maps!
We looked at the maps with extreme filesizes, but how about actual image area? The # of pixels?
The maps for Limbo and Blasphemous have over ONE BILLION pixels, each!
That's over a gigapixel!

Still celebrating VGMaps.com: The Video Game Atlas now having over 50,000 screenshot maps!
After yesterday's huge maps (a BILLION pixels!), today we have the smallest (only 1886-3264 pixels), and they're all in-game maps from The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time. Thanks, Peardian!

After looking at the largest and smallest maps by image area, here are those in the middle. ozderya, who mapped the 50,000th map, also mapped many of the maps here at the center!

Here's a summary of all the maps of extreme sizes, including the tallest/shortest/widest/narrowest (no thumbnails because they'd just look like sticks anyway).

Dang. 50,000 maps. That's... a lot of maps! Congrats, Jon! And I'm happy to have contributed to that total, small as it is. Wish I could think of more games to map out... but oh well. I'm sure I'll think of something else someday. :P

Anyway, here's hoping we'll one day hit 100k maps! :D

Quote from: YelseyKing on April 07, 2026, 10:15:50 PM
Dang. 50,000 maps. That's... a lot of maps! Congrats, Jon! And I'm happy to have contributed to that total, small as it is. Wish I could think of more games to map out... but oh well. I'm sure I'll think of something else someday. :P

Anyway, here's hoping we'll one day hit 100k maps! :D

Oh, don't you worry. There's still loads more out there, the choices you may decide, whenever you do, can be right up your alley. The count is still going strong, and the ranges are so wide, so to speak.

Hey! I just remembered something that's been forgotten/overlooked in the midst of our celebration!

Presently, for 3D games, VGMaps doesn't count the length of maps in distance meters, kilometers/square kilometers, miles, and so forth. The many game console atlas pages that have 3D game maps in the site, regardless of perspective, doesn't have their meter size counts alongside pixel and data file sizes, for traveling in different directions.

As I recall, from the GDC 2009 YouTube video presentation Sega made about Sonic Unleashed after its launch, the stages ranged from 5 to 20 square km, spotted at minute 43:28 in the video(I've left a video link to it in one of my posts). This led me to think, "What many other 3D games do have their meter size counts?".

I just had this thought after seeing your numerous calculations for select maps that are the longest, largest, narrowest, smallest, etc., etc., and my mind went "DING!" through a little thinking, and that's where it hit me.

Jon, if you're around, perhaps the atlas pages may need a new distance meter count section for 3D game maps added sometime soon. Think about it. I'm curious to see what they are.

Over 400 people have submitted maps to VGMaps.com: The Video Game Atlas!
Thanks to G.E.R. for providing the data on these video game cartographers!
It helped me to make this table of the top 30 mappers showing how many maps they've made, including how many that are for their fave platforms!

It's insane that G.E.R. alone has created almost 11% of the entire site's content by himself!

Is your name on the list?

Well this is quite a thing to happen! ^_^

Quote from: Cyartog959 on April 08, 2026, 08:01:26 PM
Hey! I just remembered something that's been forgotten/overlooked in the midst of our celebration!

Presently, for 3D games, VGMaps doesn't count the length of maps in distance meters, kilometers/square kilometers, miles, and so forth. The many game console atlas pages that have 3D game maps in the site, regardless of perspective, doesn't have their meter size counts alongside pixel and data file sizes, for traveling in different directions.

As I recall, from the GDC 2009 YouTube video presentation Sega made about Sonic Unleashed after its launch, the stages ranged from 5 to 20 square km, spotted at minute 43:28 in the video(I've left a video link to it in one of my posts). This led me to think, "What many other 3D games do have their meter size counts?".

I just had this thought after seeing your numerous calculations for select maps that are the longest, largest, narrowest, smallest, etc., etc., and my mind went "DING!" through a little thinking, and that's where it hit me.

Jon, if you're around, perhaps the atlas pages may need a new distance meter count section for 3D game maps added sometime soon. Think about it. I'm curious to see what they are.

Measurements in meters or square meters really don't mean enough to be listed on the atlas pages.
And technically, it could be applied to 2D games as well, but we're not going to do that.
Even now, as it is, some days I wonder if the pixel area and filesize are even necessary, so I'm definitely not going to add another column with limited value.

Calculating it isn't easy for multiple games, let alone just one.  For one thing, it's completely arbitrary what scale is in each game.  It's usually calculated by taking the known height of a character.  But what if that isn't known, or it's some abstract game?  Or if there are changes in perspective or game modes, you have to calculate them for each one?

It can be interesting in certain instances (like comparing the cities of GTA-style games, or open worlds in general), but not something you can realistically expect to be applied to maps "en masse".  If you still want to discuss the intended area of particular game maps, that should be a different topic thread.

Thank you so much, Jon, for making it possible for all of us to contribute to this amazing internet project you began so long ago. And I'm happy to have been a helping hand in reaching the 50,000 milestone. :D

It's been a lot of fun viewing all of these "windows" into the state of the website these past few weeks. ;D

And wow, I definitely wasn't expecting to be the fifth most active contributor on VGMaps! Have I really done that much?!

Thanks for the cool data, Jon. This is good stuff.

Also, those Silksong map dimensions. G.E.R. is truly a madman  :)

Quote from: FlyingArmor on April 10, 2026, 11:29:38 AM
Thank you so much, Jon, for making it possible for all of us to contribute to this amazing internet project you began so long ago. And I'm happy to have been a helping hand in reaching the 50,000 milestone. :D

It's been a lot of fun viewing all of these "windows" into the state of the website these past few weeks. ;D

And wow, I definitely wasn't expecting to be the fifth most active contributor on VGMaps! Have I really done that much?!

You're welcome!

I have a few more stats I could show off, and probably will (just not tonight), but it's definitely winding down, there's only so much that's worth saying.
Glad people find them interesting!  I knew this one about how much the top mappers have contributed would get people's attention!

Yeah, you're up there, FlyingArmor.  Is there really any doubt?

What I find interesting is that the top five contributors are all about 1000 maps apart from each other.  That's pretty even!

There's some mathematical theory or law or something about how when something is big (like population, for instance), the largest one will be considerably larger than the second, whose difference from the third isn't as big.  Probably some distribution thing I can't remember right now, and Google's not helpful.  Maybe it applies to map sizes, seeing as how G.E.R.'s latest huge map is three times bigger than his previous one, as mentioned here (https://www.vgmaps.com/forums/index.php?topic=4260.0).

In any case, it's clear from that table that this site's content and success is due to you guys, so I should be thanking you.  I mean, just look at that!
G.E.R. alone has made almost 11% of maps on this site, that's over one-tenth - and almost one-ninth - of ALL of this!  The top 12 mappers alone have made up half the site!
Guard Master only recently starting sharing his maps with VGMaps, with so much of it in 2026... which is amazing, already shooting up to 7th place by providing 1/40th of VGMaps.com in a short amount of time.

So thank you all again for your hard work!  This community may be small, but it's amazing.

Quote from: JonLeung on April 10, 2026, 09:00:32 AM
Measurements in meters or square meters really don't mean enough to be listed on the atlas pages.
And technically, it could be applied to 2D games as well, but we're not going to do that.
Even now, as it is, some days I wonder if the pixel area and filesize are even necessary, so I'm definitely not going to add another column with limited value.

Calculating it isn't easy for multiple games, let alone just one.  For one thing, it's completely arbitrary what scale is in each game.  It's usually calculated by taking the known height of a character.  But what if that isn't known, or it's some abstract game?  Or if there are changes in perspective or game modes, you have to calculate them for each one?

It can be interesting in certain instances (like comparing the cities of GTA-style games, or open worlds in general), but not something you can realistically expect to be applied to maps "en masse".  If you still want to discuss the intended area of particular game maps, that should be a different topic thread.

I didn't say calculating the field distance meters would be easy nor impossible; just thought that would be a little necessity for 3D game maps. I'm not making that a big priority, too.

I mean, sure, its nice to see how long or large 2D maps can go, but when it comes to seeing and playing 3D games, my mind sometimes wonders, "how much distance meters do these 3D fields have?".

Pixel areas and file sizes are indeed necessary for maps, to me and plenty of people, anyway, because knowing is already natural as well as learning. It is already worth good effort for people to learn and have some knowledge in it as well as the experience without them feeling they're wandering off too much going blind, so to speak, or not knowing how long any game map it takes for anyone to go through and reach the goal.

Knowing is only half the challenge, but calculating is part of it, too, depending on the matter.

Yes, it does require effort, I know, and I'm not expecting too much on the matter, but I won't worry about it.

OK, I'll do a thread on that subject at a later time.

Still celebrating VGMaps.com having 50,000 maps!
It's little surprise that the majority of maps are for console games.
(It'd be nice to have more computer games mapped!
And I don't know what to classify the Virtual Boy as, so it might as well be its own category.)

3401 games have at least one map on VGMaps.com.
Here's the breakdown by platform.
818 games are on the NES (including the Famicom and Famicom Disk System), a whopping 24%.

50,000 maps for 3401 games means an average of 14.7 maps per game.

So how about individual platforms?

This table shows the average number of maps per game, per platform.

(How often do you see the Wii U ranked so highly?)

Here are 100 words in game titles/map names, listed here by frequency.

"Man" is among the most common, but "Woman" is the least.
"Final/Battle/Dark/Kid" & "Space/Alien/Force" are next to each other.

I have but one query that didn't get answered yet, even though we have 50,000 maps in VGMaps thus far...

Which map from what game got labelled as the 25,000th map in VGMaps history?

With all the excitement, I almost let that one slip from my mind.

I don't recall tracking that, so if it was never discussed at the time, then it was never counted.

I still have my folder of when we got to 50,000 maps exactly, so sorting them by "Date Modified", I looked for the 25,000th one, but before I get to that, there's at least a couple problems with that.

(1) The biggest one is that maps are remade now and then.  A mapper might find an error, or even entirely redo a map.  There are a few cases when I do deem a map replaceable with one from another mapper (thankfully that isn't too often, as I hate tough calls).  So any maps made before the 25,000 mark but remade/replaced after we passed it would mean that what looks like the 25,000th is actually a later one, and whatever is the true 25,000th must be an earlier one, but I'd have no idea which, because it's not like I was counting how many times maps have been replaced.

(2) Because I use PNGGauntlet to compress the maps (since they're usually .PNG files), but I sometimes have to run it multiple times to ensure the filesize is as small as it can be, I have a habit of using FMS File Date Changer to change the time to midnight that day when I rerun PNGGauntlet.  The idea is that if the date changes, then it compressed again, but if it hasn't, then it's reached its final size.  This process is so that I don't waste time trying to recompress files that have already been compressed as much as they can be.  Once I'm satisfied that they're all compressed, I change the dates of all of them to midnight again to indicate that their sizes are finalized.  That means all maps submitted and (usually) published within a day all have the same timestamp, and it would have affected both the "Date Modified" and the "Date Created" fields of the file details.

Anyway, like I said, I looked at the 25,000th file in the folder, and we got our 24,997th map on December 21, 2014.  That is, if we are ignoring (1).  So the 25,000th map would be the third one after that, right?

The thing is, I have 447 maps with a timestamp of midnight on December 22, 2014.  That's an insane number of maps for one day.

But when I look into it - and you can see for yourself on the News Archives if you scroll down on the "NEWS" on the front page, if you click on 2014 - there wasn't an update on December 22, 2014.

Looking at the 447 maps again, I notice many of them are by KeyBlade999, and then now I remember being BOMBARDED by a whole slew of his maps.  It happens from time to time when a longtime mapper (perhaps for GameFAQs, or for their own interest) learns of VGMaps, and/or suddenly decides to contribute a whole mass of maps all at once.

Because it was around Christmas, I probably wasn't able to get all of the maps up in one day, and indeed, I see that many of these maps were put up later than Dec. 22, 2014, even going into January 2015.

This actually helps, because I was going to say, the third map out of 447 would be impossible to pinpoint.  But since they weren't all published right away, you'd think it should be easier.

It looks like the third map should be from one of Ax Battler: A Legend Of Golden Axe (https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/GameGear/index.htm#AxBattlerLegendOfGoldenAxe), Shadow Force (https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/Arcade/index.htm#ShadowForce), or Amazon: Guardians Of Eden (https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/PC/index.htm#AmazonGuardiansOfEden), since those were the first games whose maps were published after Dec. 21, specifically Dec. 26.  Amazon's maps technically have a date of Dec. 21, but 11:59 PM - usually my own indication that I wasn't able to compress it, but that it still was received on Dec. 22 (but then maybe that throws off the count by another four?), Shadow Force's maps have a date of Dec. 24 and Ax Battler's maps have a date of Dec. 26, meaning that they jumped ahead of the queue, maybe because I figured I would tackle KeyBlade999's huge mass of maps later, after getting Richard V. Grant's, Will Mallia's, and George s's maps out of the way first.

I'm usually good about putting maps up the same day, or at least putting them up in the order that I received them, so that brings us to...

(3) Apparently when it MIGHT have been - if we ignore (1) altogether) - I was apparently handling a ton of maps at once, so it was one of the rare times when I couldn't put them up in order of when I received them, and with so many games it would have been totally arbitrary which I would have put up.

All that to say... we really don't know.  Judging by that there would have been a good number of remakes of maps already, I can say it almost surely happened in 2014, but that's about it.

(And yeah, this turned out to take longer to write out than I thought, because I was investigating various things while writing this up...)  :P