Messages

1

Map Requests / Re: Sega Genesis Mini 2 - full map set

« on: September 11, 2025, 08:48:34 am »

I guess there's not much to the last area of Space Harrier, but with that final map of "Absymbel", it looks like the "BONUS" games of the Sega Genesis Mini 2 are now completely mapped!

Feel free to correct me if that's not the case.

If the list is accurate, looks like we have a couple of Shinings, a couple of Eccos (sounds like we're talking about light and sound there), Populous, and Mansion Of Hidden Souls left.

I don't know much about Mansion Of Hidden Souls.  Skimming through some images and videos of it just now, I'm reminded of the classic PC game, The 7th Guest, which I also requested in my own requests topic.  That game is notable for being one of the first CD-ROM games showcasing the storage capacity of CDs with its many video cutscenes.  But that's The 7th Guest... we can talk about that elsewhere.

When I think of the Sega CD, I always think of Night Trap and Sewer Shark.  I don't know how I didn't hear about Mansion Of Hidden Souls.  It might as well have been hidden... at least to me...

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« on: September 11, 2025, 08:28:12 am »

We finally have a map for Alwa's Awakening, thanks to duckfist and Stubbsy, which I put up last night, but it was my fault that it took this long because I forgot that I had asked for permission on the Steam Community page and actually got permission... on September 16, 2024... meaning that it is close to a YEAR that I finally noticed the response and got it up last night.

Cyartog959 reminded me that I had asked... weird that I forgot. I don't make it a habit to ask for maps... you'd think that alone would make it more memorable.  Must be my old age... 

In any case, we have it now!  Yay!

This is the kind of indie, 8-bit-styled game that I like to see more maps of.  More modern/recent content!  (Well, the game is like seven years old - some sources say eight - but still, you know what I mean, where the 8-bit look is a stylistic choice as opposed to a necessity.)

Thanks again, duckfist and Stubbsy!

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Map Requests / Re: Sega Genesis Mini 2 - full map set

« on: September 10, 2025, 09:43:04 pm »

We "gained some ground" (heh) thanks to G.E.R. today, with maps of
Gain Ground,
The Ooze,
and one map from Populous.
Now every base Genesis game is at least partially mapped!

Also, more of the maps from the hidden Space Harrier.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there's one more stage to go, and then the "BONUS" section will be complete!

Getting close to the end, many thanks to G.E.R.!

Looking forward to seeing maps of the Sega CD games!

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« on: September 06, 2025, 08:37:08 pm »

zagato blackfist saw a recent post on Bluesky where I mentioned the 17 ColecoVision games that I grew up with, and took it upon himself to map the ones that hadn't already been mapped!

These include four of them that I requested in this topic:
Frogger,
Lady Bug,
Smurf: Paint 'N Play Work Shop, and
Venture!

But of course I'm glad to see my entire pre-NES childhood mapped, so also a shout-out to zagato for the maps for
Buck Rogers: Planet Of Zoom,
Carnival,
MouseTrap,
Omega Race,
Q*bert,
Slither, and
Super-Action Baseball!

The other games I grew up, also mapped by zagato, back in 2021, are:
BurgerTime,
Donkey Kong,
Donkey Kong Jr,
FrontLine,
Jumpman Junior, and
Popeye!

Thanks again so much, zagato!  It means a lot to me that these games are mapped for this site!   

Keep up the awesome work!

5

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

« on: September 01, 2025, 08:29:15 pm »

I know I need to get back to making the kind of videos I usually do, but I couldn't help but throw together this quickie.

It's an amusing take on the Mega Man 2 Robot Masters, if they were human.

Remember to give a thumbs up if you like it, and then share it with your friends, and subscribe!  It's what keeps my channel going.

Thanks!

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Maps Of The Month / 2025/09: SOS (Super NES) - Tropicon

« on: August 31, 2025, 09:22:32 pm »

SOS

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Tropicon's SOS (Super NES) maps.

On the evening of September 13, 1921, a passenger ship called "The Lady Crithania" capsizes during a storm off the coast of England. Among the 2300 people on board are the four playable characters of this adventure: architect Capris Wisher, counselor Redwin Gardner, Dr. Jeffrey Howell, and crewman Luke Haines.  After the capsize, they have one hour to escape the upside-down and labyrinthine ship.

Inspired by the book and film, "The Poseidon Adventure", the game even presents itself as "a Syuji Yoshida film" in its opening credits. Known in Japan as "Septentrion" and not to be confused with another Super NES game called "S.O.S: Sink Or Swim", SOS certainly is quite different than most Super NES games with its dire premise, its serious tone, and its time limit.  It is certainly daunting, with each injury costing you five minutes, and the challenge of having to save many others along the way. The four characters each have a different story, and their endings are not only dependent on the number of passengers they save, but if that includes people that are close to them (such as Capris's stepsister, Amy or Dr. Howell's wife, Adela).

Tropicon has mapped The Lady Crithania thoroughly in three different forms. There's a version where the ship is upright at the start (which is pretty impressive, considering that it doesn't stay that way for long) and two capsized versions, both marked and unmarked.  With only sixty minutes to make your way out, these maps will certainly be of help when planning a route and deciding who to save.

So to recognize the effort put into mapping this underrated survival adventure, Tropicon's SOS (Super NES) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for September 2025.

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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: August 24, 2025, 08:41:28 am »

zagato, you've been doing a great job so far, and keep it up if you can, but are there any particular NES games that you foresee that you might have difficulties mapping, or any games or genres you'd rather not tackle?

I'd really like to see all the NES games mapped eventually, obviously sooner rather than later, but there are still many to go, and, while your prolificness is commendable, I wonder if it might make other people hesitate to map NES games too... maybe?

If there are some you'd rather have someone else do, or are questioning how you might do them, maybe some discussion of it here will give you ideas, or let other people take on certain ones if they would like.

That's not at all a negative comment on your skill, of course not, as you do exceptional work, but as we all know, there are still hundreds of games, and I'm sure you could use a hand based on quantity alone, if we're to get a full NES atlas anytime soon.

You already have suggested that FlyingArmor take on Ultima: Warriors Of Destiny, are there any others you wouldn't mind others tackling?

Maybe someone has an idea how to map Miracle Piano Teaching System (due to having to emulate its controls and what would be worth mapping), Star Voyager (3D space, if you want to map more than just HUDs and other scenes) and Elite (European exclusive, similar to Star Voyager).

In any case, I'm always happy to have more discussion about how this is progressing.

I'm sure it's not possible to have every NES game mapped by the 40th anniversary of the NES (in under two months!), but would the 45th anniversary of the NES be possible?

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« on: August 13, 2025, 09:48:17 pm »

Okay, I got around to finishing Beyond Shadowgate (PC).

I'm not sure if I want to do a "marked" version, but to make up for that () if I don't ever do that, even though it's maybe more work, is that I made a version showing all the possible variations of all the screens in the game.  Maybe I need to come up with a better term than "Screens", but that's how I referred to them in zagato blackfist's submissions for the NES games Shadowgate, Deja Vu, and Uninvited (which inspired me to get all of those screens) as well as many other games, especially on the NES page...

Yeah, we're talking about over 1700 variations, yikes.

If a room has a single item in it that can be taken, there's two: one with the item there and one with it taken.  If there's a door that might be open or closed, that doubles it again.  For most rooms there aren't too many combinations.  But for some, there can be multiple items or multiple states, leading to exponential numbers of possibilities.  I tried to map them all as much as I could!

Believe it or not, I captured most of them in my playthroughs.  Since items can't be put down after they've been picked up (unless being used) and almost all doors can't be closed after they've been opened, it required a lot of saving and loading to be able to get the various combinations.  While I thought I was pretty good at getting all the combinations that I knew of per room, I kept finding stuff that I missed, like how the Wraith can appear in most rooms in the first half of Castle Shadowgate.  In this and a few other instances, mechaskrom's paint.net plugin that he made when I asked about comparing pixels made it easy to isolate differences (in cases where I couldn't just copy and paste rectangular or simple shapes), and from there, to copy over the right pixels to create combinations that I know are possible in the game, even if I hadn't actually done them in-game.  If the game didn't have such a rigid save system, it would be a lot easier...

Here's one example of many combinations for a single room.


And in yet another room in Themiere Mansion, there's a clock, and there are way too many combinations with that, so I just included images of what all the 16 possible clock faces could be - I wasn't going to multiply the already numerous screens by 16!  And there are lots of skeleton death images there because while most monsters in the game that jump at you and kill you have the decency to cover up many of the variables in the room, this skeleton doesn't block the door (with three states) or the clock (with four states), so it appears 12 times!


Yeah, there are a LOT of ways to die in this game, so I marked deaths (and impending deaths) in red.

If you actually use these when playing, you might find them upside-down at first glance.  That is, earlier rooms are shown at the bottom and later rooms are shown at the tops of these images.  That's because this game moves from "south" to "north".  So it generally works, except for the cursed Themiere Mansion (once again), where the basement/dungeon areas appear above the second floor, since you do go to the second floor before you go to the basement.  But these are just showing combinations, if you want to find your way around, referring to the actual map with room connections makes more sense.

I can't believe it's mid-August, as this game came out last September.  Sheesh!  I enjoyed putting it together, and it was a good reminder of how much work even simple maps can be, but man, I got other projects to do! 

9

Gaming / The Legend Of Zelda is 33⅓ years old today!

« on: August 13, 2025, 09:13:17 am »

Today, The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past is 33⅓ years old (in North America); that's ⅓ of a century!
It's the third game in one of Nintendo's top three franchises and "three" is often used in the series: the Triforce, number of goddesses, and main characters, among others.
Happy 33.333...rd!
Feeling old yet?

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Maps In Progress / Re: VGCartography - getting to work on PS1 maps!

« on: August 11, 2025, 09:22:37 am »

Site report, though: the link to the map of the last stage in MediEvil is broken. Just figured I'd point that out. Hopefully Jon sees this.

Thanks for the report.  And for VGCartography for letting me know before I saw it here...

I do have a habit of testing every link after putting up maps, and while I did test it initially, that was when I noticed that Zarok's Lair is included in the map.  So I went back into my files to rename the link, but apparently I hadn't renamed the actual file and forgot to retest.

It's been fixed now, but it can take a while for all the servers to catch up to the change.  If it's still not appearing for you, try a refresh, or a hard refresh with Ctrl+F5 or Shift+F5.

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« on: August 10, 2025, 07:19:29 pm »

VGCartography has hit me with a bunch of PlayStation game maps to publish here, they'll certainly be up, but it won't all be right away.  But I certainly prioritized Final Fantasy IX and Parasite Eve!

This double-helping of PlayStation games has also doubled up the number of fulfilled PlayStation requests thus far.

I didn't spend a ton of time with the original PlayStation back in the day as I probably should have, but the games I did play I certainly enjoyed, especially these two Square offerings.  I've mentioned here multiple times why I played Parasite Eve essentially four times to truly finish it, and Final Fantasy IX is among my favourite Final Fantasy games ever.  It's nice to see maps of them here now.

There will be even more PlayStation maps from VGCartography up here soon, look forward to them!  Thanks again, VGCartography!  Your work continues to be amazing.

...And on another note, if anyone's wondering, I am still working on my Beyond Shadowgate (2024, PC) maps.  I decided to make "maps" just showing every single possible screen (like what zagato blackfist did with the NES games Shadowgate, Deja Vu, and Uninvited), including all the ridiculous combinations and permutations of all the variable things on each screen.  Kind of ridiculous.  I think I have them all, and all assembled, too, it's now just a matter of putting on my name and etc. on them, so hopefully I'll be able to show those soon...ish.

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Maps Of The Month / 2025/08: Super Mario Sunshine (GameCube) - VGCartography

« on: July 31, 2025, 09:51:32 pm »

Super Mario Sunshine

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to VGCartography's Super Mario Sunshine (GameCube) maps.

Mario and Princess Peach, as well as some Toads, fly to Isle Delfino for a vacation.  But when they arrive at the island resort, they find themselves in some trouble.  Mario is accused of splattering paint-like goop all over the island and causing Shine Sprites to vanish.  To clear his good name, Mario vows to find the true villain and clean up the island, with the help of Professor E. Gadd's latest invention: FLUDD, the Flash Liquidizer Ultra Dousing Device.  FLUDD's abilities of shooting water or being propelled by it will allow Mario to not only clean up the messes, but also to find the 120 missing Shine Sprites in Isle Delfino's nine areas.

What would also help are VGCartography's maps of Super Mario Sunshine here on VGMaps.com!  Each area is beautifully captured, with Shines, Red Coins, Blue Coins, and other things of note indicated with icons.  Even if mapping polygonal games is VGCartography's forte, it's still always impressive to see these kinds of maps here on VGMaps.com.  In fact, this is the first map set of a GameCube game ever to be honoured for the Maps Of The Month!

So to recognize the effort put into mapping a GameCube classic, VGCartography's Super Mario Sunshine (GameCube) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for August 2025.

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Map Gab / Re: Eternal Daughter

« on: July 16, 2025, 05:30:45 pm »

I recently realized there is a missing key item in the water cave, above mermans (see attachment). It was there at some point, but I mistakenly removed it while patching that area.

I assume the process of updating a map involves sending it again via e-mail? I wonder if it's even worth it.

You absolutely should send in a correction.  We like to have accurate maps here on VGMaps.com.

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

« on: July 15, 2025, 01:08:15 pm »

Happy 26th birthday to Legend Of Mana!

It came out on this day (July 15) in 1999 in Japan.

I guess since Japan is 15 hours ahead of where I am, it's already past 4 AM on July 16 right now... oops.  Happy belated!

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« on: July 03, 2025, 05:12:19 pm »

Ricardo Sallin has mapped out Xexyz (NES)!

That's pronounced "zeck-sees" or "zeck-sis", apparently (but hopefully it's the latter, since that's how I sang it in my recent music video at about 2:40 into it)...

I know there are many NES games still not mapped, but it surprises me when a colourful platformer goes this long without being mapped.  While it's not on the highest echelon of NES classics, I think it's still a decent enough game that the Xexyz-sized hole being filled in today by Ricardo Sallin does feel satisfying.
(Try saying "Xexyz-sized" quickly...)

Thanks, Ricardo Sallin!