Messages

[Spanettone]

Spanettone has mapped the GBA game, Gunstar Super Heroes!

The original on the Genesis is much-loved, I feel like the GBA game should be remembered too, and now that Spanettone has mapped it, it is better preserved.

Thanks for your continued work in the GBA atlas, qwert_vs_qwerty!

Checking it off from the list that I made on VGMaps.com's 24th anniversary, this is where we are at now:

Are you interested?

You're asking if a website that collects video game maps would be interested in video game maps?

The answer is a "yes", of course.

The real meat and potatoes of my channel seem to be my book reviews (or at least they're the ones that I feel I should be known for), and, though a bit overdue, I finally got around to finishing this video of Rey Estaban's NES Endings Compendium - Vol. 2: 1990.  Check it out, and pick up the book if you're interested... it would be nice if he would be able to complete the NES Endings Compendium series!

I published these on my YouTube channel, forgot to mention them here.

The first three "If Mega Man Robot Masters Were Human" videos, well, the Shorts versions, are really popular, so I figured I'd keep going.  Here are the Robot Masters (or Human Masters) of Mega Man 4.

Spider-Man: The Videogame

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to George s's Spider-Man: The Videogame (Arcade) maps.

Spider-Man, Namor the Sub-Mariner, Hawkeye and Black Cat are the heroes you can play as in Spider-Man: The Videogame, where you take on a bunch of classic Marvel Comics villains.  Venom, Green Goblin, Kingpin, and others stand in your way, until you confront Doctor Doom in the final chapter, "Doom's Day".

What's neat about this game is that it has both beat-'em-up and platforming sequences, with zooming-out and zooming-in transitions between them at least a couple of times each chapter.  How many multi-genre arcade games do you know of, especially with such quick and seamless genre switches?

George s is a major contributor to VGMaps.com, and has been awarded the Maps Of The Month honour multiple times before, but until now, not for an arcade game.  This is an oversight, since arcade games are clearly George s's specialty, with over 1,700 maps of arcade games to his name!  The arcade atlas would be one-quarter its size if not for George s!

So to recognize the effort put into mapping this arcade beat-'em-up/platformer hybrid, George s's Spider-Man: The Videogame (Arcade) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for August 2026.

[qwert_vs_qwerty]

qwert_vs_qwerty tackles a DS request, for Monster Tale!

I remember enjoying this game, and wondering why not many people talked about it.
A 3DS remake, "Monster Tale Ultimate" was cancelled.  Supposedly a version is or was supposed to come out for the Switch, Xbox One, and PS4, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

I enjoyed this as I saw it as a sleeper hit of a Metroidvania.  I played it when it was new, so that was probably 2011, when maybe 2D Metroidvanias like the ones that crowd the indie scene today might not have been common yet.

Well, we have maps of it now, for anyone that gives it a chance.
Thanks again, qwert_vs_qwerty!

Occasionally, there are coincidences here on VGMaps.com, like when different mappers indepently submit maps on the same day that can be thematically connected.  I probably should have made note of some of the previous ones...

But today, there's a really neat one.

George s submitted a map from the classic arcade game, Lady Bug.

qwert_vs_qwerty submitted maps of Record Of Lodoss War: Deedlit In Wonder Labyrinth, which was developed by... "Team Ladybug".
They even use a pixelated ladybug as their logo!



Two different games... with ladybugs!  Submitted on the same day!  Wow!

[zagato blackfist]

zagato blackfist plows through another NES request, this time for G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero - The Atlantis Factor!

It's the day after The Fourth Of July, but I'm sure my American friends still wouldn't mind the appearance of some kind of American hero any day of the year.

(Though this one is published by Capcom, the first was published by Taxan.  The developer for both is KID, who also made the very similar-styled NES platformers, Low G Man and Kick Master.)

G.I. Joe's the team that defends the world from the evil Cobra... so zagato included maps for three other "Cobra"-titled NES games.  And Cobra Triangle was mapped by zagato earlier as my most recent NES request.  That's a lot of "CobraNESs"!

Plok!

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

On the island of Akrillic, our hero, Plok, finds that his flag on top of his house has gone missing! It's a ploy by the evil Bobbin Bros. to lure Plok away to Cotton Island, allowing the Fleas to run amok.  Will Plok be able to find Grandpappy Plok's amulet and make his way to the Fleapit to defeat The Flea Queen, and restore peace to Akrillic?

In this 16-bit platformer, Plok, with his detached limbs (a couple of years before Rayman debuted), hops and bops his way across the mulitchromatic lands of Cotton Island and Akrillic, the monochromatic Legacy Island (in a flashback featuring Grandpappy Plok), and the gloomy Fleapit.  Many stages, especially the early ones, have secret Warp Levels that, if Plok finds and can complete the challenge within, can skip ahead in his adventure.  The stages and their various secrets are all mapped here, thanks to Jackster!

So to recognize the effort put into mapping this cute and colourful cult classic, Jackster's Plok! (Super NES) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for July 2026.

[George s]

George s has mapped the thirteenth arcade game that I've requested - and it's Battletoads!

It's quite different from any of the console/handheld versions. Probably not as remembered, though it is bundled with some other Battletoads and Killer Instinct games in the Killer Instinct Arcade1Up, since they're all by Rare.

Great for this game to be preserved in these maps, too.  Thanks again, as always, George s!

[zagato blackfist]

zagato blackfist has mapped out Cobra Triangle!

There's something charming about this game. For some reason I never really played much of R.C. Pro-Am, but I think this is sort of like that, but on the water... maybe?

But besides my memories of playing Cobra Triangle, the significance of having this mapped is that we now have maps of all 72 NES games that were published by Nintendo Of America!

zagato blackfist seems intent on ensuring that every NES game will be mapped, but along the way, I think it's neat to see certain subsets get completed.  Maybe I should see if any other publisher's games are close to all being mapped... but this is an important one, it's Nintendo (Of America) themselves on the Nintendo Entertainment System, of course!

Thanks, and keep up the good work, zagato... as you are very well aware in your own topic about unmapped NES games, there's still a ways to go yet... but it looks like, for the North American list especially, you've certainly made progress since you first made that topic!

And of course, anyone else can map NES games, zagato blackfist isn't calling dibs on them all just because he made the list...

[George s]

George s has mapped the twelfth arcade game that I've requested - and it's Spider-Man: The Videogame!

It's a fun four-player beat-em-up that I don't hear many people talking about.

When I worked at Playdium at West Edmonton Mall, there was a cleaning checklist for the arcade machines. Whoever made it listed Spider-Man: The Videogame as "Spider-Man: The Best Game Of All Time" or something, I always thought that was funny.  It's a specific memory that probably not many people have, but, there we go, some of my requests are indeed personal.  But Spider-Man is popular... right?

Thanks again, George s!  You're the best!  Especially when it comes to mapping arcade games!

Might as well also point out that until June 14, Gravity Circuit is free to claim on Steam, so if you're a PC gamer, why not go for it?  It's an indie game that's 8-bit in style but plays much like Mega Man X.  It's free because the sequel was recently announced, so they want to build excitement for it by giving out the original for nothing.  Of course I bring it up because it's one of the games on my requests list, in the (long) PC section.

I wonder if one day I should split up the PC section into "retro-style indies" (usually platformers) and "point-and-click adventures" since most games there are one or the other... any thoughts about that?

Magic Knight Rayearth

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to zagato blackfist's Magic Knight Rayearth (Saturn) maps.

Three eighth-grade girls - Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu - on a field trip to Tokyo Tower in modern-day Japan are transported to a magical world called "Cephiro".  The three girls are warriors, "Magic Knights" foretold by legend, whose innate magical powers will awaken, allowing them to save Cephiro from destruction while rescuing Princess Emeraude from the evil Zagato.

Speaking of Zagato, it is zagato blackfist, better known for his NES mapping efforts here on VGMaps.com, who travelled to the world of the Sega Saturn to map this colourful action-RPG.  Though similar to the first story arc of Magic Knight Rayearth's manga and anime, this game adds new characters and locations, which are all mapped here by zagato, so you will have no trouble making it from Tokyo Tower all the way to Zagato's Castle.

So to recognize the effort put into mapping one of the best Saturn games - also the last one officially released in North America - zagato blackfist's Magic Knight Rayearth (Saturn) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for June 2026.

With Bubsy 4D coming out this week, I thought I'd revisit the Bubsy cartoon pilot.
Here are all the times that Bubsy says, "What could possibly go wrong?"

[GamesComputersPlay]

It's been said that you can put Doom on anything... well, now we've (finally) got Doom on VGMaps.com!

GamesComputersPlay created Wad2Pic, which created the maps for Doom!
This also includes the fourth episode from The Ultimate Doom, and though it wasn't specifically requested, we've also got maps for Doom II as well!

And thanks for VGCartography for directing me to these maps.  Yes, I got GamesComputersPlay's blessing on these Doom maps.  If you could really say that anything related to Doom could be blessed...

What's there to say about Doom?  Everyone knows it. Quite the monumental game. Before FPSes (first-person shooters) were commonly known as such, the term "Doom-like" was used to describe these... first-person shooters.  It hasn't stuck around like "Roguelike", but it certainly was a thing.  How many other games can achieve genre-naming status?  (I suppose Metroid and Castlevania have...)

Along with yesterday's ET, we've now got the most lower-right and the most upper-right of my 24th anniversary requests image knocked out already!  Wow!  Will the other corners be next?