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My first attempt at mapping, so we'll see how this goes.  I imagine the process will be long, slow, and ardu... ardru... difficult.  So far, I have 1 town mapped, and thinking about starting on the overworld.



I have found one map of the overworld on the internet, but it is not at 1x scale, and the colors seem a bit distorted.  Still haven't seen any of the towns, castles, or caves mapped, so this should be a worthwhile venture.

What kinds of things do you do when you're busy gaming?



Recently, I've taken to walking while gaming.  I hop on the treadmill, fire up the playstation, and pound out a mile or more while beating up enemies.  



Yesterday, I was playing DW7, and was fighting some bosses in a tower.  By the time I had beaten them, collected the spoils, and gotten back to town to save my game, 30 minutes had passed. With the treadmill set at 3.0 mph (2.5 is too slow, and 3.5 is too distracting from the game), I finished a mile and a half without even thinking about it.  Good thing too.  I could stand to lose a few (dozen) pounds.

The mushroom can be delicious and deadly.  In the world of Nintendo, though, it is more than just a food.  See how many mushrooms you can dig up.



Name the game, where to find the mushroom, and what the purpose of it is.  Be nice and take turns.  Only post one mushroom at a time (even if there is more than one type in a game), and wait for someone else to post one before posting another.  There's plenty to go around.



I'll start.



1. In Super Mario Brothers (NES), the mushroom item can be found in ? blocks, and it causes Mario to become big.

Seeing as this is a forum for a website whose primary purpose is the creation and hosting of video game maps, I was wondering...



What tools are the contributors using to create maps from their video games?



I know the job can be done (albeit slowly and painfully) using MSPaint, or the Mac equivalent.  Are there other tools that make the mapping process easier and faster?



What emulators are generally used for these mapping projects (my interest is in NES,SNES,GBA)?



What resolution are the maps usually drawn in, and are they scaled down to make the image more managable?



Are there special considerations that need to be accounted for with regard to water cycling, flame flickering, and other "moving" parts?  Generally speaking, how are these issues addressed?



Do mapping projects also include creating guides and charts to accompany the maps?  For instance, the original Dragon Warrior had an overworld map, and dungeon/town maps.  Are monster and item guides also useful and/or recommended for inclusion on this site?

What's up with Inty's sig?



From the profile:

<object data="https://www.vgmaps.com/rand.php" type="text/html" style="width: 400px; height: 30px">Your browser doesn't support object.</object>



I don't know if people are seeing something I'm not.  I only get a textbox with nothing in it.  Kinda silly if you ask me.  And the overhead of loading that empty box is not exactly what I'd call user-friendly!



If it's browser related, I'm using Maxthon, based on IE 6.0, running in XP.

Is Dragon Warrior VII any good?  



I picked this game up a few months back for the playstation, but have yet to try it.  It only set me back about $10 at my local Gamestop, and being a fan of the original four Dragon Warriors, I thought it a wise investment.



I unplugged the playstation (first-generation, not even a PSOne) many years ago.  Being impatient as I was, I hated the load times on the playstation, and the sluggishness of games when not played on an emulator running at full (800%+) speed.



I really enjoyed the first four in the Dragon Warrior series (on the 8-bit NES), and have toyed with the 5th and 6th ones on my SNES emulator (since those games were never release in North America).  



I hate the pokemon-style games with a vengeance.  I'm not even going to go into Pokemon 0.5, aka Dragon Quest Monsters.  Calling it a true Dragon Quest/Warrior game is as unforgivable as saying Zelda II is a real Zelda game.



But I digress...is the 7th game in the series worth dusting off the playstation for?  I've been contemplating plugging in the old system again.  With a newborn, I usually only have one hand free for gaming, and I just happen to have a one-handed controller for the playstation...

I've just started playing some of my old favorites again, namely, the Zelda games like Minish Cap, Oracle of Ages/Seasons, and stuff of that nature.  



What I've been unable to find is a site that has checklists for 100% completion of the game.  I'm one of those nutcases who likes to 100% games when possible, just to say I've done it.  It would be really helpful to have a checklist (either online or printable) that allows me to track my progress in the game.



Anyone know of any sites that contain 100% completion checklists?  (Unfortunately, Google doesn't like the '%' so searches are mostly futile).  



Printable checklists are easy enough, so long as the checklist is minimal enough to print the checklist to 1 or 2 pages (small fonts).  Online checklists would be nice too.  Either using cookies or online accounts, you can click the checkboxes on the website which are saved between sessions, or a unique code can be generated (probably non-dictionary alphanumeric) which can be entered to remember the checkbox status for the next visit.



While this is a maps website, usually mapping involves following some checklist to ensure the entire map and all appropriate data is collected.  Adding a checklist shouldn't be too big of a jump from mapping, and I was wondering if that was a possibility for the future of vgmaps.