Messages

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Maps Of The Month / Re: 2026/01: Nightshade - Part 1: The Claws Of Sutekh (NES) - zagato blackfist

« on: January 02, 2026, 10:37:02 am »

Thanks as always. I remember the biggest challenge with this one was compiling all the rooms in a way that actually makes sense. I was originally going to treat this like The Legend of Zelda with the city as the overworld and the houses/sewers as the underworld, but when I found out this wouldn't work I had to make a new plan.

I changed my mind several times in fact. In the end I only decided what the layout for these maps would be after I beat the game and collected screenshots of every last room.

2

VGMaps Social Board / Re: External site using VGMaps content?

« on: December 20, 2025, 11:38:30 am »

Jon also pointed this out to me a few years ago and asked me if I knew anything about it. I told him I had no idea they were hosting my maps until he brought it up.

"Better VGMaps" has never contacted me by any means to ask permission to host my maps.

I would not have given them my permission to host my maps on their clone site if they had asked me.

Better VGMaps is hosting my maps without my consent.

It is unfortunate, but as FlyingArmor says, there is very little we can do about it. We can play a game of Whack-A-Mole with that site, and just watch it pop back up on different hosts each time it gets knocked down, but that seems like a waste of effort. I'm just going to do my part to tell people about the real VGMaps, and if they ask me about the plagiarized site i'll just tell them the truth about it...

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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: November 22, 2025, 10:24:47 am »

Crossfire, Brush Roller, and Higemaru Makaijima: Nanatsu no Shima Daibouken were mapped by Ricardo Sallin and removed from the international list.


I'm currently working on Super Spy Hunter.

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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: August 24, 2025, 10:38:00 am »

To be clear, I am not going to complain if somebody sends in a map set that I was planning to do myself. I would like it if more NES maps started coming in from other people.

That said, there are a few games i've checked out and decided to set aside for now...

American Gladiators is difficult to control on the NES.

3D World Runner will require drawn maps, but I have almost no experience playing this game.

Ultimate Air Combat has a lot of big maps with monotonous scenery. I think this would be better suited for mappers who have experience using scripts, or maybe an auto stitcher. If anyone wants this i've already made some codes for mapping purposes and will post them below.

Zanac has LONG maps, and will need to be broken up in pieces. Also tons of repeating, monotonous scenery. Maybe another auto stitcher project.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure I only mapped one road from the first medieval stage before putting it down. I estimate these maps will be 12,000x6,000 pixels in size, but more importantly I need to find better codes for boundary breaking before I continue.

Miracle Piano By looking at BizHawk's hex editor, I can see where the game handles inputs from the midi keyboard, but my efforts to play this game by manually controlling the inputs from the hex editor were unsuccessful. I heard this game has a side scrolling platform type of minigame. To the best of my knowledge there are no emulators that support the keyboard this game came with.


Ultimate Air Combat [NES] (Always use "system bus" memory domain)

020A:09 Infinite Bombs
0216:FF Skip Air Stages
0242:CB Infinite Fuel
0341:00 Invincible
05B3:00 No Targets Left


Also, Dash Galaxy In The Alien Asylum and Niji no Silkroad were mapped by Ricardo Sallin and removed from the list.

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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: June 14, 2025, 11:18:03 pm »

Bomberman II was mapped by Alisa and removed from the list!

I'm currently working on the rest of the Tengen games.

https://bootleggames.fandom.com/wiki/Tengen

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Maps In Progress / Re: New maps from a new member

« on: May 31, 2025, 09:47:33 am »

Hi Ricardo. It's great to see more people getting involved in this. I've been grinding away at the NES index for the last few years but most of the games you listed are fine if you want them.

The only one of these games i've been working on is Klash Ball. Actually, i've already ripped all the backgrounds, so i'll send it in today.


I have codes for Zippy race that might be helpful to you. They make you invulnerable to crashing so you'll be able to focus on getting screenshots.

Zippy Race [NES]
0021:1C Infinite Gas
0093:40 Invincible
0095:20 Invincible

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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: May 21, 2025, 01:27:23 pm »

Monster Truck Rally was mapped by Ricardo Sallin. I have not played this game before so I don't know if there's supposed to be any more maps. At any rate i'll take it off the list.

I'll get to Base Wars soon. I didn't realize it was another baseball game.

On that topic, everything in the international list with the word "yakyuu" in the title is a baseball game.

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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: May 09, 2025, 10:23:25 am »

Removed Battle City from international list because it was mapped by Ricardo Sallin. Thanks!

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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: March 30, 2025, 09:58:45 am »

Getting all of the games mapped in a few months is still a stretch, though, there are still a few RPGs and adventures (the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games, Tombs & Treasure, Ultima: Warriors Of Destiny) and a few that would be technically challenging to do justice: various flight simulators (including stuff like Star Voyager), games with unique "3D" effects (Castelian), games with peripherals that may not be easily emulated (Miracle Piano Teaching System).

As for Ultima: Warriors Of Destiny, i'm going to leave that alone for now just in case FlyingArmor wants it.

Looking at Miracle Piano Teaching System for the first time, I can see why this might be a problem. I thought VirtuaNES had pretty good peripheral support but even that doesn't have a midi keyboard. The only thing I might be able to do about this is go into BizHawk's hex editor and see if I can operate the game from there somehow.

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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: March 28, 2025, 10:25:06 am »

I must have forgot to adjust the number when I took Fun House off the list. Now it's fixed.

Lately i've been doing a bunch of games that can be mapped in a day, if not two in a day. This will cause the list to shrink rapidly, but there are some games on the list that might take months when a good solution is found for mapping them. Perhaps when I notice games that would require knowledge of using scripts to properly map i'll point them out so that people here with the right skills can look at them. (I'm already thinking Ultimate Air Combat for this...)

I agree it would have been great to have a complete NES map index back in 2002. It would have helped a lot of people learn the games and plan out their speedruns. Right now though, i'm doing this under the principal "Better late than never."

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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: March 20, 2025, 12:26:46 pm »

Removed Kiwi Kraze from the list. Thanks, lymphoid!

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Maps In Progress / Re: John Brain's Sega Genesis maps (25/25)

« on: February 28, 2025, 10:00:34 am »

I've seen at least a few people use our maps for reasons other than actually playing the game.

Maps are sometimes used for creative purposes when making Youtube videos. Atlas Videos is probably the best example of this. Their work has gotten even better in recent months.

I saw another channel called GaMetal use the Crystalis "Wind Valley" map while playing a remix of this game's music. It really adds to the atmosphere.


So even if a map isn't useful for gameplay it's still a good thing to have it on the site. Someone, somewhere, will find a use for it.

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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: January 14, 2025, 10:31:57 am »

I made the changes. I also took Ultimate Frogger Champion off the list because it was made in 2009.

I'll have to check out Rainbow Islands. I never knew that it was completely remade for the PAL version.

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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: December 17, 2024, 07:06:42 pm »

I could go on all day.  Do you want me to go on about the five Donkey Kong games on the NES and how I think they should be ordered?

I actually took the screenshots for those earlier today. I'll just send those in now and find out naturally. :p

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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: December 17, 2024, 11:55:21 am »

@TerraEsperZ I've removed Ufouria from the list. Don't know how I missed that. Hopefully this list is accurate now.

@JonLeung I'm starting to see what you mean. I use GameFAQs as the main authority on release dates, developers, and titles, but I must admit their system is confusing when you have a large number of games to organize.

I especially dislike how Bases Loaded II is the only game in the series that uses roman numerals. Now we have to choose between proper alphabetical order and game order.