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What Nintendo left for a lot of people, we grew up with the real true dedicated gaming handhelds that gave us great games, even the dual-screen DS and 3DS games. The smartphone mobile games have since been alienating and mentally reconforming many of their minds to think and believe their purpose and history doesn't exist to them, and that brings sadness in my heart, as well as others' out there that still crave for the exact experiences they grew up with in their childhoods. Even they are not educated on their proper history and creation beneath them.

Yes, I haven't forgotten Sony's PSP and Vita, too. They were, and still are, neat.

Not only that, but they gave developers more work to create games when they got unique SDKs for them, and that gave them joy to work on them alongside home console games and see gamers buy and play them to see their work in fruition.

I'm very worried that there's no way to really preserve these kind of games for current and new players to truly enjoy and cherish for later generations, both physically and digitally. When some people try to speak about that to others, they just scoff at them and constantly tell them to only get mobile, hybrids, and PC-made devices over and over, because they think they're all they want and need for gaming, when in truth, it's not. They really don't fit in pockets, period.

They don't fill the void at all, and it really puts the future of that kind of gaming outlet into question. They are not, nay, never, inevitably destined to be worthless junk heaps, nor their games to be delisted, unplayable, and unobtainable. They have real charm.

What a true dedicated handheld gaming system needs, even a dual-screen in the lines of 3DS, is to take improved fidelity and tech capabilities into account, even matching both screens' sizes to be wide, add a few new features to give them extra distinction, and make them future-proof, especially to stand out against mobile games that don't have the same experiences. It's never that difficult to say, ask, and do. It does take work, yes, but doing it is not impossible.

I really hope and pray(which helps in any situation, per say) for such new systems to be made to more than accomplish such goals for gamers and preservationists.

420000 screenshots is no so scary as it might seem at first glance. All images was captured, distributed to folders, imported in Photoshop automatic and compressed too, then their manual stitching took about 1 second per image

Maybe, but, that sure was a lot of screenshots to capture for a much bigger map, especially if its a Metroidvania. A great accomplishment, I say! I was astounded when I read how many screenshots you used to put that together! Its size almost reached the JPEG maximum pixel size limit in both directions!

Where The Embraced One, who did Hallownest's map mostly alone for years(which, of course, I still appreciate such efforts, to say), accomplished such a task, you actually focused on it so very well, you took almost 2 months to chart Pharloom, all the way from bottom to the very top, by comparison!

I would be that surprised if another map would reach beyond that limit for JPEG. Perhaps using JPEG XL, if VGMaps supports it(Uh... does it?), would be substantial; otherwise, PNG's a very good choice, too.

Wonder how much RAM it would take for any browser to handle decompressing it to view it up-close. Quite much, depending on the amount anyone's PC has.

Of course, the game's already got DLC plans, so I would presume more work's inbound for revising it later on.

Congratulations, by the way! My compliments!

[Egg Catcher]

This may be a little discovery, and I might've been behind on it, but the bosses in Knuckles' Chaotix all have official names, and it seems the Sonic Wiki Zone's got pages about them in serious need of updating to adopt that. They're already reported official, as written from the soundtrack's names.

The bosses' names in each Zone of Knuckles' Chaotix are...

Egg Catcher - boss of Botanic Base Zone (https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Botanic_Base_boss)
Egg Arms - boss of Techno Tower Zone (https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Techno_Tower_boss)
Egg Repilca - miniboss(and the game's only miniboss, albeit recurring in it, nowhere else) of Amazing Arena Zone (https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Amazing_Arena_sub-boss)
Egg Projector - boss of Amazing Arena Zone (https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Amazing_Arena_Boss)
Egg Barrier - boss of Marina Madness Zone (https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Marina_Madness_boss)
Egg Merry-Go-Round - boss of Speed Slider Zone (https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Speed_Slider_boss)
Metal Sonic, Weaponized Selector - penultimate boss in Newtrogic High Zone (https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Metal_Sonic_(Knuckles%27_Chaotix))
Titan Metal Sonic/Metal Sonic Kai - final boss in Newtrogic High Zone's Central Core (https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Metal_Sonic_Kai)

Guess Ian Flynn may not have known that nor their names yet, but Sonic Team's people do.

Little history heads-up on its final boss' creation, as I have also learned...

Ryo Kudou, involved in the game's development, and who designed some new Badniks and most of the bosses, was tasked to design that boss for Metal Sonic Kai's first transformation. Because of complications that had him swamped, Kudou delegated that task to Takumi Miyake, the designer for the game's stages, graphics and some of Dr. Robotnik's Badniks, instead, giving him another role of boss designer.

Once he got the task, he used Strata 3D, a 3D modeling, rendering and animation program used in its past years, to translate its design into 3D polygons and then used its model to draw over it to create its sprites.

The naming for Metal Sonic's monstrous, red-painted titanic form was a bit back and forth, though. Kudou and some of his programmer friends wanted that form to be named "Devil Sonic"(a little heart frightening, yes, and for sort of obvious reasons as to why, but I won't say them here), as a shout-out to an anime series, Mobile Fighter G Gundam(yes, there's also plenty of other shout-outs to other numerous anime series with giant mechas and their countless battles in past Sonic games, but not many then-young Sonic fans understood such references at that time, not even me; I thought that was out of nowhere until now), preferably, one of its mechs, "JDG-00X, Devil Gundam", but as an attempt to compromise, Kenichi Ono, a game designer also involved in the development, insisted for it to be named "Death Metal Sonic".

With very little methods to deliver official names from the game's bosses to any form of media outside of games globally at the time, the name "Metal Sonic Kai" was what fans came up with and was referred to for many years, which was deemed official from Ian Flynn's book, "Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-speed-ia". Guess that book may need a printing update someday.

Thought I should let you all know this bit of the game's history, too.

I'm not putting anyone down or anything like it, but I truly do worry about Atooi's status as an indie game company and Jools, the founder, managing it and the game projects being worked on, and priorities shifted many times that kept its release being completely settled and finalized.

For one, we were supposed to be having Treasurenauts, the long-developed game still in the belt, but constant delays and priority changes to other projects and matters outside of game development has been hurting so much for the game and the people wanting to play it for so long, it shredded their patience and anticipation for the game in their hearts and minds, even stemming so much doubt in others that game could ever be released as time goes by. Even I feel doubt, too.

Why, even the words about the game being "ready when its ready" really comes into question about the project's well-being in development, as well as other games suffering constant delays without warning nor notice. Hatch Tales suffered too much from delays and slight hesitation about appeal to people, when its meant to be universally applicable. That, and the game's marketing might've been better off handled to someone else that is more experienced at that field, but have hopeful, positive visions in them.

For a lead having too many hats in one sitting, and with so many created IPs, Jools should've handed a few of them to others to speed things up.

I guess for tools Jools has for game dev work on his belt, I believe he uses Pro Motion NG, and Photoshop to put together the games' aspects, mainly because games like Mutant Mudds and Chicken Wiggle are all hi-bit pixel art games in their own right, and other games uses Unity as their engine, but such games uses its own created proprietary in-house engine; that of which was made for Treasurenauts originally, but Mutant Mudds had ghost levels in the works that had alpha transparency in them for its final update, back when Renegade Kid was the IP holder for it, so you know, and the previous engine wasn't capable of that, even on the 3DS, so, work on moving everything to its new engine and testing had to be done first before it can be updated to the original 3DS version, to complete the whole package.

Adobe's Illustrator, I think, was also used for Hatch Tales' content and vector-based graphics, too. Perhaps a better, more efficient program could've made it easier to make vector graphics.

I think Jools' workflow, in my perspective, needs to be improved by using Aseprite, which does pixel art a lot better than Photoshop, Tiled Map Editor, that does a lot better for level editing, compared to Pro Motion NG's capabilities, because by using them, they can streamline a lot, as it does for other devs and studios, so games could be done quite quicker with very minimal delay, especially when it comes to preparing all planned content ready for coding, testing, and then launches.

When it comes to communication with backers and fans about Hatch Tales' progress, I find it unsettling for Jools to remain silent about that. Even backers who supported the game called him out on delays and tight-lipped silence, but instead of answers, Jools had the... the...  audacity to block them on his company's and his own Twitter accounts!

I had never felt that distraught over something so little, especially when it involves game development! Jools' lack of communication caused backers and fans to turn against him and lose their respect and support. Purely just petty, if you ask me.

As any indie or regular game developer, I'll say this... that is no way to treat and respect anyone, especially their fans. I can guess there's some sort of inferiority complex bred in Jools, and fear of flop for that game, or any game, for that matter, but constant delays on that game, as well as Treasurenauts, really does hurt more than just PR.

Any other game announced as the higher priority than a long-anticipated game, which I've already said its name, damages people's anticipation of it and hopes of its finalized release date. Sure, money does keep any indie company going, but priorities for game projects and finishing them needed to be sorted out first and foremost.

Communication should've also been better about progress on game projects, because without any form of transparency, how is anyone going to gain trust in these kind of developers, the players, and the games they were looking forward to playing them when they've been delayed and kept in the shadows for far too long?

I'm already even getting too bored waiting for Treasurenauts or the next Mutant Mudds installment that's supposed to be set after Super Challenge's events. Its fun to play, but without a new game, you're left with no choice but to play it over and over again, and even re-porting it another platform many times over hurts the fondness and stunts growth to any game series, and diminished enjoyment and value.

Something's got to get Jools and Atooi going faster sooner or later. Otherwise, I don't know what will.

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.

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.

[Sansara Naga 2]

Is it just me, or is everyone experiencing 2 minute wait times to load one page on the VGMaps forums? It took me something like 15 minutes just to get to point of posting this message.

In other news, Sansara Naga 2 is in the works.

It's not you, FlyingArmor. It just happened recently, I think. It's obvious maintenance work needs to be done, so the wait times can be cut down from minutes to seconds flat, as it is supposed to be all the time.

Yes, not many of us are patient, but we can still try to be moreso and not let this little situation or anything else run our nerves much.

Have faith, and peace and prayers to Jon and the forums' staff to resolve such situations.

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.

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

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.

Been a bit in thought about the unaddressed discrepancies in Sonic Origins lately(and I do mean PLENTY of discrepancies), especially about a bit about the canon placements in games. Yes, that includes the wrong insignia and face decal Robotnik used from Eggman's decal in later 3D Sonic games and media.

I mean, Origins does good at fleshing out specific details about the characters from the Japanese manuals, such as Amy Rose' fortune card readings, Tails' bullying for what he was born with, and how Knuckles first got tricked, but there are so many things left out and/or have gotten wrong, including Tails' single-handed victory over the Battle Kukku Armada on Cocoa Island in Tails Adventure, said to take place before he met Sonic, not before Sonic met Robotnik for the first time, and not after Tails met Sonic. I get that Tails was slightly less brave there and then, but that was a worthy accomplishment for him.

Origins also ignores specific story points and details in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, such as Dr. Robotnik landing outside the island, attempting to exaggerate Knuckles' fears about the fabled and much feared dragon's egg the echidna remembered in legend about bringing destruction upon hatching to his advantage in tricking him, not to be linked to the Great Dark Dragon from Superstars NOR Perfect Chaos from Adventure, and Sonic and Tails discovering an engraved ring that came from Angel Island and actually heading off in the Tornado.

Also, it really ignores Knuckles' side of the story, where Mecha Sonic Mk.II, having still survived his defeat by Sonic and Tails, reactivating himself to find any intact robot to try to continue his creator's plans on Angel Island, and a proper new prelude where Mecha Sonic found the exact Eggrobo that emerged from the wreckage from Sonic's good ending, which should've been played not just for Super Sonic, but Hyper Sonic's best ending, too, and then having experienced a common experience, they partner up to take down Knuckles and steal the Master Emerald, and the good and best ending from Knuckles' story should have seen Robotnik throwing another tantrum, but on the junk heap from his Final Weapon's wreckage on the ocean, likely preferred to be set at night, rather than drifting with a Rexxon floatie in the day, and a particular distant light gleam that signifies another island about to surface from the ocean shortly, which leads to Knuckles' Chaotix's events.

Not to mention, there's loads more bugs and glitches in Sonic 3's remastering the original game does not have Origins never bothered to fix even after the patches did very little fixing, and its NOT how a well-deserved Retro Engine remastered re-release should've had. And, we would've had the additional option to play its split halves alone, rather than having the only option to play the whole game together.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles' ROM hacks and mods have done a more better job of bug fixing, technical and cosmetic details than Origins, specifically Sonic 3 Complete and Sonic 3 Rebuilt, such as the crystal platforms seen in Lava Reef's main boss fight changing colors right from hot to cool palettes after the lava cooled down, stage music remaining silent after finishing Act 2, and many more.

If the games get re-released again, we'd be far better off having either original emulated ports of all halves and the whole game, Retro Engine re-releases with new animated cutscenes that truly pay more great attention to the details from the canon and backstories from the Japanese manuals, or all of the above, to meet the best of many worlds, including the game preservationists'.

I don't know how many people do not know Sonic's history, but compared to us that do know more longer, I'd say the numbers are slightly less of them, as there are still a lot of us who know Sonic more longer.

Whatever present management SEGA's got there, that are responsible for rushing that compilation too soon just to make the anniversary date as its launch, they really need to get their facts straight again and re-evaluate their actions.

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

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

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! 

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! 

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!

Greetings!
For many years, I've been hoping someone would make a map for The Pirates of Dark Water on Genesis, and now I have decided to complete it myself.
I have only just learned the basic ripping techniques and begun to experiment with it, so progress may be very slow(just finished the first jungle level). And I still trying to find a more efficient way to complete this.

Good for you to map that game based on that mostly forgotten original Hanna-Barbera TV show! I briefly had thoughts on who would do it, but, now, I already know. Take your time to finish. I have confidence in you.

Just to say, as a small heads-up, I feel quite disappointed after reading that David Kirschner's TV series didn't get its proper conclusion that should've ended with Ren finally obtaining all Thirteen Tresures of Rule, extinguish Mer's long-time oceanic threat, the Dark Water, defeating and ending the Dark Dweller and the evil pirate lord, Bloth, in the formerly thought of final battle, and saving the world once and for all.

I mean, for the fans, they never got to see the actual conclusion because of budget cost underestimations(the half-hours were costly priced at $500,000 then, and the cel frames' amount for them was 12,000 each were twice as much as a Saturday morning show at the time), quality decline and channel moving that struck a nasty blow to its run, and left with only eight of the Thirteen Treasures collected.

If anything, I still hope one of these days, the show will finally get the conclusion it should have had all those years ago. It may take a miracle, even.

Apologies for bringing this back after inactivity, but, I really want to say this game got a good mention from Sonic's recent audio show, "The Chaotix Casefiles", the first episode.

Before leaving Angel Island, Vector the Crocodile tried to plea to Knuckles for help on their latest investigation by bringing up a rather distant memory he actually remembered.

That distant memory was the final battle against Dr. Robotnik(yes, still alternatively called Eggman) and Metal Sonic's form, powered by a captured Giant Ring that he turned into a crystallized Dark Battery Ring, Metal Sonic Kai, which he piloted from the inside, and how they were victorious against him in the central structural depths of the Newtrogic High Zone, his main base that was another attempt to conquer the world and build his own park, Robotnikland(or Eggmanland), stationed on the island they were all in, right after Knuckles and his then-newly founded allies got all the Chaos Rings.

Surely, with utilization of Sling Rings(clever name, though; not from me), the ring tethers used throughout the game, that gave them the upper hand to Robotnik's plans.

My heart felt a little down for Vector, though. Even as Angel Island's guardian, you think Knuckles could've been a bit more on-par with his memory when Vector brought the end of their first adventure up to him. I mean, he was involved.

I know, the game wasn't quite well-received because that Sling Ring gameplay mechanic dragged the game on a bit too long, among other reasons, but bear in mind that game was kinda rushed for its launch in 1995, and SEGA tried to get a Sonic game into the 32X before the Saturn became the focus at the time. The least we can do is appreciate their efforts.

I would be elated to think and see the game get a second chance by having it redone under the Retro Engine, with proper care, that is, and be given a more finely thorough polished work effort to it and loads of tiny cosmetics that were missed before the original launch day, especially having the Good Ending fleshed out quite more, to give it good closure to the game's story with the Chaos Rings.

If you haven't listened to that, give it a go.

[Mario Tennis Fever]

I'm maybe the only one here who recognizes this day enough to post about it...

I made this collage a few weeks back, with Japanese box art on the top and North American box art on the bottom.  The Japanese like to show the world and a bunch of other characters - the North American ones just seem to show Mario jumping.



But, hey, at least with the Game Boy, they kept the "crowded" box art:



I'm pretty busy currently with a few projects at once right now, including one with a deadline, and haven't been playing my usually-consistent 1½ hours of daily gaming while on the treadmill for almost two weeks (because I just had an operation and can't do anything strenuous), and felt guilty about playing games if I'm not on the treadmill especially as I have other things to do, but I did pick up Mario Tennis Fever on the Switch 2, so maybe I'll squeeze in a few minutes of it today somewhere just to say that I did.

Anyone playing anything with Mario in it today?

As much as I enjoyed the many Mario games before, I'm still not feeling the satisfaction of any game giving more challenge; more longer courses, more original bosses, maybe occasionally a new main villain that isn't Bowser, like how it was with a lot of his adventures.

All the increased memory and CPU Nintendo held for their computers and companies, and yet, the present minds there that made the games could at least spare extra effort to keep on challenging us; but not by shorter, tougher courses, rather the longer courses while still retaining their challenge level. Their minds need to be more open-minded to listening to others, especially their fans.

My thirst for long, challenging stages/courses could never be satisfied. Not to mention those that test our basic know-how of platform gaming for it, including using our minds to solve puzzles.

Sorry you went through an operation. Many prayers for your healing, Jon, and for your recovery!

Also, happy Mar10 Day, Jon! Hope you get well soon! Thought and prayers are all with you!

And, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury is one of my recent favorites. Really great to play!

People, I may have been down, but, I'm not out with my search for the game's maps. After a bit more looking by trying again, I definitely found a batch of Freedom Planet stage maps in a gallery!

I just only found it now, and felt that should've been found sooner, but, we all can't lament on what anyone should've done before; only to live the moment.

The only tiny thing is, I couldn't find the names of the map rippers responsible. Oh, well. I won't spend some time trying to find it; that can be left to anyone else.

Anyway, here's the gallery's link I found - https://imgur.com/a/freedom-planet-map-rips-qUvQY

And, to show proof, here's some example stage maps I've found with the gallery in image links. There's out of bounds sprites and such here and there, but I won't bother.

DRAGON VALLEY

Map 1 -

Map 2 -

Map 3 -

Map 4 -

RELIC MAZE

Map 1 -

Map 2 -

Map 3 -

Map 4 -

Map 5 -

FORTUNE NIGHT

Map 1 -

Map 2 -

Map 3 -

Map 4 -

Map 5 -

Map 6 -

AQUA TUNNEL

Map 1 -

Map 2 -

Map 3 -

Map 4 -

SKY BATTALION

Map 1, Metal Airship -

Map 2, Fire Airship -

Map 3, Earth Airship -

JADE CREEK

Map 1 -

Map 2(its in jpeg from that gallery. Sorry, its all I could find  . Don't worry. Only temporarily until I'm provided with a png link to it so I can replace it) -

Map 3 -

Map 4 -

Map 5 -

THERMAL BASE

Map 1 -

Map 2 -

Map 3 -

Map 4 -

Map 5 -

Map 6 -

Guess their sizes are very close to the 20,000s range(not like most of Spark the Electric Jester's stages, which they seem to be are), but they're within the 10,000s range, horizontally, at the very least.

I think these can be worth comparing to prior Sonic games' maps(well, before later games like Sonic Advance 2, Sonic Rush, and Sonic Colors DS) and perhaps needing references to any 2D stage designers wanting them for their projects.

There's a small problem; I couldn't seem to find the rest within that gallery, including Mayor Zao's airship as a sort of its hub in Sky Battalion, the rest of Pangu Lagoon, and the whole of Final Dreadnought, Lord Brevon's massive starship that housed a large fraction of his army of created robots, bio-engineered aliens, including monstrous aliens, and hybrids of both, alongside his Super Troops that constitute much of the games midbosses.

At the very least, I gave you the maps I tried to search for. Hope whoever can find the mappers responsible to contact them. Otherwise, whoever's up for doing or finding the rest, if already ripped, the decision's yours.

I didn't make them, mind you, only found them, so you know. I did search where not many did, even without intent.

Hope you like them! If anyone finds more, let me know!