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Maps Of The Month / Re: 2024/10: Sweet Home (J) (NES) - zagato blackfist

« on: October 01, 2024, 10:48:35 am »

Good choice for October with Halloween coming right up. This game has a creepy atmosphere in general with some disturbing imagery here and there. Surely it would have come with some kind of warning for young audiences if it had been licensed in North America back then. It's such a well made game though, shame it never had a chance over here.

As always, thanks for the feature!

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Maps In Progress / Re: My mapping projects

« on: August 22, 2024, 12:23:58 pm »

Since Jon has expressed an interest in this, here are some of the more subtle differences between Matendouji (NES) and Conquest of the Crystal Palace (NES). The above is a platform that has been raised in stage 1. The below is a platform that has been widened in stage 2.



The most striking difference is still in stage 3, where the background tiles were redrawn to make the entire stage look different. We see more of these redrawn tiles at the start of stage 4.

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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future

« on: August 17, 2024, 06:19:56 pm »

It's so nice to finally have a comprehensive map set of Dragon Quest 6. Pointing out the town/dungeon locations on the mini map is a good idea too given the large number of places you can visit in this game.

I know that mapping an RPG can be a lot of work and DQ6 is NOT a short game by any stretch of the imagination. This project must have been a pretty big commitment.

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Maps In Progress / Re: My mapping projects

« on: August 17, 2024, 06:11:39 pm »

Glad to hear this map is already getting some use! Who would have thought Capcom made an RPG besides Breath of Fire... and Destiny of an Emperor too I guess.

Speaking of, the legless zombies in Sweet Home are a lot like the legless zombies that you encounter in Breath of Fire. Maybe it was a subtle reference to Sweet Home.

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Maps In Progress / Re: My mapping projects

« on: August 12, 2024, 12:39:23 pm »

I'm going to have to update my Sweet Home map. I just found out there's a wall in the dungeon that you can use the mallet on, and it opens a path to the boiler room in the basement. I've numbered it as door 101. Thanks to TCRF for pointing this out.

I can't help but be a little disappointed that there's no longer an even 100 doors in this map, lol...

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« on: July 16, 2024, 10:03:09 pm »

Yeah, as soon as I had all the rooms in my collection I decided that I definitely wanted to make this one big map, if even remotely possible.

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« on: June 20, 2024, 02:10:41 pm »

Just wanted to thank you, zagato blackfist, for mapping Shadowgate, Uninvited and Deja Vu. Shadowgate is an old favorite that I played a lot when I was young.

I've always wanted maps for these games and even thought about mapping them myself. You did an excellent job and also including all screens in a separate image was a nice touch.

Glad to hear. I'm sending in an updated version of screens.png because, this being my first time playing Shadowgate, I kept forgetting that you can burn things with your torch. I burned a few more rugs on a second playthrough and added the Japanese version of the EPOR room.

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« on: June 08, 2024, 05:48:53 pm »

As for games that don't really have maps, we can sometimes make a chart or infographic that would still be helpful to others. Something you might see in an old issue of Nintendo Power, or in a player's guide.


Space Shadow on NES barely has anything to screenshot, so I made something like a flowchart for it. It shows how the entire game plays out from beginning to end.


I think the NES section will be "done" when we are finally left with a small pile of games that we have absolutely no idea what to do with. Something like... a game with no graphics at all, just a menu driven text game. Also, it would be pretty hard to do anything with games that don't have any real goals to begin with, something like Taboo: The Sixth Sense on NES.

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Gaming / Re: Nintendo Leak: The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past on Game Boy

« on: June 07, 2024, 06:27:54 pm »

I noticed that too after Jon posted the greyscale. They really stick out like a sore thumb.

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Gaming / Re: Nintendo Leak: The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past on Game Boy

« on: June 06, 2024, 07:20:50 pm »

The Cutting Room Floor seems to have a full sized version of this map now. It's original Game Boy colors though, which is to say, lots of GREEN.

https://tcrf.net/Development:The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Link's_Awakening_(Game_Boy)/Maps

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Maps Of The Month / Re: 2024/06: Skate Or Die 2: The Search For Double Trouble (NES) - zagato blackfist

« on: June 01, 2024, 12:54:13 pm »

A buddy of mine introduced me to this game in the summer of 1996. It's always a pleasure mapping games that I played a lot in my youth. I remember we used to think that store in the mall called "Kafka's Candies" sounds a lot like Kefka from Final Fantasy 6. We found it pretty funny that "Healthy Nutritious Food" had an out of business sign too.

The mall, in fact, might be the most important map in this set. This game does NOT give you a lot of time to find the next store you need to make a delivery to, and if you're not sure which direction will get you there first you might not make it in time.

I wish I had switched to BizHawk a little bit earlier. VirtuaNES is good for actually playing games but the colors are kind of washed out. Also, maybe I should have used bigger letters on the power plant's grid so it would be easier to read?

Thanks for the MotM feature!

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« on: March 26, 2024, 06:56:23 pm »

That is one spooky coincidence. Even if I had known that you were buying these games I never would have guessed the exact day they would show up in the mail.

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Map Gab / The mini map of Link to the Past, but the palettes are swapped

« on: February 18, 2024, 03:38:01 pm »

So recently I was recording some scenes from LttP for my youtube channel, which is mostly just game hacking, modification, and research. I had the idea to enable the use of the flute in the Dark World, and after trying many different cheat codes I finally discovered a way to do this. The game rewarded me with a mini map that was physically still the Light World, but with the same color palette as the Dark World.

Since I was successful, I decided to take a screenshot of this. I also decided I wanted to compare it side by side with the normal Light World map. Instead of using the flute again though, I just went back to the Light World and pressed X because I thought it would be the same map. That's when I noticed there are subtle differences...

On the left is a screenshot of the LW map you get from using the flute, but with the sprites turned off. On the right is a screenshot of the LW map you get from pressing X. If you open one of these up in paint and paste the other one of top of it, then hold ctrl and start tapping the z and y keys, you will see how these are different.


---

I sat there scratching my head for a few days when I finally realized what was going on. Mode 7. I tried this again in ZSNES and got my screenshots from vSNES, and the maps are identical whether they come from the flute screen or the X button. I suppose the orientation must be slightly different in game. I kind of suspected they looked different when I was playing this back in the 90s but I had no real way of comparing them back then.

Just for fun i'll share the screenshot of the LW map with the DW palette below, and also my more recent mode 7 rips of both worlds with and without their palettes swapped.

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Maps In Progress / Re: My mapping projects

« on: January 02, 2024, 10:34:35 am »

Not so much given up, but i've put that on hold in favor of getting other things done. There's going to be a lot of work involved in Super Star Wars.

One of the first things I did was make codes, including x/y coordinate mods to see where i'm at on the map. After flying all the way to the end of Hoth (stage 1) I checked the coordinates, which suggest the first map of the game is supposed to be 17904x3616.

I've briefly explored other games too and hesitate to commit due to not knowing if I will be successful. From what I can tell, the maps in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure on NES would all be 12000x6000 in size.

I did actually finish Surf Ninjas though after getting side tracked for a few years.

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Maps In Progress / Re: My mapping projects

« on: January 01, 2024, 11:18:12 am »

Plans for 2024

Cool World [NES]
Cowboy Kid [NES]
Flying Warriors [NES]
Ikari Warriors 2 [NES]
Thundercade [NES]