Recent Posts

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« Last post by Cyartog959 on September 15, 2024, 12:31:59 pm »

JonLeung, if I may, I found a whole map of "Alwa's Awakening", courtesy of 2 people responsible for charting this neat Metroidvania NES influenced adventure, Duckfist, for the whole map, and Stubbsy, for updating it to include secrets and making the map more complete. Its straight from a Steam Guide posted a long while ago. Sprites of all bosses and enemies included. Didn't need to do any ripping for this. I just only found it.

The map's link's right here - https://drive.google.com/file/d/10vPv7HfbtoaqKg4-E8AzPhjgWmRJiX1r/edit

It was rather fun, but I loathed having to travel to all the areas without making backtracking more lenient, especially with the slow speed I've had to endure the whole adventure.

Thankfully, "Alwa's Legacy" eased it all up. I can only hope we get to see "Alwa III" sometime soon. Elden Pixels made great games! They even recently released their newest game, "A Void Hope". Rather different, but, still, sounds rather fun to look at.

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VGMaps Social Board / Re: YouTube channel! (JonLeung1)

« Last post by G.E.R. on September 11, 2024, 04:30:11 am »

Returning to the Vietnamese noodle soup, have you tried "Nongshim Super Spicy"? It's a very spisy korean ramyun and I would be interesting to compare a human reactions because only only I could eat Nongshim Super Spicy without dilution with water and without glass of milk

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Map Requests / Re: Full map set for Sonic the Hedgehog's games

« Last post by G.E.R. on September 11, 2024, 04:15:06 am »

SUnleashed doesn't completed for PS3/XBOX 360 and I don't how many maps (playable areas) included in the game. I think that it need to rip 2D-sections for day acts and view-from-top for night levels. Mayby STH-2006 and SForces can be mappable too by using this method.
And 300GB of my photos in RAW which shoted last months besides this.

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Maps In Progress / Re: eishiya's Maps.

« Last post by Cyartog959 on September 10, 2024, 10:21:58 pm »

Your progress is very good. Using Tiled in that manner does save much struggle when it comes to map making from games to be mapped out.

Never give up on your efforts, bud. I know you'll keep it up. Can't wait to see more full maps soon!

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« Last post by JonLeung on September 08, 2024, 02:52:07 pm »

Today, we got maps from zagato blackfist, this time for the Japanese Famicom game, Majou Densetsu II: Daimashikyou Galious (J).

This is one that is originally a little indulgent, but I think there are more fans than myself.  I haven't ever gotten far in this, part of why I would like these maps.

The indulgence I speak of is that this was just an old memory of mine, and for years I didn't know what this was.  Back in the day, for whatever reason, I think my dad had just travelled somewhere, and he came back with some loose Famicom games as sort of a long-distance borrowing (? ? ?).  There were three games at least (for some reason I think there might have been four), and after maybe a month or two my dad had to return them.  I didn't find out until much later what those games are.

We turned on one game, and was pleasantly surprised to see the tank from Blaster Master, but in a different setting.  As we already owned Blaster Master, my brother and I got excited at the prospect of a sequel!  But a mere two seconds later, it turned out to be the same game!  Turns out it is Chou-Wakusei Senki Meta Fight (J), the original version with a totally different story - no pet frog here! - which explains why the intro and - a rude surprise later - the end part of Area 4 is different.  In that part, you have to grab a small piece of ladder after a blind jump, it's little ridiculous, so it was changed to a series of platforms for Blaster Master.

Another game we got was a definitely-Japanese game with characters that I would later recognize immediately when I saw The Legend Of The Mystical Ninja for the Super NES.  The Famicom game at the time turns out to be Ganbare Goemon 2 (J), which my silly young self referred to as "Yummy 2" because I couldn't read it other than the "2" on the label.  I most definitely remember the robot sumo boss seen here at 6:40.  I realize I didn't actually request it yet, so now it's added to the list. 

So, Majou Densetsu II: Daimashikyou Galious (J), for the longest time I had no idea what it was.  It's not something that was localized or had recognizable characters.  I didn't give it a weird name like "Yummy 2", so I think my brother and I just called it "the castle game" or "the knight game".  In the years since, I might have seen some random screenshots, but only got its name for sure from reading The NES Anthology from Geeks-Line Publishing, which I reviewed here.  It's a challenging dungeon game, and I didn't get far.  If it's dependent on knowing the Japanese language, that might be part of it.  I especially remembering the ladders, and how weird it is that they don't extend one more block higher - as it is, it looks like all ladders are under the platform that you can actually climb up into, or down.  I guess this hides ladders that would go down from the bottom of the screen, if that's intentional or not.

My dad had to return the games at some point, but just the short time I had with them cemented some memories that make Blaster Master, Goemon/Mystical Ninja, and "the knight game" some kind of weird trilogy.

Anyway, that's a lot of ranting that no one else except my brother might find interesting.  But, in any case, thanks for helping to preserve my childhood memories, zagato blackfist!

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« Last post by JonLeung on September 08, 2024, 02:23:36 pm »

JonLeung, you also have Stargate in your SNES requests, but, like with Daze Before Christmas, Genesis version is the same, as you can see by comparing these two maps, so this request is also completed. 

So, the request for Stargate is specifically for the Super NES version, as it is one of the requests for maps of games that appear on covers of Nintendo Power between 1988-1996.  The game appears on the cover of the magazine for April 1995, and obviously wouldn't be the Genesis version.

However, I certainly do appreciate the effort of mapping the Genesis version, and as you mentioned, its maps are practically identical to the Super NES version's.  I would guess there might be some palette differences, but navigationally, they still work more than well enough.

So, thanks, John Brain!  You have contributed a lot of Genesis stuff, and though I am a Nintendo fan, I have frequently stated my desire to see more Sega stuff on here, in some attempt to balance things out, so you should get more praise for the stuff you have contributed!

I will consider that request fulfilled (as the Genesis version) here in this topic (though I think I will still leave that open in the Nintendo Power topic).

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Maps In Progress / Re: eishiya's Maps.

« Last post by eishiya on September 08, 2024, 02:00:27 pm »

According to the in-game map, I'm about 2/3 done, but I probably missed some collectibles, I'll have to go smash some more crates and lamps later. Since I prefer to include all the destructibles in my maps, I avoid breaking them normally, and often forget to go back and grab everything after getting my screenshots.

I've reached the fifth area, which has some rooms where every or nearly every part of the screen has a moving sandstorm effect, so it's not possible to get the backgrounds (and in some cases even the foregrounds) from screenshots. To map these, I have to take and arrange the screenshots as normal, and then use them as guides to rebuild the storm-covered layers from the source tiles. Normally I only have to do this to fill in the gaps left by UI where the map doesn't contain other usable instances of those tiles; doing it for the entire map is very time-consuming, especially since the sand effect makes it hard to even make out which tile is meant to be there in some cases.

Here's an example of one such room:

The colours aren't quite a match for the in-game ones since I don't know the colour and blending parameters the game uses, but it gets the idea across, at least.
Bonus, the room without the sandstorm layers:

To place so many tiles in an image editor is too much work, so I did this reconstruction in Tiled (except for the distant background layers and storm effect).
If you spot some weirdly misaligned tiles near the ground: Don't blame me, they're like that in the game xP

Hopefully there won't be many rooms like this, they take ages! I think this room took about four hours. If I didn't have access to the tilesets, I'd have given up here for sure.

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Gaming / Re: Is there a site to download an entire library of useful save states?

« Last post by ReyVGM on September 02, 2024, 03:31:51 pm »

I've amassed a ton of save states across the decades, but honestly a lot of them need specific emulator versions and in the case of Visual Boy Advance, you even need the specific bios version used or else the state won't load.

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Maps Of The Month / 2024/09: Gimmick! (NES) - TerraEsperZ

« Last post by JonLeung on August 31, 2024, 08:55:54 pm »

Gimmick!

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

Yumetaro, a small green yokai, has been given as a birthday gift to a young girl.  One night, her toys (also alive, apparently) kidnap her and take her into another world.  It's up to Yumetaro to rescue her!  Using his power to create a bouncing star, used as a weapon or platform to ride or jump from, he will traverse seven colourful levels of late-era NES platforming!

It's a short game, but pretty solid.  The music is particularly top-notch, especially in the original Japanese Famicom release.  As one of the last 8-bit games from Sunsoft, it's not to be missed, so it's great that TerraEsperZ has mapped this out for us to appreciate!

TerraEsperZ also mapped Trip World for the Game Boy, another cute Sunsoft platformer that originally didn't get an official release in the Americas, as we saw when it was honoured here two years ago, also in September.

As of last year, Gimmick! is more accessible worldwide, as it was released for the Evercade as part of the "Sunsoft Collection 1" cartridge (under its original Scandinavian name, "Mr. Gimmick!"), and a rerelease, "Gimmick!: Special Edition", also came out in 2023, for the Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and on Steam.  And this month sees the release of a long-overdue sequel, Gimmick! 2, more than three decades later.  There's definitely lots of love for Gimmick! now!

So to recognize the effort put into mapping this once-obscure platformer, TerraEsperZ's Gimmick! (NES) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for September 2024.

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« Last post by John Brain on August 28, 2024, 05:41:27 am »

JonLeung, you also have Stargate in your SNES requests, but, like with Daze Before Christmas, Genesis version is the same, as you can see by comparing these two maps, so this request is also completed.