Recent Posts

11

Maps Of The Month / 2025/11: Scurge: Hive (GBA) - Spanettone

« Last post by JonLeung on October 31, 2025, 09:30:43 pm »

Scurge: Hive

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Spanettone's Scurge: Hive (GBA) maps.

On the planet Inos, at a research laboratory, a virulent alien parasite known as "the Scurge" has breached containment.  As the Scurge infects organisms and machines, it transforms them into creatures and obstacles that our heroine, Jenosa Arma, will have to overcome.  She has been hired by the military to eliminate the Scurge while salvaging whatever equipment she can.  Good thing she has a special suit and is capable of upgrading her abilities along the way, but she'll have to stave off her own infection, which she gets after her first exposure to the Scurge.

Though comparisons with the Metroid series are expected, Scurge: Hive is more action-heavy, so Jenosa's survival will be very much a priority, that exploration of this isometric world won't be that easy.  It's fortunate that we have these maps by Spanettone to make getting around Inos easier.

Though this game was released on the GBA and DS back in 2006, it recently got rereleased - last month, in fact -  for the PC and all the major platforms, so it's easier to experience Scurge: Hive than ever before.

So to recognize the effort put into mapping this "isometroid", Spanettone's Scurge: Hive (GBA) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for November 2025.

12

Gaming / "10 Games To Get To Know Me..."

« Last post by JonLeung on October 31, 2025, 11:58:52 am »

I could've sworn I already posted this in these forums... but maybe I'm confusing it with the VGMaps Discord... or my X, Bluesky, Facebook, or Instagram... too many social media platforms to keep up with!

Anyway, if I haven't, here's my image as part of the "10 Games To Get To Know Me" trend on social media where people post an image of themselves, as well as box shots (usually, or some use screenshots) of ten video games that they really like, or define them, or whatever.

I couldn't settle on 10 so I took it up to 11 (like Spinal Tap).  Well, I had kind of settled on ten games a few days earlier, but noticed right after posting it that I had somehow forgotten the game with my favourite map on all of VGMaps.com, Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night!  (Thanks yet again, Revned!)

A bizarre thing to forget as it should have been high on the list to begin with.  As I saw others were breaking the "rule" (if there ever was one) and posting fewer or more games, and as it IS Hallowe'en, I was like, yeah, I'll stick Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night on there, it's fine.

Obviously, The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past is there, as the first maps I ever made for VGMaps.com are of that game.  But some weren't sure bets, at least not initially.  I hesitated on if I should include SimCity Social (a now-defunct browser game on Facebook that didn't even last a year) or specifically the arcade version of SoulCalibur II which I played when I worked at Playdium (especially the Risk-like "Conquest" mode not seen in any of the home versions).  Then my brother said those are EXACTLY the reasons why I should include them if I wanted my image to be personally unique, because others likely wouldn't have such strong and specific memories.

So, yeah, that's my eleven games.

(I guess.  In my over four decades of gaming, I've played MANY games, so this wasn't easy to choose in the first place... This might be a little different if you ask me about the most influential games in my life if you ask me on another day, if I remember something else... for me to even forget Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night in the first place... wow, maybe I am getting old...)

If you want to partake in this trend, you're welcome to share your ten (or however many you want).

13

Map Requests / Re: "Tom and Jerry: Frantic Antics"

« Last post by mechaskrom on October 29, 2025, 10:26:20 am »

Any progress on your Tom and Jerry maps kiddingfan? You seemed very committed to mapping this game, but have been worryingly inactive since your first post.

14

Maps Of The Month / Re: 2025/10: The Mummy Demastered (PC) - eishiya

« Last post by mechaskrom on October 29, 2025, 10:07:48 am »

Nice maps eishiya.

How did you map this game (tools, methods, etc. used)? Ripping the parallax layers separately in a PC game must have been difficult. It also sounds like you were able to rip the tiles from the game. How?

15

Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« Last post by JonLeung on October 27, 2025, 10:02:04 pm »

And so what we have here is the combination of the two previous wallpapers from my two previous posts... the 72 games Nintendo Of America published for the NES in North America.

Nintendo did things differently in Europe, so that might be interesting to look at later.  They published The Battle Of Olympus, Kickle Cubicle, Little Nemo: The Dream Master, and others.

Sorry for the North America-centrism, but if we compare the 72 games here to the listing on VGMaps.com...

Wow, we actually have maps for them all... except for Cobra Triangle.

I'm going to put that on my personal requests list now, as well.

That will be a milestone, wouldn't it?  Would be cool to be able to say that we have every Nintendo (of America)-published NES game here on VGMaps.com: The Video Game Atlas?

16

Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« Last post by JonLeung on October 27, 2025, 09:56:35 pm »

Maybe I will talk more about that, actually...

If you are curious, I also made a wallpaper of the 35 games published by Nintendo themselves that are NOT in a black/silver/blue box.

Nintendo wanted to get North American gamers into RPGs, so they chose to publish Dragon Quest (and rename it to "Dragon Warrior"), Final Fantasy, and Faxanadu.  They also chose to publish Mega Man 6 when Capcom didn't seem to want to do it.

But it's interesting what we have here...
Consider the black/silver/blue-box games (seen on the wallpaper in my previous post) to be when Nintendo was starting out, that is, the early NES era.
Then the games with red banners on the top would be the latest phase (because the Super NES was on the horizon or already out, like Kirby's Adventure, Wario's Woods, and the Yoshi puzzle games).
Then everything else in between is what you'd think would be the "peak Nintendo era".

But if you filter out the Zapper and Power Pad games, since no one remembers those (sorry, Super Team Games and To The Earth), the games from franchises that are not dependent on Nintendo anymore (as mentioned earlier, like Final Fantasy and Mega Man 6), then what are you left with?

Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3, both Zelda games, Punch-Out!!, and... that's pretty much it?

(I mean, I like StarTropics, but sadly, that's not really remembered after the NES era... wasn't even released in Japan... not even any Super Smash Bros. references, if I recall correctly...)

Arguably, The Legend Of Zelda would almost be a "Black Box" game due to the timing and that it almost had a black box... but that just means one fewer game for the "peak era" that we are discussing here!

I mean, sure, the Mario sequels and Zelda (even if it's "just" Zelda II) are certainly nothing to scoff at, and Punch-Out!! was insanely popular too.  Though big, nay, HUGE, that's really not many games at all.  But they didn't need to make many more, clearly.  Maybe Nintendo didn't NEED to release more stuff, lest it distract from the well-selling Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3.  Looking at this really goes to show how the "peak NES era" was probably heavily supported by third-party games, that is, Mega Man, Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden, even licensed stuff like Disney and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Certainly interesting to look at it this way, isn't it?

17

Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« Last post by JonLeung on October 27, 2025, 09:21:50 pm »

I made this wallpaper on the 40th anniversary of the NES (nine days ago, Oct. 18), and was kind of surprised to see that of the 72 NES games that Nintendo published themselves, 37 (JUST over half of them) are "Black/Silver/Blue-Box" games.  That is, if you count World Class Track Meet, the Action Set (Super Mario Bros.+ Duck Hunt) double Game Pak, and the Power Set (Super Mario Bros. + Duck Hunt + World Class Track Meet) triple Game Pak as truly belonging here despite not actually having individual boxes.  Plus, Donkey Kong Classics (being comprised of Donkey Kong + Donkey Kong Jr.) kind of feels like it belongs here.

I could talk a lot more about that, but I bring it up because I probably should have acknowledged that when zagato blackfist submitted maps for Mach Rider, Slalom, and Stack-Up the other day, we actually now have maps for all 37 of these "Black/Silver/Blue-Box" games!

Keep up the good work, zagato!   

18

Maps Of The Month / Re: 2025/10: The Mummy Demastered (PC) - eishiya

« Last post by eishiya on October 27, 2025, 09:18:42 am »

Oh hey, thanks for the feature!

I like the London location of this one - it has the usual caves, forests, and catacombs too, but it was cool to see some real landmarks in video game form, and architecture that doesn't make the most characterful backgrounds made to work. Sadly the London Streets map that has most of that also has the sandstorm, which makes the backgrounds hard to see, and the most distant parallax layers are further distorted by the need to repeat them to fill the space.
That sandstorm was such a pain in the butt that for the larger maps that didn't fit in a single screenshot and didn't have any convenient points where I could cut the sandstorm effect without a noticeable seam, I had to rebuild the maps from the tiles, and then add the sandstorm. I posted one of the clean reconstructions in my WIP thread.

19

Gaming / Re: Open World Maps... Sizes and Comparisons

« Last post by Cyartog959 on October 27, 2025, 07:03:39 am »

I haven't played GTA V yet, but it having a world almost twice as big as Oblivion sounds insane to me.

HA!

You think that's insane? Wait 'till you see and explore GTA VI's map! Said terrain's spoken to cover about 125 sq kilometers, and about closely 3x bigger than GTA V's map. Don't know how it is compared to previous open world games, but, that'll hit the spot as the biggest open world map yet... unless another game says otherwise.

On the other hand, there were the well-known Batman: Arkham games and its follow-ups that had their maps bigger than the previous, but they've been behind in their sizes compared to GTA's games.

For Arkham City, it was made five times bigger than Arkham Asylum, which, is kinda like a confined world of its own, but technically holds the makings of one. Then, Arkham Knight, which arrived later, made it, well, five times bigger than City, as well, to better accommodate anyone being able to ride the Batmobile across it.

Small fact: There was a prototype Batmobile made to see how it would flow well driving into Arkham City's already existing map, but the city's size was claustrophobic for Batman to glide and using grapple didn't work well. Meaning, the city was too tight to drive the Batmobile in that map. So, the city was redone with wider streets and taller buildings to accommodate ejecting the vehicle.

Don't know how big Sunset Overdrive's map is, but some guessed it's about 8 square km, bit more than Arkham Knight's.

Later came Gotham Knights, said to be bigger than Arkham Knight's, but Suicide Squad, which got out later, too, also had its map bigger than that. Don't know if SS is bigger than GH, but I hope for a comparison to see which is bigger than the other.

And, last, uninvolved with the whole Arkham series, there is another next game in the LEGO game series from Traveller's Tales, Lego Batman: Legacy of Dark Knight. That game is primed to have its map much bigger than Arkham Knight, even quite moreso than SS's map.

Funny you should say that since moving around is how you increase some skills in Oblivion. Considering also how much inventory (weight) you can carry the player must get a real workout.

Makes us wonder how other heroes, or even villains, if they have no vehicles to go around, have felt they've done the same after running through all those more and more bigger landscapes in each of their adventures.

20

Gaming / Re: Open World Maps... Sizes and Comparisons

« Last post by mechaskrom on October 26, 2025, 08:56:50 am »

Good. Not sure it surpasses GTA V's size, but, that does place it above San Andreas' size by a few miles.

I haven't played GTA V yet, but it having a world almost twice as big as Oblivion sounds insane to me.

I should say this, with all the bigger landmasses, any playable character's already bound to have their own physical workouts from all the running they've done without using vehicles... not that I've thought of such little outcomes before.

Funny you should say that since moving around is how you increase some skills in Oblivion. Considering also how much inventory (weight) you can carry the player must get a real workout.