[Dragon Warrior II]

I've been working on Dragon Warrior II on and off for the past year. I just have a few more dungeons to map out, then labeling can ensue.

Secret of Mana is also a game I've been thinking of working on for a long while. With all the hard work done thanks to Tropicon, arranging and labelling the maps should be a piece of cake.

And I see you're requesting the PC version of Ultima VI. Seeing that it will be 30 years old this year on June 1st, it would be a fitting time to have it all mapped out by then. Though listing out every item that can be picked up is going to be madness... I'll try mapping out a small area, like Cove, and see how crazy it gets!

One game I didn't think I'd be finishing up is Lufia & The Fortress of Doom. I was going through the game capturing the enemy sprites for a sprite sheet I'm making and I noticed there were several areas I didn't bother mapping when I was working on this game ten years ago.

They were mostly shrine type areas like the four shrines that warp you to Doom Island and other areas where no chests or hidden items exist. From a gameplay perspective, I didn't think mapping those areas out would've been all that helpful to players looking for hidden items and such, so I suppose I skipped them for that reason. Well, many years later, and I'm much more likely to map out any area that's seen in-game, even if it's just for short cutscene.

Hey Robert. It's great to see new people contributing to video game cartography!

It's been about seven months since you have posted here, so I was wondering how far you've gotten with mapping this game? I'm curious because I've been watching a let's play of this game by the Japanese group "Ii Otona-tachi" for the past two months or so, seeing Taichou and Ossan die over and over again, and use up all their continues to get through all the levels on hard mode. I think I've made it up to part 42 and they've finally gotten to Nosferatu at the end of Level 6, though they didn't last long there.

Through watching their videos I got to see what a really amazing game Nosferatu is, so it'd be awesome to see your maps from that game make their way onto VGMaps. Those two maps you've shared thus far look great and I look forward to seeing the more complex level layouts found in later levels.

[Shinseiki Odysselya]

Mapping for Shinseiki Odysselya is finally done (or rather it was two weeks ago)! Some maps had dragged on this project for more time than I would have liked, but at least it's now complete.

As for what to do next, I'll focus on finishing up a few of the mapping projects that I started but haven't completely finished up yet, such as Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar and Final Fantasy VII, before starting anything new.

My co-worker's been twice recently and he says it's easy to get around in Tokyo without needing to know English.

I think you mean " without needing to know Japanese"?

My friends and I have been planning this trip since the beginning of this year, so I'm certainly looking forward to visiting and exploring that beautiful country. It's always been a dream of mine to go there ever since I became fixated on the Japanese language (through video games and manga), so I'm really excited to finally see that dream come true!

I've got a notebook of all the books and other stuff I'd like to get while I'm there, the bulk of it being books related to video games that are out-of-print for the most part. Although I have some things I'm set on finding, I'll probably find a lot of things I never knew existed and just can't resist, haha! But we'll see how it goes.

And of course, I'll be sure to write up a trip report or something to that effect afterwards.

After my trip to Japan in October I'll definitely have the time to finally devote to working on the world map. Plus now that there's a concrete release date for FF7 Remake, that's help spur me on.

[Shinseiki Odysselya]

Alright, I think a quick update is in order.

I'm still whittling away the remaining maps for Shinseiki Odysselya. I think I got about seven more maps to do and that should be it for that game. I've been submitting maps for it since January 2018, so it'll be nice to have this mapping project finally behind me.

I also submitted maps for Golf and Snow Bros. a few weeks ago.  They were pretty simple to capture and compile, so it's the least I could do to fill in some gaps in the NES Atlas. And speaking of filling in the gaps some more, I'm steadily working on Legacy of the Wizard, so that should be awesome to see once it's complete.

After much finagling with FCEUX, I figured out how to use those addresses to "teleport" myself around the world map to capture the inaccessible areas I couldn't capture before, as well as figure out how far away China is from Japan in-game. So thanks so much Zagato for bringing those memory addresses to my attention! I'll have the world map sent to Jon shortly and with that this request will be fulfilled.

Not copyright, but trademark (though it's understandable that you confused them since they're confused all the time). And from what I could glean from the United States Patent and Trademark Office's website, all the uses Nintendo applied for trademark protection were simply for the word "TRIFORCE", and not the symbol itself.

Now as for The American Academy of Actuaries you had mentioned? Their trademark does indeed also apply to those three triangles as well, but they could only go after anyone using that symbol in conjunction with actuarial matters, not any other possible use (though I could be incorrect).

The closest match I could find to the three triangles in the "triforce configuration" in relation to video games was for YOGATRON, but the triangles are inverted, and the trademark has been dead since 2012.

So yeah, it doesn't look like my use of the triforce symbol is my fanart is actually infringing any trademark related to video games. The funny thing about the coordinators telling me to take down the "infringing" prints was that they did so about one hour before the convention ended, so I had those prints up for 95% or so of the rest of the convention anyway, so looking back, it wasn't a great loss. But still it's pretty ridiculous whichever way you look at it.

And as for the Final Fantasy VII world map, I did some searches for a few of the more unique place names (Midgar, Junon, Gongaga, etc.), and did not get any relevant matches. So I should be in the clear with that, though I wouldn't be surprised if the coordinators raise an objection to it.

I know they're trying to protect artists from possible lawsuits and legal action, but making artists take down pieces of work for hypothetical infringement is I think going a little overboard.

I'm back to report that I have the overworld map for this game mostly finished. The problem I've come across is figuring out how to walk through walls (or in this particular instance, walk on water) since there are a few areas that are very far away from the main islands of Japan that are difficult to place accurately if you play through the game normally. I should try again with the hacking to see if I can come up with something, but so far I've had no luck.

In the meantime, I suppose I could release what I have so far of the map, as rough as it is.

I did make a tiny bit of progress some time ago, but haven't done anything with it since then. Basically, I just took the in-game map and traced around the coastlines of the continents and islands in a paint program. My next step is to print it out big on multiple sheets of paper, then painstakingly go through the game and draw what I see on that map.

Since Anime North is coming up at the end of next month, perhaps I can get it done before then to sell as a print to con-goers? I'd need to consult the organizers of the Comic Market (a.k.a. the artist alley) to see if that would be allowed, since they've become very strict when it comes to trademarks. They're so strict in fact that even the triforce symbol is not allowed in fanart (I found that out last year when I was asked to take down my two Legend of Zelda prints that depict shield designs, this being one such). So I wouldn't be surprised if they decide that the names of towns and places on the map would be considered trademark infringement, as ridiculous as that sounds.

But first I'd need to get the map finished before proceeding to that stage!

Sure thing. Here's the games that are complete:

NES / FC:
Final Fantasy III (FC)
Legend of the Ghost Lion

SNES / SFC:
Final Fantasy VI (SFC)
GD Leen (SFC)
Silva Saga II (SFC)
Ultima VI: The False Prophet

And the one that's incomplete is the one I mentioned above: Shinseiki Odysselya (SFC). Thanks!

I did a similar compilation for NES and SNES games, which sorts out the NES, Famicom, Family Computer Disk System, SNES and Super Famicom systems.

That's cool that you have done much the same thing, Will. However, I did notice a number of my own map sets say they're incomplete when they're actually complete, and I saw that the Super Famicom list says Shinseiki Odysselya is complete when it's still in progress. But I did learn about COUNTIF() which you used to count up the various categories of completion. All I did before was use separate columns for each category and place in 1s wherever appropriate. Thanks for that! It sure helped make things much more streamlined and concise.

One thing I've thought about doing (and now I wonder if I will regret doing so if I don't get around to it) is going through the Atlases with a fine-toothed comb.

When I was going through the NES atlas, I noticed a few Japanese games that weren't indicated as such with the (J) after the title. So I suppose I could go through those two atlases when I check the Japanese and European completion rates and e-mail you a report of the inconsistencies and which games are unlicensed, homebrew, etc.

Hard to say if multiple request lists work.  But at the very least, they might remind people of games that are likely to be mapped anyway.  Recreating the NES Game Atlas and the library of the NES Classic Edition were easy, but the Super NES versions of both of those took longer, the Super NES Classic isn't even done.  Same with my Nintendo Power magazine cover games topic.  The Game Boy "Game Atlas" recreation topic is stagnant despite having only Super Mario Bros. Deluxe remaining...

I didn't really imagine it as a request list, but rather simply as a reference. But that'd be interesting to at least get an inkling of what people would like to see via some sort of polling, that's for sure. After compiling my lists, it gave me a few ideas of new games to try mapping out, at least ones that are much simpler to do than fully-fledged RPGs, haha.

I did find I still had Donkey Kong Classics in my NES list, so that's been removed. However, with the five compilation games out of the way, that still leaves me with 673, so I still have one extra game somewhere.

Ah! I didn't know about the Exertainment Mountain Bike Rally and Speed Racer compilation. Thanks for pointing that out!

The reskins you spoke of were grouped together with the respective games they originated from in the Wikipedia article. After viewing some videos comparing the pairs, I'd say they all warrant separate entries. So I suppose my official count should therefore be 719 if I take the two compilation cartridges out of the picture. After I made my initial post, I found a few more Japanese exclusive games, so I'm now down to 719. I guess I'm okay now with my count then? I still haven't taken the time to double check my list with non-Wikipedia sources, so I might still find discrepancies, but it's close enough regardless.

Hey, it's no problem! It has certainly opened my eyes to just how many games there really are for these consoles, even when my current lists are limited to just North America. It's one thing to hear the numbers, but totally another to see each and every title one by one. If getting these lists into shape was this much of a headache, I wonder how bad it'll be when I get to the Japanese side of things? TT__TT;;;

Also, going through this ordeal made me think of posting these completion lists up here on the forums (akin to the various Atlas posts), so mappers can see the vast array of games that haven't been touched yet. I have to wonder if the forum software can handle posts being 1000+ lines long?

[NES]

I decided to make this topic in response to a comment in another thread asking about the how complete the NES and SNES Atlases on this site are. So I took upon myself to do the detective work and come up with an answer.

So far, I've only taken the time to compile statistics on the games released in North America, since adding in all the Japanese and European titles as well would be quite the formidable task to take up all at once. I'll be sure to update this post with stats for the games released in Europe and Japan once I have those numbers ready.

Before I continue, I'll point out that I took any game compilations off my lists if they were previously released separately (such as Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt) as they are redundant. As far as I know, I found four game compilations on the NES, so those out of the way will reduce the total number of NES games from 677 to 673. With my list at the moment, I seem to have an extra game on it, but have no idea which one it is, so as of now, my total is 674. My SNES list comprises 720 games, so I seem to be missing one if I want to get it up to 721. I don't know how many compilation cartridges there are on the SNES, but the one obvious one I can think of now, Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World, wasn't present on the list on Wikipedia. Perhaps there was only one so that might explain why I'm off by one?

By the way, I compiled my lists from the respective Wikipedia articles, and I found errors with the release dates of MANY games. I found at least ten Japanese exclusive games purporting to be released only in America in the SNES article, so that probably explains the discrepancies I currently have.

For the NES, out of 674 games, there is coverage of 281 games (41.69%). Of those, 262 are (as far as I can tell) mapped completely (38.87%), and 19 are partially complete (2.82%).

For the SNES, out of 720 games, there is coverage of 191 games (26.53%). Of those, 152 are (as far as I can tell) mapped completely (21.11%), and 39 are partially complete (5.42%).

So Jon is completely right in saying we're nowhere near having very complete atlases for these two consoles despite being the most popular. And keep in mind this is just for the North American releases! While I haven't taken the time to count up the Japanese or European releases yet, I'm sure those are in a similar if not worse position. According to the SNES game list on Wikipedia, there are 976 exclusive games for Japan alone! I know I've helped to map some of those Japanese exclusives, but there's still TONS left to go. I wouldn't be surprised to find that less than 10% have any maps at all let alone complete sets here on VGMaps.

But anyway, it's certainly interesting to see how much has been done so far and how much there is still left to do!