Recent Posts

1

Mapping Tips/Guides / Re: How to map Miracle Piano

« Last post by dark_lord_zagato on February 12, 2026, 12:44:24 pm »

That's a cool thing to have in your collection. Using a Miracle Piano in a song about NES games was a nice touch.

Anyway, that's very interesting that the codes you (zagato) found happen to work the same way on the NES, Super NES, and Genesis.  Is that a common occurrence, codes being interchangeable between games that appear on multiple platforms?

No. It's a very rare occurrence. Even Smash TV doesn't do that. I've been playing with Game Genies and Gamesharks since the 1990s and i've never seen codes work across different platforms before.

The R.B.I. Baseball games on NES use many of the exact same codes, but these are all on the same system.

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Mapping Tips/Guides / Re: How to map Miracle Piano

« Last post by JonLeung on February 11, 2026, 09:22:31 pm »

The Miracle Piano Teaching System is a game that I was glad to find for a decent price on eBay, boxed and everything, in great condition (the keyboard especially) so I like to flaunt it where I can.

On the Internet, on notable sites including GameFAQs and MobyGames, that box scan is a photo of my very own box (though cleaned up a bit digitally), which I contributed myself when I couldn't find a good scan of it online.  (Same with Super Scope 6, yup, that's mine too...)

Both the box scan and the Miracle Piano keyboard appear in my "We Didn't Start The Fire" NES parody at 0:27.  One thing I hope viewers appreciate about my "We Didn't Start The Fire" parody in particular is that every line matches with the original at least somewhat, they're not just totally random like similar parodies I've seen (there seem to be at least three for the PS2 alone, but as far as I know, mine is the only NES one).  So thankfully, replacing "Marilyn Monroe" with the similar "Miracle Piano" also has the benefit of having a brief wordless part of the chorus (I'm not sure of my musical terminology, but I think you know what I mean) right after, which gave me the perfect opportunity to show off the Miracle Piano keyboard (though it's my brother who's playing it).

Anyway, that's very interesting that the codes you (zagato) found happen to work the same way on the NES, Super NES, and Genesis.  Is that a common occurrence, codes being interchangeable between games that appear on multiple platforms?

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Mapping Tips/Guides / How to map Miracle Piano

« Last post by dark_lord_zagato on February 11, 2026, 06:37:29 pm »

As you may have noticed, maps of Miracle Piano on the NES are now available.

The Miracle Piano Teaching System is an educational game that was sold with it's own hardware. Menu navigation is possible with normal controllers but the actual gameplay requires an electronic keyboard that is not supported by any emulators that I am aware of. As a result, it is not possible to play this game normally except with original hardware.

It took me a few attempts to figure this out. After some confusion and some poking around I finally realized that you need to use controller 2 to navigate the menu on the NES and SNES versions. It makes sense. Other games that use special hardware, such the Nintendo light zapper, expect you to put the light zapper in port 1 and the d-pad controller in port 2.

The gameplay for this depends entirely on playing the piano, but you can overcome your lack of original hardware on emulators with cheat codes that seem to be exactly the same for every system Miracle Piano was released on.

There is a side scrolling minigame called Robo-Man. This is the only part of the game worth mapping and the codes that i'm sharing were made for this specific task. There are 48 different songs. Every song has it's own notes at the bottom.

I currently have no plans to map the SNES and Genesis versions myself. I'll be quite busy mapping NES games for at least the next year. I'm leaving these instructions for anybody who might wish to rip all the graphics for these games themselves.




NES

Use controller port 2. Press A to get to the child/adult mode settings, then press start to get to the welcome screen. Press select to get to the options screen. Pick practice room. Pick a song. Pick Robo-Man. Use the following codes to make the game run by itself without any further input from the player. Turn the sprite layer off and start taking screenshots.

7E3F:04 Invincible (System Bus Memory Domain)
7ED8:28 Infinite Fuel (System Bus Memory Domain)
7F0A:16 Set Robot To Build Mode (System Bus Memory Domain)




SNES

Use controller port 2. Go to the welcome screen. Press select on controller 2 to go to the options screen. Pick practice room. Pick a song. Pick Robo-Man. Use the following codes to make the game run by itself without any further input from the player. Rip the background layers separately and put them together when you're done.

7E3F:04 Invincible (WRAM Memory Domain)
7ED8:28 Infinite Fuel (WRAM Memory Domain)
7F0A:16 Set Robot To Build Mode (WRAM Memory Domain)




Genesis

Use controller port 1 for the Genesis version. Press start to get to the main menu. Pick arcade. Pick a song. Pick Roboman. Use the following codes to make the game run by itself without any further input from the player. Rip the background layers separately and put them together when you're done.

7E3F:04 Invincible (68K RAM Memory Domain)
7ED8:28 Infinite Fuel (68K RAM Memory Domain)
7F0A:16 Set Robot To Build Mode (68K RAM Memory Domain)

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« Last post by JonLeung on February 03, 2026, 05:18:32 pm »

We've got maps for Spanky's Quest, by Guard Master.

This is a bit of a random request, just because it's a cute game, but anyway, Guard Master stepped up, and even mapped the Japanese version, Hansei Zaru Jirou-kun no Daibouken (J).
It's always curious when there are stage layout changes between regional versions... like, why?  But in any case, Guard Master covers it all!

Thanks for helping Spanky the Monkey, Guard Master!

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« Last post by JonLeung on February 02, 2026, 01:55:01 pm »

zagato blackfist takes a step away from mapping NES games to take on the original pack-in game for the original Game Boy, Tetris!

This is one of those games that just about everyone has (being a pack-in game at all), so, of course I feel it was an absolutely must be mapped. (Still waiting on that Keith Courage for the Turbo Grafx 16, though...)

Being Tetris, well, what can you map besides the "well"?  That would have been fine, but we didn't even have that.  And yet zagato decided to bring us the menu and animated scenes as well, because, why not?

Fitting to get this "map" of screens this month... on Facebook, X, Bluesky, Reddit and Discord, I had posted in the last couple of days that February 2026's calendar looks like a Tetris... that is, the four weeks are four perfect lines (as in was in 2015, and will again in 2037 and 2043):

...this assumes you have your weeks start on Sunday and end on Saturday.  Most North Americans do this, but that's not the case in other parts of the world (as I was quickly reminded).

I do think the days of the week match better with numbers if Monday is first!
Mon = rhymes with "one", "mono" means one
Tue = TWO
Wed = 9 letters = 3 x 3 (a stretch, I know...)
Thu = thUR is like foUR
Fri, Sat, Sun = same first letter as Fifth, Sixth, Seventh...

Anyway, that was a little tangent there...

Thanks for fulfilling this Game Boy request, zagato!

6

Maps Of The Month / 2026/02: Blades Of Vengeance (Genesis) - John Brain

« Last post by JonLeung on January 31, 2026, 09:15:16 pm »

Blades Of Vengeance

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to John Brain's Blades Of Vengeance (Genesis) maps.

The Master has summoned three adventurers, The Huntress, The Barbarian, and The Wizard, as they are the only ones who can save The Kingdom from the evil Mannax, The Dark Lady.

It's not much of a story, but everything else about Blades Of Vengeance is quite venerable. Two-player simultaneous co-op games are always a treat, for one thing, but it's also got solid gameplay, great graphics and animation, and even the sound and music are pretty good! And so are the level layouts. There are many hidden rooms and shortcuts (there's even one by the area in the thumbnail here), all thoroughly indicated on the maps we have here made by John Brain, who has mapped several other Genesis games, as well. Thankfully, he hasn't overlooked this cult classic.

So to recognize the effort put into mapping this hidden Genesis gem, John Brain's Blades Of Vengeance (Genesis) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for February 2026.

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Map Gab / Re: How did Tropicon rip this cutscene map? (Star Ocean) [SNES]

« Last post by Spaghettimaster on January 31, 2026, 08:19:46 pm »

Ah, a code like that would've been too good to be true I guess. Hopefully one day I can stitch the frames together from the chunks in YY-CHR (if they're actually completely unused, I haven't checked any PA event so far).

You're Barack Obama on TSR? It looks like you've done quite a lot of work over there.

Yes, that's me. I'm currently going for every SNES rpg possible, with a few breaks here and there.
I get most of my codes from the gamehacking.org discord (walk thru walls, no random battle), since they're the base of my work.
Also using an emulator called bsnes+ with a mod for true colours (bsnes-rawpalettes) made by Random Talking Bush.

It would be nice if there were better programs for displaying everything in a ROM visually.

The best thing I've found for viewing Star Ocean was the no S-DD1/96Mbit hack from Romhacking, which allows me to view the rom file in YY-CHR with much better clarity.
Although I couldn't find every frame for every npc (and a few other things), it was great improvement over the original rom.

8

Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« Last post by JonLeung on January 30, 2026, 10:22:34 am »

I thought I had Jack Bros. for the Virtual Boy on my list, but apparently not?  Still worth mentioning, since I did ask Guard Master in an email about it, and he delivered!

It's the first Megami Tensei game released outside of North America.  That's a series with many branches, including the Persona games.  What makes it funny is that the box art covers up the face of Jack Frost, who's supposed to be the main character of the whole franchise!  It's like a Mike Wazowski thing...

Anyway, I'm glad we got another Virtual Boy game mapped.  It's been 16½ years since the last time that page was updated, which is more than halfway to 1995 when the Virtual Boy was released!

The Virtual Boy "Nintendo Classics" app is coming to Nintendo Switch Online next month, with several games at launch but more games coming out later this year, including Jack Bros.!  There are going to be two previously-unreleased games, D-Hopper and Zero Racers, so I think there will be at least some increase in Virtual Boy appreciation this year!

Thanks for your continued work, Guard Master.  You sure have been keeping me busy with daily submissions in the last couple of weeks!

9

Map Gab / Re: How did Tropicon rip this cutscene map? (Star Ocean) [SNES]

« Last post by dark_lord_zagato on January 29, 2026, 01:47:09 pm »

I just checked, and even if you delete Ratix from your party and only have one other character, the map character will still be Ratix. It might not even be possible to change map characters in this game, unfortunately.

It would be nice if there were better programs for displaying everything in a ROM visually. Zophar's Domain has tile viewers, but this stuff hasn't been worked on in decades and most SNES roms look like a total mess.

You're Barack Obama on TSR? It looks like you've done quite a lot of work over there.

10

Map Requests / Found Freedom Planet Maps!

« Last post by Cyartog959 on January 29, 2026, 07:28:01 am »

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 be 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!