Recent Posts

41

Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« Last post by JonLeung on February 26, 2026, 01:30:04 pm »

Castlevania Crypt.com has now allowed VGMaps.com to host the maps of Castlevania: Harmony Of Despair!

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the series (the Famicom version of Castlevania came out in September 1986), so it's nice to finally have full maps of Harmony Of Despair, a game that includes past Castlevania locales and characters.

Of particular interest to me is Chapter 10: Origin, a DLC stage based on the entirety of the original 8-bit Castlevania.  It has some modifications, like the underground part being extended and the following stage being reversed, an extra floor added to the purplish dungeon area, among other changes.

Compare it for yourself:

Revned's unmarked Castlevania (NES) map:
https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/NES/index.htm#Castlevania


Castlevania Crypt's Castlevania: Harmony Of Despair's Chapter 10: Origin map:
https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/X360/index.htm#CastlevaniaHarmonyOfDespair


I'll probably be saying it again in the autumn, but happy 40th anniversary, Castlevania!

42

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

« Last post by mechaskrom on February 25, 2026, 11:10:31 am »

Choosing just 10 games is hard, but I tried to pick some favorites from different genres that I really like.
Final Fantasy 6 (SNES)
Super Metroid (SNES)
Settlers IV (PC)
Silent Hill 3 (PS2)
Castlevania SOTN (PSX)
FlatOut 2 (PS2)
Secret of Mana (SNES)
Solomon's Key 2 / Fire 'n Ice (NES)
Guardian Legend (NES)
Super Probotector / Contra 3 (SNES)

43

Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« Last post by JonLeung on February 24, 2026, 05:30:46 pm »

We've got the maps for Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (Taito), thanks to zagato blackfist!

This is the Taito version, not to be confused with UbiSoft's "The Action Game" version.  Seems silly to have two games on the same platform with the same name... and their box art is pretty much the same too, based on the same still from the movie, no doubt opening the door for more confusion.

Thanks as always, zagato!  Can we expect the other Last Crusade NES game to be mapped too?

44

VGMaps Social Board / Re: Are there any graphics apps/plugins that can reduce an image to integer scale?

« Last post by eishiya on February 22, 2026, 01:10:20 pm »

I've generally found it sufficient to use nearest neighbour scaling down to the 1x size. As long as the unevenly scaled image hasn't been cropped or unevenly scaled again, and doesn't include layers that have been misaligned after being unevenly scaled up, the sampling tends to line up such that you get back the original pixels. If the image has been cropped slightly, extruding the edges by an appropriate amount prior to scaling can help.

I included a bunch of caveats there - nearest neighbour scaling should work for situations where the image is scaled after being composited, or where all the component parts are scaled up nearest neighbour in exactly the same way, which is the usual case with emulators of retro consoles like the NES. Some modern games (and some emulators of 3D-capable consoles like the DS) use this sort of uneven scaling independently for different assets or do "subpixel" (relative to the 1x artwork size) alignment between layers/assets that causes what amounts to a mixture of pixel grids, and scaling the entire image cannot get a clean result. In such cases, I've found nothing that works better than separating the elements, scaling them independently, and re-compositing them. When I encounter such games (sadly quite common with modern pixel art games using general-purpose engines such as Unity), I generally either find a way to make them render 1x to begin with, treat it as a high-res game and don't aim for pixel accuracy, or, most frequently, don't map the game at all.

45

VGMaps Social Board / Are there any graphics apps/plugins that can reduce an image to integer scale?

« Last post by JonLeung on February 20, 2026, 06:17:16 pm »

Since I got some help from the forums about a specific graphical editing need before, I have another one that I hope can be solved...

Let's say I have a screenshot like this:


Specifically, this is from Mega Man 9, in the PC version of Mega Man: Legacy Collection 2.  This collection has a problem of not scaling with an integer scale, so the graphics aren't cleanly 1:1.  I believe they should be 256 x 224 of 256 x 240 like NES games should be, not 874 x 768.  And then Mega Man 10 screenshots are 922 x 767.  So weird.  The "pixels" aren't consistent in height or width, obviously if they were all perfect squares I could resize them down to 1:1 with no issue.

Now I have tried to use some "ReShade" thing I downloaded that's supposed to fix this problem, with setting for specific games, but I can't seemingly get it to work quite right.  That's a moot point though, as I'd like a more general fix for any screenshot like this from any game.  (Mega Man 9 and 10 have already been mapped by Revned, anyway, but I just want certain screenshots, is all.)

I imagine there must be a way for a dedicated tool, or perhaps a plugin, to compare each column to adjacent ones, and each row to adjacent ones.  If columns or rows are identical, then it could reduce them to just one row or column.  It might take multiple takes, but I would think that by the end what should remain is a 1:1 screenshot.

Does that make sense?  Is there already some way to do that in GIMP or Paint Shop Pro, or a plugin for Paint.net, or if not, could one be made?

Thanks in advance!

46

Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« Last post by dark_lord_zagato on February 17, 2026, 11:13:50 am »

King Neptune's Adventure is now fully mapped and was posted yesterday. For those of you who are familiar with this game, and might be wondering how in the actual hell I was able to screenshot the 10th bill, i'm going to share a few things that I dug up in my research.

Color Dreams made a bunch of unlicensed games back in the 1990s. There was some kind of contest to promote these games and get them to sell better. I'm not too familiar with the details of this contest or how you would go about claiming the prize, but I think the challenge in King Neptune's Adventure involved collecting 10 of these dollars that are hidden throughout the game.

I couldn't seem to locate the last several bills on my own, and GameFAQs didn't have this information, so I did some searching and found what I was looking for on another forum.

The community on Video Game Sage figured this out last year. One of their members, 0xDEAFC0DE, analyzed the code of the game and found some absurd conditions that were placed on finding the 10th bill. A very specific number of lives, seahorses, and bombs, as well as the easiest bill to find secretly disqualifying you if you pick it up before the end of the game.

If I hadn't found this post I would have just assumed the last bill was bugged, or doesn't exist, and wouldn't have included it in my maps.

47

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.

48

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?

49

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)

50

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!