For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to George s's Popful Mail (J) (Super NES) maps.
Mail is a bounty hunter down on her luck, repeatedly unable to capture the technomancer, Nuts Cracker, who gets away yet again. But she soon learns of a new bounty, a magician-turned-criminal, Muttonhead, worth two million gold. Mail eventually teams up with Muttonhead's apprentice, Tatt, and a creature named Gaw, in her adventure which will turn out to be more grand than anything she has ever imagined (even if the stakes are totally expected from any Japanese fantasy adventure game)!
There have been many versions of Popful Mail, with different ports handled or published by NEC, Sega, SIMS and Working Designs, but the Super Famicom version was remade by Nihon Falcom, the creators of the original PC-88 version. While Falcom is known for their Japanese RPGs, Popful Mail is a 2D platformer with some RPG elements. But for any platformer, RPG-like or not, the areas here can be quite sprawling and twisty. Good luck trying to navigate the Gades Ruins or Castle without some help from George s!
So to recognize the effort put into mapping this Japanese gem, George s's Popful Mail (J) (Super NES) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for May 2019.
