Topic: 2011/05: E.V.O.: Search For Eden (Super NES) - Tropicon

[JonLeung]

E.V.O.: Search For Eden

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Tropicon's E.V.O.: Search For Eden (Super NES) maps.

Gaia, the Mother Earth, has created you and put you on prehistoric Earth.  It is her hope, and your quest, for you to become the perfect creature and join her in Eden.  You begin as a basic, unremarkable fish, but through surviving encounters with other animals and encountering mysterious crystals, you will eventually evolve into other forms, and finally a mammal - and if you play your cards right, perhaps even a human.

It's survival of the fittest, according to Darwin, and whether you believe his theories of biological evolution or not, you have to admit that it makes an interesting concept for a video game.  Or, at the very least, it's a bit more unique than another generic fantasy RPG, sci-fi shooter or cutesy platformer.

Tropicon (whose name sounds like the name of a species) mapped out this charming game from Enix - from the Ocean Of Origin to the Entrance Of Eden, and all the locations in between.  He's also marked off all life that you can interact with EOVP and HP amounts.  You have a better view of the whole world than any bird-man in their floating fortress, thanks to these maps that he put together for us!

So to recognize the effort put into searching out Eden, Tropicon's E.V.O.: Search For Eden (Super NES) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for May 2011.

[Trop]

This was quite an unusual project.  At first the challenge didn't seem too great since each individual stage is small.  But it's never as easy as it looks.  EVO is filled with backgrounds containing multiple parts that scroll at different speeds, sometimes subtle fluctuations in color or movement in the foreground, and everybody's favorite, off screen gaps.  By the end of the game I had a stack of codes longer then my arm to control everything, and piles of back up saves.  The adding of icons and text was, at least, some of the simplest I've ever done.

This sure was a fun project to work on overall.  All of the cute little parts of each level came together to form cute little maps.  Looking back over these I remember when I first played this game all those years ago when it was new.  I never thought my maps for this game, or any game back then, would exceed line drawings on paper.  I guess the "Mysterious Time Stream causes Evolution."

[TerraEsperZ]

I remember reading about this game in Nintendo Power when it was featured and being intrigued by the whole evolution mechanics. I seemed so much fun to try as many different body parts as possible, which I only tried for real last year.

Instead of mapping the game, I got it into my mind to try and "map" all the different body parts you could put together and where they would go, which restrictions there would be. In short, I wanted to make a sort of mashup between a sprite sheet and a creature editor for every era. Needless to say, I gave up halfway during the second era thanks to the massive amount of variation for every body parts depending on the body size and armour.

Going back to these maps, I'm the most happy about the continental ones weirdly enough. I've always been fascinated by continental drift and I think it's nice to see the land mass change with each era, much like the world map changes in Chrono Trigger with each time period. Finally, you're a real trooper for fully mapping this game, as I've always hated working on SNES games because of the way most games play with palettes, the overscan color which is way too often black and those so-hard-to-reproduce transparencies. Good job!

The game's predecessor in the series, 46 Okunen Monogatari: The Shinkaron looks like it too has interesting maps even though it's apparently much more of an RPG instead of a side-scroller but it's apparently so old and obscure in addition to being for an old Japanese computer model that I doubt anyone will ever be able to map it even if they wanted to.

[Trop]

Ooo, looks like the prequel was hardcore.  Yeah this game and it's transparencies were a huge pain.  There were a lot of what the hell, left field challenges.  It all looks so simple with it's little rooms.  It's not at all.  I thought of doing the body part map too but hit the wall in the same place you did.