Looks like I'm a few weeks late to this thread, but happy birthday to VGMaps all the same!
Wow, 15 years! It's almost difficult to appreciate how long that is in terms of Internet time, and especially for a noncommercial site! I think I can count on one hand the number of fan sites I used to frequent back then that are still around, so it's one hell of an accomplishment. I don't remember when I joined the forums exactly, but I do remember submitting my very first maps back in 2004 (they were for The Goonies II (NES)) so it was probably a bit before that. Growing up with Nintendo Power and their numerous maps helped feed a growing interest in game maps that really started with my first PC and one of my first games, Wolfenstein 3-D.
I think I inherited that PC back in 1993 or 1994 from a cool uncle we didn't get to visit often but who loved gaming. Along with a few dozen pirated games (from a BBS) like Space Quest I and IV, Wing Commander II, F-117A Stealth Fighter and of course Wolfenstein 3-D which he'd already shown us while he was alive, he had a bunch of binders. They were filled with photocopies of instruction manuals (those flight sims manuals were *thick*) and a few primitive maps for Wolf 3D. I was intrigued so I looked through all the 5¼-inch floppies and found more of those maps. He made them in AutoCAD and I remember having to use a small converter to turn them into something I could print. The maps were barely adequate to get a vague overall view of those levels, but it mostly served to make me feel a connection with my uncle. I wish he had been alive so we could have talked about maps together...
I started making my own maps shortly afterward. First, I reproduced all the maps for the first Lands of Lore (PC) in WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS using ASCII characters and using a walkthrough from a french gaming magazine. Shortly afterwards, I started doing my own maps for Wolf 3D using graph paper and reproducing them in good old Paint for Win 95. Those are also lost to the mists of time, but it would have been nice to still have them for comparison with my later work.
Finding VGMaps eventually allowed me to fully explore what quickly grew to become not just a hobby, but a passion. I wish I'd been more active the last few years. I'm certainly not lacking in ideas for projects, but time and energy make it difficult to get anywhere significant with any of them. But I'm still working most days, never saying anything to avoid creating expectations I know I can't fulfill. I used to be angry at fans making content and projects they'd never finish, but boy do I get it now. A hobby like this one you do because it's fun and challenging, but when it stops being fun, when it becomes an obligation, that's when it's time to either take a break or move on.
Well, I have no intention of moving on, but I honestly wish I didn't need as many breaks as I've been taking lately. I wish the forums were still active like in the "good old days", but I guess things change, people and technology move on and it's a bit foolish to pine for some mythical era when things were so much better. Maybe the VGMaps forums will experience a renaissance someday, that would be nice. Maps will still be submitted even if it doesn't, but I guess I just miss all the energy going around when so many classic games were being mapped and we'd all be asking each other for help and discussing techniques and such.
Before ending this, I'd really like to thank Jonathan Leung for creating and maintaining VGMaps all this time. You helped make this community a place where geeks like me could indulge in a weird passion and feel at home. I'm glad you're still not looking forward to quitting, so here's hoping for many more years of quality videogame maps!
