For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Dan_'s Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight (NES) maps.
Ken, a former Street Fighter, now a scientist, is the hero of this planet-trotting adventure. After his partner has been killed, his lab ransacked, and his Cyboplasm stolen, he must traverse five planets in order to track down the killer, and stop the spread of Cyboplasmic mutations. And to do that, Ken is upgraded with bionics, so that he can fight his way through the hordes of mutants and aliens. Surely, a story based in the future. As in, the future year of 2010!
...Oh, wait. That's not really the future anymore. And could this really be called a Street Fighter game? Or a Final Fight game? It doesn't really have anything to do with either of Capcom's own fighting franchises. Capcom USA's strange localization of 2010 (as it is known as in Japan) changed the protagonist's name from Kevin to Ken, and added a feeble back story of Ken being a former street fighter, strongly implying that it is the same Ken from the better known Street Fighter games. Even long before this year, its place in Street Fighter canon has been disputed or ignored, but that hasn't stopped Dan_ from mapping this game! You may not need maps, but it is one of the more detailed NES fighting games. (And yes, admittedly the current year being 2010 helped get this game the Maps Of The Month status.)
So to recognize the effort put into making these "futuristic" maps, Dan_'s Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for January 2010.
