For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to zagato blackfist's Super Ninja Boy (Super NES) maps.
Jack and Ryu are out to save Chinaland (again). And to do so, they'll have to recover the seven Auraballs!
Super Ninja Boy is the North American version of Super Chinese Land (J), a game in the "Super Chinese" series, of which most of the series has not been seen in the West. They do have a big fan, though, zagato blackfist, who has mapped a number of these games for us here on VGMaps.com.
It's not too uncommon to see games having regional differences. Besides language, obviously, there are other localization choices made to appeal to cultural standards. Perhaps religious symbols are censored out or modified, or food items are changed into something resembling more common cuisine in that part of the world. But Super Ninja Boy has a number of changes which seem rather superfluous. Compare the World map, for instance, and you can see that some interesting looking towns and castles look a bit more generic in the North American release. The overall landmass is similar, but here and there you will find a number of alterations that serve no real purpose. The Underwater area has a lot less detail and fewer sunken ships. Perhaps it's not necessarily a cultural thing but that someone just felt like changing the graphics and layout of the game without disrupting the overall experience. Nothing major, just random tweaks on a whim. Whatever the case, zagato blackfist has mapped both versions for us, so we can enjoy comparing them, even if we don't quite understand why the changes exist. He's essentially mapped the whole game, twice!
So to recognize the effort and dedication in mapping a game 200%, zagato blackfist's Super Ninja Boy (Super NES) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for March 2015.
