Topic: JonLeung's Requests

[JonLeung]

zagato blackfist keeps the NES request fulfillment train going with two LJN NES horror games based on slasher films: Friday The 13th and A Nightmare On Elm Street!

I maintain that Friday The 13th is not as bad of a game as so many people make it out to be.  I don't know why I like the repetitive music to it.  That same track is also heard at 0:24 in one of my favourite videos of Felicia Day, "The 8-Bit Haunted Dance Party".
The "Happily Ever After" NES game that was never finished and released has some Friday The 13th music too, as heard here at 5:44 in this video playthrough of that prototype.

A Nightmare On Elm Street is notable for being the only NES platformer with four-player support.  (Most other four-player NES games are sports, other than Bomberman II, Gauntlet II, and Swords & Serpents, I guess.  It's still in rare company.  Speaking of which, it is by Rare Ltd.)

For an upcoming project, I wanted to get all the LJN NES "black box" games, and potentially for a later project, these two games specifically.  So I ordered these two NES cartridges on eBay recently, along with a few other LJN games that I didn't already have.  It'd be a neat coincidence if they arrive today, too!

EDIT: I just NOW got today's mail, and I received the NES cartridges of Friday The 13th and A Nightmare On Elm Street!  What a fluke that I would get the games themselves AND the maps on the same day!  No word of a lie!
(I also got T&C Surf Designs and The Uncanny X-Men, which isn't a coincidence, other than that I have an X-Men/'97 opening comparison YouTube Short that's doing extremely well this week...)  I'd say getting these games on the same day as getting the maps is an even bigger coincidence than the time I bought the "Left Bros." variant of Super Mario Bros. 3 before I realized that the seller I was buying it from is "Two Brothers Games", LOL.  If only I got these games/maps on an actual Friday the 13th from someone who lives on Elm Street, but that'd really be too freaky...

[dark_lord_zagato@yahoo.co]

That is one spooky coincidence. Even if I had known that you were buying these games I never would have guessed the exact day they would show up in the mail.

[TerraEsperZ]

Even weirder coincidence: I've been slowly making my way through Hardcore Gaming 101's Top 47k Games of All Time podcast over the last three years and just yesterday, I listened to their episode on Nightmare on Elm Street for the NES.

I remember starting to map Friday the 13th in 2009, thinking I was clever in handling the "parallax" background by doubling the lenght of every segment. I remember giving up after starting the cave because I really wasn't a fan of game in the end. My goal would have been to try and make a unified map covering the whole game but the way the game is structured, what with featuring several concentric circles, would have made the whole thing quite inelegant.

Anyway, great work as always zagato blackfist, finally providing maps to so many overlooked "classics"!

[JonLeung]

Apologies to FlyingArmor as I hadn't realized that Lufia: The Legend Returns on the GBC has been complete since January 22, 2024, over three months ago!  Sorry!  And thanks again!  I'm always happy to get fully-labeled JRPG maps from FlyingArmor!  Will we eventually get every JRPG from this era fully mapped out?

[JonLeung]

zagato blackfist comes through with yet another of my NES requests, this time for Culture Brain's Flying Warriors!

Culture Brain had some interesting marketing back in the day, like some text-heavy magazine spreads, and I remember this game having a 16-page comic in the first video game magazine I ever had, the December 1990 issue of GamePro (a month before I started subscribing to Nintendo Power).

Despite my fondness for this, I don't think I've ever actually finished the game - perhaps zagato blackfist's maps will be of help if I try again.  Personal interest aside, Culture Brain's stuff is underappreciated, so it's nice to have another game of theirs mapped.

Thanks again, zagato!

EDIT: Some more "Flying Warriors" trivia of sorts.  When I made my "One Minute of Music from EVERY NES Game" video, it initially got four copyright claims at the start.  They were all eventually dropped, but then I got one more... for the Flying Warriors tune that is heard at 3:34:00.  Interesting that of all the NES tunes, that would be the only one that is an issue.  It has no dire consequences for my video - it's a copyright claim, not a copyright strike - but it's still interesting.

[JonLeung]

Deja vu, indeed.  I'm sure we've seen me thank zagato blackfist for mapping an NES game before.

This time it's for the MacVenture game Deja Vu!

Ironically, I'm surprised we haven't already seen anything mapped of the three MacVenture games on NES (the others being Shadowgate and Uninvited).  Thanks to zagato, that's one down!

I'm feeling like I've thanked you before... you keep coming through on these requests!  Keep up the great work!

With "Beyond Shadowgate" (which I semi-recently supported on Kickstarter) coming soon, the NES Shadowgate - or the TurboGrafx CD game ALSO called "Beyond Shadowgate" - would be cool, too... 

[JonLeung]

mechaskrom has fulfilled a TurboGrafx CD request!  The first one, actually.  We don't get many TurboGrafx games as it is...

Though The Dynastic Hero isn't a wholly original TurboGrafx CD game, but rather a version of Wonder Boy In Monster World (Genesis), which mechaskrom has submitted unmarked maps for at the same time (to go along with Dammit 9x's maps that we've had for quite a while).  mechaskrom has also mapped and submitted Wonder Boy In Monster World, a European release on the Master System.

Besides wanting more TurboGrafx games specifically, my request for The Dynastic Hero is because I think it would be interesting to compare against Wonder Boy In Monster World.  And now we can do that with this triple feature!  Thanks, mechaskrom!

[JonLeung]

VGCartography is the first one to fulfill a PlayStation request, for Final Fantasy VIII!

It's an FF game that certainly has its detractors, but I have certainly enjoyed it at the time, and seeing as how the FF series is all over the place now, I think VIII being still in a now-classic era with turn-based (excuse me, "Active Time Battle")-style action, there's still much to like.  Looking at these maps brings back memories.

I always knew it would be possible to map.  I'm not sure why Final Fantasy IX wasn't on my request list (I have fixed that now), I think I mistakenly thought it had polygonal backgrounds, but they are actually prerendered, just like for VII and VIII.  VGCartography's taken care of a big chunk of IX too!  Those are up as well.

A bunch of maps by VGCartrography have been put up Saturday, Sunday, and today.  Lots of good stuff, really pushing what's possible.  Might have to rethink what I've deliberately left off my list, now that I see I shouldn't assume PS2 games are off the table.  Though my list is big enough already, LOL.

Thanks yet again, VGCartography!

[JonLeung]

zagato blackfist continues his NES mapping crusade by taking on Princess Tomato In Salad Kingdom!
(That's right, I have the title correctly - at least, in-game-wise, as there is no "the" there.)

zagato had previously mapped Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes, another NES game with "Tomato" in its title, and most recently Deja Vu, another NES point-and-click adventure.  So a similar-style adventure also with tomatoes?  Why not?

I always wonder if we will ever achieve completeNESs (apologies if I've used that pun before), as in, a complete NES atlas, though zagato is certainly putting in his share of contributions towards that with many of the games that I think are worth mapping.  Thanks again, zagato!

[G.E.R.]

As Nintendo fan you should known that some NES games has non-linear or non-platformer structure and some areas aren't mappable for this reason.

[JonLeung]

As Nintendo fan you should known that some NES games has non-linear or non-platformer structure and some areas aren't mappable for this reason.

Of course some games can't be mapped in the typical sense, but it would still be nice and should still be possible to have SOMEthing we can put up here.

We've managed to get backgrounds for "unmappable" Super NES games like Star Fox and Star Fox 2.  And are they truly unmappable, when we have maps for games like Space Harrier II on the Genesis?

If there are graphics at all (which of course, there will be), we can rip them.  If there is gameplay at all (which of course, there will be), there must be some kind of visual guide that can be created, even if not a typical map.

I mean, we've even got "maps" for Dr. Mario and Tetris!

I bet you we always could find some image(s) up here that would be worthy!  Go ahead, name an NES game that you don't think we can have something up here for.

[dark_lord_zagato@yahoo.co]

As for games that don't really have maps, we can sometimes make a chart or infographic that would still be helpful to others. Something you might see in an old issue of Nintendo Power, or in a player's guide.


Space Shadow on NES barely has anything to screenshot, so I made something like a flowchart for it. It shows how the entire game plays out from beginning to end.


I think the NES section will be "done" when we are finally left with a small pile of games that we have absolutely no idea what to do with. Something like... a game with no graphics at all, just a menu driven text game. Also, it would be pretty hard to do anything with games that don't have any real goals to begin with, something like Taboo: The Sixth Sense on NES.

[JonLeung]

Even something like Taboo: The Sixth Sense would have graphical assets.  Like all the tarot cards.  Doesn't this game have bare breasts?  Eh, we can let that slide.

We're not trying to be like The Spriters Resource necessarily, but if all the screens/graphics are all we can get out of a game (or "game" with quotation marks), I would likely accept that.

I think something like Star Voyager could be quite difficult (my brother and I never did figure out how to play it, and it's become sort of a joke between us), but I'm sure someone could figure out something, even if they are original hand-drawn maps or diagrams or guides.

In any case, there is still a considerable number of quite mappable NES games not represented on VGMaps.com even after all these years.

[G.E.R.]

As example, Angels with scaly wing can be "mapped" in Excel-table. Timeline in column A vertically, the dragons names in string 1 horizontally and interaction between player and dragons in the table.
I tried it, but I found full article about all timelines on Steam later.

[Cyartog959]

Even something like Taboo: The Sixth Sense would have graphical assets.  Like all the tarot cards.  Doesn't this game have bare breasts?  Eh, we can let that slide.

We're not trying to be like The Spriters Resource necessarily, but if all the screens/graphics are all we can get out of a game (or "game" with quotation marks), I would likely accept that.

I think something like Star Voyager could be quite difficult (my brother and I never did figure out how to play it, and it's become sort of a joke between us), but I'm sure someone could figure out something, even if they are original hand-drawn maps or diagrams or guides.

In any case, there is still a considerable number of quite mappable NES games not represented on VGMaps.com even after all these years.

Yes, but let's not forget, there's swathes of games across numerous systems not yet mapped, and I don't mean well-known games alone.

With so much focus on NES maps a bit too much lately, I'm feeling concerned about others not tackling other games' maps, not counting other matters occupying their time.

I'm still hopeful others will shift focus from NES maps to other systems' games' maps. There's still so much to cover.