Solomon's KeyFor this month's "Maps of the Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Rick Bruns's Solomon's Key (NES) maps.
The world has been overtaken by demons, and it's up to the wizard Dana to recover the book, "Solomon's Key", in order to seal them away and restore order.
Not much of a story, but it's a puzzle game, after all. And what a puzzle game it is! It's got what counts, and that's challenge. This game is still considered one of the most difficult puzzle games ever. (Not only that, but it's the first non-Nintendo-developed NES game available on the Wii's Virtual Console.)
What might help you and Dana as you "block" your way through the rooms of the zodiac constellations are Rick Bruns's maps. Every room (including the secret ones!) have been captured so you can plan your moves in advance before you even see the next stage! All arcade puzzle games should be captured in this way: it's the juxtaposition of the basic simplicity of the rooms against the sheer difficulty of traversing them. Oh, ambivalence!
So to recognize the effort put into making these puzzlicious maps, Rick Bruns's Solomon's Key maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps of the Month for February 2007.
