Screenshot maps showing an entire game or area
^ Dr. Who and the Mines of Terror
^ Soulless
Click on these to enlarge them, obv
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these were my favorite things about early Nintendo guide books
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these were my favorite things about videogames
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Oh wow, itās like a little bite-sized version! Thatās fantastic.
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Koholint is so crushingly good. Just look how compact and dense w/ detail it is, and yet it not once feels small. My favorite videogame overworld probably.
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I agree. I remember, as a kid, noticing how the water flows from the mountains, through the rapids, into the lake, and out to sea, coherently.
Iāve been replaying this last lonely month and I think their dungeon design is even better. So much teasing within the bounds of a small square screen, so many overlooks and bridges and flooded passageways with such a limited palette. Level 6 (FACE) is incredible for this:
Look at the overlooks in the upper-mid-left, and those strange disembodied horse heads, the giant face rocksā¦ disturbing and cramped
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My only complaint is how much space the castle takes up in the middle of the map. Itās barely used and doesnāt pull the multi-entrance tricks other screens do, so it doesnāt even feel particularly large.
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totally agreeing w/ all yāall itt. also iāve heard that it feels more dream-like and cool to play b&w but i love the garish palette so so much? and the way the āblankā colour is that off-white. the pokemon GBC card game did that too and it made for great contrast when actual white was used
i think one of the things i have trouble with when trying to figure out scope in my games is that iām always torn between my desire for detail/interconnection and wanting to recapture that blue-skies, world-trotting adventure feeling i got from old RPGsāit didnāt matter to me as a kid that ff1 was a barely-designed grindfest because you could literally walk across continents, stealing treasure from ruins and selling it in a town on the other side of the world; it blew my mind
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Yeah as someone who dabbles in rpgmaking and still vainly hopes to make one someday, i feel that.
ive always preferred the color version of Linkās Awakening but its also the one i grew up with.
i think its instructive to compare Koholint w/ Holodrum & Labrynna (the overworlds from the Oracle games)
Labrynna uses space really poorly, with lots of big empty screens. Notice how every area is arranged into these big blocky chunks, theres little overlap between areas that create the smart density of LA. Perhaps some of this was done to accomodate the ātime travelā mechanic so you could use it on any screenā¦
Holodrum, which enforces its āseason changeā mechanic in specific locations, seems to point to that being true. Itās still got a lot of empty spaces but thereās much more variety and transitions between areas feel less rigid. Also it has a much more appealing color palette!
Seasons is unquestionably better than Ages btw (Ages is a tedious slog) and the world design is part of why. Still doesnt hold a candle to LA
Dont get me started on the dungeons in either of these games though. for some bizarre reason Camelot decided to have rooms be several screen widths long instead of packing better design into a single screen, totally playing against the hardware (whereas Linkās Awakening leans into it and is much better for it)
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I like that the master sword in Holodrum sits outside of the otherwise perfectly square map. Feels like you would have to glitch to get there.
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forget what i said about LAās garish colours
Remember that these palettes are filtered through the murk of a Game Boy Color screen, so they donāt look quite right on our backlit monitors.
Alundraās map bloody owns. Love all the cliffs and stairs and waterfalls. Really has a sense of the whole map being one big mountain. And that little pier on the water is brilliant. Iāve never even played Alundra but I look at this map often. Itās too big to upload so hereās a link instead. http://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/PSX/Alundra-World.png
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I feel the exact opposite! But I donāt want to crap up this thread with a Zelda argument so feel free to disregard my unsubstantiated rebuttal
We donāt have to argue about it! Iād be happy to read your counterpoint if you ever feel like expanding on it. Iām replaying the Oracle games now, it had been years since i had when i made that post, so my opinion might have changed anyway. I remember Ages having some pretty long-winded dungeon puzzle design that i wasnāt as into, though since i lost my copy of Seasons when i was a kid i also played Ages a lot more, so iām more familiar with it and less so with Seasons. Maybe iāll like Ages more now, or maybe iāll think they both suck!
