Mapstalgia

Ultima Exodus, moon gates on world map, by Dave.

Not really created from memory, but I did create this while playing the game back in 1984.  Recently I discovered this while sorting through some old papers.

Resident Evil, first floor, by dungeonsdonuts.

Map from Resident Evil (PS1) drawn from memory. Hopefully posted before Halloween. 

Seriously, I love this game to bits. 

I am so in love with this, yo.  I've mentioned my RE love here before, I'm sure, and I identify pretty strongly with a lot of the more emphatic notes here.

Riven, world map, by Will.

Hey, long time Mapstalgia. Riven. Oh man, Riven. Intended to be the only Myst sequel before Ubisoft bought the rights and slowly burned them. Criminally overlooked, absolutely brilliant. Some of the best world-building and environmental storytelling ever, fantastic atmosphere, memorable iconography, oppressive dictatorship, world-spanning puzzles, a sense of exploration that still makes me giddy and OMFG RIVEN.

This is the first game I remember looking forward to. I didn't know where to find game news at the time so I was pretty much kept up to date by Fox Trot and my sister. I was young and hadn't beaten Myst but I loved exploring that game and fell in love with Riven immediately. I got the bad ending by mashing buttons and blundered my way around the islands all the way to the side entrance of the gold dome before getting completely stuck, giving up, and leaving it for ~5 years. I also remember stopping and running from the computer at times. Game was creepy as hell.

Long time, indeed!  It got super quiet in the ol' inbox again, and I'm afraid I got so "dare not look" about it that I've let a few things that actually DID straggle in sit for too long.  But let's make that better!  I'll get 'em posted over the next few days.

Streets of Rage, Boat Level, by Nathan Windsor.

Less of a map and more of a screenshot, but as it was side-scrolling beat-em-up, there's not much of a map to really draw. I don't remember the first time I played this game, all i know is my older brother used to be a lot better at it than me! I tried to get the city backdrop in and the box thing that changed in every level that you smashed for food, weapons etc. I used to have it on Sega MegaDrive, but now I have it on Xbox360 in the MegaDrive collection, on my phone and also on an emu. It's still fun to play and I still very rarely make it past the "corridor with trolleys" level even when I played it a few weeks ago. 

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Koholint Island, by Ryan Veeder.

A low-res impression of Koholint Island. Link's Awakening was my first Game Boy game and my first Zelda game. The first time I played it, I got stuck in the Mysterious Woods because I was afraid to walk on the cracked floors in one of the caves.

I would have liked to include some more detail, but I figured it was most important to get the eight main dungeon entrances. Some important landmarks (the mermaid statue, the monument to the Flying Rooster, the creepy cave entrance with the tusks) have been lost in between.

You still remember a lot more of it than I do at the moment, and I remember looooving that when I first got it.  Man, that big egg!  The big egg.  I'd forgotten all about it.

Metal Gear Solid, first level, by onysk.

The last time I played MGS1 ... Phew, i can't remember, it was on the Gamecube with the remake i think! Well I don't really have something to say but this game is awesome. The gameplay, the story, the characters, everything is awesome in MGS, so I dare you to say it isn't :)

Scooby Doo Night of 100 Frights, map, by kaki9.

I don't have much time for video games any more so when I rifled through my brains for game I could attempt to map, this was the one I seemed to remember most. Until I tried to put it on paper of course.

I played this game quite a bit as a kid and, to be honest, I was really bad at it. As you can see, the playground (aka the easy bit) is the most detailed. I only ever got about a third of the way through the game but it and the second hand console we got it with pretty much introduced me to gaming so it's fitting in a way.

Duck Tales Remake!  Duck Tales Remake.  So that's a thing.

I will acknowledge here that I never spent any real time with the original -- probably five minutes over at a friend's house at one point -- but know it by reputation and know a number of folks for whom it was basically The Best NES Game Ever.

Rugrats: The Movie, excerpt, by earthvexing.

So this isn't really a map as such but it's literally all I can remember from this game. It's from Rugrats: The Movie for the GameBoy Color (I think). It was the first game I can remember playing and I did so at a young age, hence my dodgy memory. The only level that stuck in my brain was a kind of mine cart level which I always got stuck on, which is what I drew here.

Thinking back, there might not have even been a mine level but I do remember there being tracks, bats (not pictured :P) and a lot of purple...

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Hyrule Castle, by Will.

More fun with pixels. LttP had a very memorable opening. Break into the castle in the rain through a secret passageway, find your wounded uncle and take his sword and shield, search the labyrinthine halls for the lower floors where the ground inexplicably gives way to bottomless pits, rescue Zelda from the jailer, and then break out with her through a DIFFERENT secret passageway. Probably the best opening in the series. It just spells out Adventure in fifty foot letters.

PS. The Bird Presidents are awesome.

No, you're awesome.  So suck on that!  

I'm not sure I'm doing complimenting totally right.

Super Mario 64, Bob-omb Battlefield, by danzgreentea. Being a game that I played a lot when I was younger, Super Mario 64's Bob-omb Battlefield was a level I visited almost as much as I turned my N64 on. I tried to get everything I felt I could fit onto the page (part of the cliff where the Bob-omb King would be is missing, as well as most of the cliff's spiral); there's no coins or very many enemies either. Overall, I felt like it came out okay, especially considering it's been a while since I last played Mario 64.

I still haven't ever spent any real time with Mario 64 -- I skipped the N64 entirely, really -- and I feel like at some point I need to fire up an emu and get to know it a little.  I've really enjoyed the GC and Wii takes on the 3D Mario franchise, it'd be good to do my homework.

Doom, E1M1, by richy486.

In my mind the map was pretty much in a straight line, when i looked at the real map afterwards it actually wraps around the outside part

Hey, brief self-promotional interlude: one of the things I've been doing lately is drawing US presidents as birds, in a little project I've cleverly titled Bird Presidents.  

Guitar Hero 3, Through the Fire and the Flames, by jvvi.

This is how I remember it at least. Just a big blur of colors I had no chance of hitting. Not sure if I ever even made it to the end. Great song though.

Man, it's been a while since I've been heroic in a guitar capacity.  I was always able to sort of feel like a badass on Medium and then sort of ease my way into Hard but then I'd run aground on something or other; I don't think I ever got to the point where I was really keeping up with any of the wall-of-notes ones; just couldn't get myself moving that quickly and precisely.

The Walking Dead: Episode 1, The Drugstore, by jvvi.

I can still remember this place, back when things still made some sort of sense and weren't too depressing. It introduces you to the two most frustrating characters in the game and Carley, who I like but made me facepalm multiple times. It's also the location of one of the game's most major decisions. It was a good start to a great game.

Oh man, and the battery thing was totally bugged in any case so I got the parts but wasn't allowed to actually find out what happens.  

Reality, my neighborhood, by frognuts.

A map of the neighborhood of my childhood. My house in green. My friends with video games in red, along with the systems they owned. Crappy cul-de-sacs, bullies, and sweet BMX jumps omitted.

Growing up lower-middle class meant knowing which consoles were in the neighborhood. Proper use of this knowledge meant you could effectively multiply your library many times over through borrowing.

(Not exactly a VG map, but it's what came to mind)

Ha!  This is awesome, actually.  I think I may have to do something similar -- I can definitely define my neighborhood and a few other parts of town in terms of where what video games were, since I sort of went through my pre-adolescence in particular on a kind of high alert for video games.