Primal Prey, world map, by Alex Biffar.

A fairly unknown PC game from back in the day. Unfortunately I can no longer get it to work on modern systems. Even back then it was pretty buggy and was never patched. It is basically a hunting game, but you hunt Dinosaurs, much like the Carnivores series, except you get actual missions with different goals. There is only one map in the game and this is it, though this make it look a lot smaller than it is. Dinosaurs spawn randomly, but there are certain areas that they tend to be.

I think this is Primal Prey?  I’ve never played it, never even heard of it, but a little bit of googling goes a long way if you’re willing to fill out the ol’ crossword in pencil like I am.

I never really played any dinosaur games that I can recall, other than one little dino-survival thing for the Amiga where you could play as either an herbivore or a carnivore, trying to eat enough plants or herbivores, respectively, to not die of starvation.  Sort of a very, very low-rent Tokyo Jungle?  I was never very good at it, and I don’t know if that’s because I was actually just bad at the game, or because the game was bad in general (a lot of odd titles for the Amiga were), or because the game was set at an extinction event and the whole point was that you’d die, or what.

That game also had a construct-a-dino mode that as far as I can recall you could do nothing with, which seemed to sort of be a nasty tease in a game where you play as a dinosaur.  Like if Skyrim put you through character creation but then that character was just a picture in a locket some other dude carries around all game.

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. 

Oh man, I only knew of these games as “that thing that looks kind of like Final Fight”.

A brief cross-promotional note: when I’m not pestering you for map submissions (*cough*), I’ve lately been recording a podcast called We Have Such Films To Show You, in which me and my buddy Yakov Grinberg re-watch and discuss in loving, rambling fashion each of the nine (!) Hellraiser films.  You can grab it on iTunes too if you like.  It’s a good time, come listen!

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.

Thanks for the submission!

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 :)

I daren’t! I have a strong abiding love for MGS, having played through it for the first time in a sort of tandem hand-off fashion with some friends in college when none of us really knew what we were getting into.  It was glorious and a bit odd.  We ended up plowing through all the VR Missions stuff too just to have more to play.

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.

Oh man, with Tim Curry doing voiceover work!  Thanks for the submission.

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…

Heh.  I love the fractured little slices of memory that people have about these things, and the drawing itself is adorable.  Thanks for the submission!

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.

But yeah, this is keen, thanks for sending it in.  Makes me want to try and reconstruct some FF1 dungeons now.

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.

And, man, there’s just something about a map on notebook paper.  Suddenly I’m 8 years old again.  Thanks for the submission, danzgreentea!