Metroid, first screen, by cubeybooby.

[Josh says: a few fun First Screens in the queue so far, kicking it off with this adorably minimalist Metroid.  Hell yeah.  Keep ‘em coming!]

Metroid, Zebes, by chocolatemarshmallowmateys.

I played through this once or twice the correct way, then I’d breeze through it with the NARPASSWORD password (which gives you all items, removing any previously existing Metroid-like elements of the game) to relax. I was amused at how closely the degree and placement of detail was affected by this, so I decided also to draw my usual route.

I originally sought this game out as a fan of Super Metroid, and never treated it as more than a strange precursor to the real thing. Between this fact and the fact that I rarely played it in anything like the fashion it was designed to be played in, I thought that a thoroughly misused Metroid would make a map all the more interesting for what are doubtless gross inaccuracies as well as large lacunae in content.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, world map, Ario Barzan.

Lots of mistakes, here! Incorrect room sizes, unrealized links, and overlapping. I think we generally have a tendency to increase, rather than reduce, the scale of places in our memory, especially if the places are large to begin with. Aria of Sorrow has a few mysteriously connected rooms in its Floating Garden area, and they’re represented on the map by several “floating” rooms around the castle’s top. I couldn’t fit them in on the scanner. The room that was easiest to recall was the one near the center-bottom that sort of resembles a person, precisely because of that resemblance.

[Josh says: you’re killing me with these, Ario.  If I have a Castlevania relapse on my DS, I’m holding you directly responsible.]

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, world map, by Ario Barzan.

I forgot to draw the castle’s center where the final fights happen. If I had remembered, there would’ve been some significant overlapping. As is maybe evident to people who’re pretty familiar with the game, I had the most trouble remembering how parts in the castle’s middle connected. Harmony of Dissonance’s layout is kinda notorious for confusing a lot of players, in part because you have to switch in and out of two versions of the castle which are are often visually similar.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, world map, by Ario Barzan.

This is my first attempt at reproducing the entirety of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow’s map from memory. It was drawn on a large sheet of paper using graphite and a colored pencil. My attempt to be as exact as possible highlights the errors moreso, but I think that the errors are the most interesting part. As one example: in the bottom-middle, a little line connects two rooms in the Subterranean Hell sector. The line represents an intended linking that I could not complete. Another example: on the top right, you can see an erased horizontal space that links two towers. This was the correct placement. The final, second-guessed version is incorrect. In any case, I was surprised by my relative accuracy. The last time that I played Dawn of Sorrow was a little less than a year ago. I should also note that, rather than mentally consulting the image of the game’s map, I drew this map according to the actual rooms in the game. Put another way, I imaginatively played the game at high speed, and used that to generate the map.

Metroid, excerpts, by MJ.

I remember two areas of Metroid very distinctly - the beginning and the end, as they were the places I was most likely to die.

The metroids weren’t quite that cute.