Soapbox features allow our writers and contributors to opine on hot topics and random things they’ve been thinking about. Today, Nathan will be mapping the pixels…
What’s the most annoying thing about playing a video game? The one thing that, when it happens, ruins your experience, no matter how good the game is? For me, it’s bad in-game maps.
Get the original MetroidFor example. I don’t like that game. Never have. And that’s not a product of me playing it for the first time decades after its initial release. No, I was there in 1986 and still have my original copy. I was fascinated by the gameplay (four-way scrolling!?) and the theme, but I couldn’t stand its labyrinthine design for one simple reason: it didn’t have a map.
I have always been interested in maps. And not just in the virtual world. In college, I studied Geography. My goal was to become a GIS (Geographic Information System) specialist – a map maker.
Even now, maps—real and videogame—play a prominent role in my daily life. Map posters adorn the walls of my home office and game room, and the background on my work computer cycles through images from VG Map. It’s fun to see my coworkers’ faces light up when they recognize a map while I’m sharing my screen in a Teams meeting. That’s the power of a recognizable and useful map. It takes you to a place you’ve been before.
What is a map? A pitiful little pile of secrets?
It may sound fancy, but what exactly is a map?
It is a representation of the world. A rendering. It can be plain text (like a warden’s), a 2D image (a bird’s-eye view), or a 3D model (like the globe at Grandma’s house). Regardless of format, a map is only useful if it provides value to the reader. It must convey information, and above all, it must be accurate. As the saying goes, The map must match the terrain.
Yoshi’s Horror Story
I learned this lesson when I worked for the Nintendo Power magazine staff in the late 90s. One of my main duties was to make sure that maps were printed accurately, with particular attention to the placement of power-ups and items.
My most difficult task is guiding players through Yoshi’s Story. For those who haven’t played it yet, Yoshi’s Story is a 2.5D platform game where the goal in each level is not to find the exit but to find and eat 30 types of fruit. The game has 24 levels and in each level there are 60 types of fruit, for a total of 1,440 types of fruit. Remember that number.
During the production of the manual, Nintendo’s headquarters in Japan would often send me a new build of the game that was still in development. Occasionally, a build would have major changes, but usually the only change was that a few fruits in a level had been moved. Of course, I was never told what to look for. Instead, I had to play the entire game and confirm or correct the location of each of the fourteen hundred and forty melons, melons, apples, bananas, and grapes.
Two months of fruit hunting had disabused me of my desire to pursue a career in mapmaking. However, Yoshi’s fruit had taught me a deep appreciation for the value of a well-made map.
Metroid: A Quick Case Study
Back in Metroid, getting around the planet Zebes definitely required a map.
In fact, the entire Metroid series is a case study in the usefulness of maps in games. The first Metroid (and to a lesser extent the sequels) are hailed as pioneers of their genre, but their lack of maps is perhaps their most common criticism. The third installment in the series, Super Metroidquite the opposite. Its in-game maps certainly set the standard for the genre and perhaps the entire medium.
More than just existing (which is great), Super Metroid’s pause screen map offers multiple layers of value:
- It communicates progression by filling in as you explore.
- It encourages exploration by only filling in the grid cells you’ve actually touched, rather than filling in entire rooms you’ve visited (looking at you Hollow Knight)
- It rewards exploration and discovery by skipping hidden areas, even if you choose to visit the optional Map Room and
- It assists you, the player, in identifying areas to explore further.
With just a grid, two colors, and a handful of icons, Super Metroid’s maps provide one of the game’s most important features.
Some other examples
If we can explore beyond Samus’ orbit, here are some other game maps that I find interesting.
Hub World Map
The first game I remember having an interactive world was Bionic Commando for NES. The World Above in Super Mario 3 Perhaps more famous, but the Super Joe game appeared in the West two years earlier.
Bionic Commando’s hub world allows players to see and explore (by flying a damn helicopter!) branching paths between levels and optional areas. The map shows the interconnectedness of the game world, while also providing interactivity never before seen in game maps.
In-game map, in-game
Is there anything more ‘video game’ than the pause button? They say “Time stops for no one”, so you know you’re in a virtual world when you can literally stop time with the push of a button.
Yoshi’s Fruits taught me a deep appreciation for the value of a well-drawn map.
Most maps in the game are only accessible from the Pause screen, meaning you can either view the map or explore the world. You can’t do both. Final Fantasy VI (also called Final Fantasy 3 in the West) broke that paradigm by allowing you to display the world map as an overlay. This blew me away at the time. I could explore the whole world And map – at the same time! In fact, I can navigate the world just by looking at that minimap. Please don’t do this while driving, but I highly recommend it when flying the airship to Narshe.
And yes, Distant Cry 2 And Minecraft Take this concept further by showing your in-game avatar holding the map. That’s complete map immersion for you.
Perfect use of dual screen
Chrono Trigger first appeared in 1995 on the SNES, but DS Gate For me, it’s the definitive edition. And not just because of the extra content and FMV scenes. No, it’s because your map is always present on the second screen. It’s the in-game map, taken to its logical conclusion on the map lover’s perfect console. Verge Axiom on the Wii U is another example of a game whose best version is stuck on an aging dual-screen platform.
Stops and symbols
Let’s take a look at one more. Like Super Metroid, the map in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild can be considered the best feature of the game.
Not only does it incorporate all the elements mentioned so far (progress tracking, encouragement for exploration, communicating the rules of the game world, and constant availability), it also adds an incredible level of interactivity. You can mark the map with waypoints, using symbols or colors to convey personal meaning. Furthermore, the line between the map and the game world is blurred by allowing Link to simply look at a point on the ground and drop a pin. Hyrule isn’t just represented by a map; that is the map.
From Metroid to Breath of the Wild and beyond, I continue to be fascinated by video game maps. They shape our exploration and paint a thousand words in a picture, especially when we’re allowed to paint them ourselves on canvas.
Lucy Fellowes, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution, once said, “Every map is someone’s way of making you see the world the way they did.” I’m not a mapmaker—Yoshi’s Story does that—but I hope I’ve painted a picture of how I see the world—in the form of a bunch of little pixelated secrets.
What do you look for in a game map? Do you have a favorite map? Let us know in the comments.
