What is it about video game worlds that etch themselves so vividly in our mind's eye? A fun new user-generated blog aims to unearth the latent digital cartographer in you.
Mapstalgia is the brainchild of Josh Millard, a self-described "nerd-type" from Portland, OR. It's a Tumblr where readers submit video game maps they've drawn from memory. The idea for the site came out of idle discussion on the message board Metafliter, where Millard works as a moderator.
"It occurred to me that there's millions of people walking around with potent memories of common fictional game worlds," Millard tells Mashable. "I asked a few friends to draw some maps, started up a simple blog for it, and here we are."
The response since he launched the site in January has been substantial. "I was banking on a few dozen [submissions] by the end of the first month. Instead, I've received more than three hundred so far and they're still coming in," says Millard. "Folks [realize] this is not just neat to look at, but something they can actively participate in. Total lightswitch moment: 'Oh, hey, wow, I bet I could do a map of Mario/Zelda/Doom/Zork…' "
The site currently has 3,245 followers on Tumblr, according to Millard, and the submissions — sometimes several dozen a week — keep coming in. And the content is varied. "Everything from the world maps to single-screen vignettes, from rough folk art to serious draftsmanship. It's wonderful seeing all the different ways people can approach the same basic idea. And to approach what is essentially improvised amateur cartography at the same time — few of us are artists, but fewer still are mapmakers."
One might look at some of them more impressive offerings and question whether they were really produced from memory, as the terms of the site suggest. Right now, Millard is working on the honor system. "Someone certainly could pretend to remember … [but] I don't lose sleep over it," he says. "I've known enough people with remarkable visual or spatial memory (and spent enough time replaying specific video games myself) that I have no trouble believing the more ambitious renderings are the genuine article."
That may be why a project like this tickles the fancy of gamers. There's something about world immersion that allows us to recall spatial details of games in very precise ways. "In a game, you're not just going for a walk — you're exploring with a purpose," Millard says. "There's an instinctive need to keep yourself oriented. And there's a cost to getting lost or being surprised — you get hurt, you die, you have to start over and do it again."
"After the third rock is the bad guy, so you count rocks. The secret weapon is two screens over and one screen up, so you draw a map in your mind," he goes on to explain. "You're not just looking at a map, you're living through it. That's a potent experience."
If Mapstalgia continues gaining readership and submissions, Millard says it may outgrow Tumblr. "Tumblr has been great for the zero-effort launch of this, but it's not really designed to accommodate the museum sensibility that I think would serve Mapstalgia well in the long run." Millard is also thinking about options for creating posters or coffee table books, but acknowledges the hurdles in securing the rights to user generated content. For now, the Tumblr-based DIY museum continues to feed gamers' appetites for nostalgia.
What's your favorite classic video game? Do you think you could draw the map from memory? Check out a few of Mapstalgia's best submissions below for inspiration.
The seminal sci-fi platformer for the NES was full of secret doors, passageways and hidden items.
The franchise's first foray into the third dimension had plenty of adult themes - at least in the PC version.
Maps from the original Halo changed first-person shooters forever.
Arguably one of the hardest and most frustrating games of the Mario series, the Gameboy installment took no prisoners.
Reader "Corinthian" drew the Valve classic Half-Life in its entirety, in two parts. Whether or not it's truly from memory is the real question.
Impressive, none-the-less.
The quirky '80s adventure game had a number of incarnations, eventually landing on the Nintendo Entertainment System, where katiecrimespree remembered it well enough for this sketch.
The original brain bender from Valve gets the hand-drawn treatment from reader jvvi.
Keep testing.
Anyone who's played this Nintendo fan favorite will no doubt remember the aptly named landmass.
Fans of the classic multiplayer shooter likely know these maps like the backs of their hands. Reader Alysson Larsen sure did.
A truly unique puzzler of its day, even if you didn't get very far in Lemmings, the shape of the first level (the one that taught you how to dig) is likely etched in your mind.
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