World maps in video games are usually pretty great. We love world maps! You can use them to track the results of your progression through some grand adventure as new locations become accessible and your control over the world grows. A well-crafted world map in any game is always a sign of high quality.
Plus, many world maps are gorgeous.
We collected some of the most atmospheric and good-looking world maps. Careful, though, mild spoilers abound.
El Nido In Chrono Cross
Source: Chronopedia
Dragon Quest V for the Nintendo DS
Source: Realmofdarkness.net
Ivalice In Final Fantasy Tactics
Source: Final Fantasy Wiki
The Northern Kremisphere In Donkey Kong Country 3
Source: Suppermariobroth
Moonstone
Source: SignificantBits
The Sword Coast In Baldur’s Gate
Source: Mike’s RPG Center
Gaia In Final Fantasy VII
Source: FuzzFinger’s longplay
The Island Of Panau In Just Cause 2
Source: Maplib
Simon The Sorcerer 2: The Lion, The Wizard And The Wardrobe
Source: VGMaps
Skies Of Arcadia
Source: Let’s Play Archive
The Legend Of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX for the Gameboy Color
Source: Link’s Hideaway
Fez
Source: NeoGAF
New Super Mario Bros U
Source: Nintendonerds
Ni No Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch
Source: YouTube
Onett During The Day In Earthbound
Not necessarily a world map, but when you look at it zoomed out, you get the same feeling.
Source: Starmen.net
The Links Awakening one would make a great cross stitch or tapestry!
hmmm that gives me an idea, I wonder how you would go about making it into a tapestry pattern
Print it out on graph paper I guess, at a lagre size.
Whenever I hear the word “tapestry” I’m reminded of that scene in Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade..
IF YOU ARE HERE TO SEE THE TAPESTRIES THEN I AM MICKEY MAUS!!
“If you are Scottish law, then I am Mickey Mouse!” Close. Love that movie.
It needs Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past’s map. That was gorgeous in it’s way. both Light and Dark Worlds.
Even though it was a side view, Super Metroid packed some very impressive environments and maps.
And Secret of Mana (SNES) had a very good mode 7 map if I recall.
http://vgmaps.com/Atlas/SuperNES/index.htm#LegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast
And I do have the Light World framed. It’s the first map I made for my site, VGMaps.com, after all.
And we have Super Metroid and Secret of Mana as well. 😉
One of my hobbies is to collect the maps sold with games, i love the way they look.
I have 30 or so, ranging from fallout, elderscrolls games, all of the wizards of the coast ones, all the way back to the old school SNES ones for teh RPG’s.
My favourite is still the Baldurs gates cloth maps.
I started making my own for RPG’s that didnt come with them as well, one day i planned to wallpaper a room in my house with them all (probably on corkboard as not to damage them).
So do I. I also have heaps from pen and paper rpgs. My favourites are the ultimas and the one from SId Meirs PIRATES.
Links Awakening and Onett are just amazing to behold
Some of these would look great framed!
I always loved the map in Heretic 2, but you hardly even traversed a quarter of it in-game…
Dragon Quest VIII!
The Seiken Densetsu 3 map looks incredible too
http://lparchive.org/Seiken-Dentsetsu-3/3-seiken3_map.jpg
My favourite game map would probably be Golden Sun: The Lost Age, you could sail all the way to the edge of the world, and see the water falling off the edge 😀
The best quality map i could find on the net was in a different language, guess it will have to do. http://img.zwame.pt/eagleeye/retro/golden_sun_tla/map1_hi.jpg
A game about maps but excludes Map the Games from Map studios, I mean Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings + others from Paradox Interactive.
Here is Europa Universalis 4, with one of the best looking map of the world going around:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?625653-Europa-Universalis-IV-Screenshots-Megathread
i’m always partial to the Ultima maps, myself:
http://www.abandonia.com/files/extras/23606_game_extra_1.jpg
No Skyrim.. no Fallout 2.. wtf?
I’m with @light487 oblivion was a good map too. Heck, any of the Zelda games always had a reasonable map crafted well
Not sure about Oblivion, didn’t really play it.. but the high quality in-game map of Skyrim set a new standard of in-game maps.. should have at least got a mention for that.
This needs the Suikoden maps and the Ar Tonelico maps. Just sayin’.
What about Monkey Island?!? Especially the HD re-release, those maps were gorgeous
New Super Mario Bros map is a good one 😀
Hmm, that’s that first one? (ctri3.png)