05-23-2015, 01:44 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-29-2015, 06:46 PM by E-Man.
Edit Reason: As promised, I swapped the image to one that is hosted on a better host.
)
I thought creating this map would be a simple task, but it turned out that it really burned me out and piecing together multiple places in a logical made me use a lot of brain power. As a result, not a whole lot of locations have as much thought and detail put into them (i.e. Isle Delfino). While I did an okay job with showing were most of the locations are geographically, I'm very displeased by the overall scale. A big problem relating to that is how I made Princess Peach's Castle and Toad Town bigger than they needed to be. There are a lot of places that are a whole lot bigger than those two locations are (take Dinosaur Land for example, which fits in the space of town and the castle grounds), so it causes a lot of locations to appear in some pretty odd spots and be severally downscaled as a result. It got even worse when I tried to make more locations larger to counter that oversight. I guess it serves me right for using the Mushroom Kingdom map from Paper Mario as a base, which shows Toad Town to be much larger than any other location in the game.
In spite of that, I think I did a good job linking together the Shiver Mountain Range and Forever Forest with Fahr Outpost's area and the Twilight Town area respectively. Heck, the main reason why I even wanted to make this map in the first place was to show how the overworlds from the first two Paper Mario games linked together in my fanon. Of course, since I knew that the Mushroom Kingdom had more than those two places and there's actually some places that I do want the characters to visit that haven't appeared in other Paper Mario games (World 1-1 is a recent example), I just had to squeeze as many of those locations in there; however, I wasn't exactly able to include all the locations seen in Mario games. There are good reasons why I did not include places like Flipside and the worlds from Super Mario 64 (in the case of the latter, I think that they are more like pocket dimensions created by Bowser and the Star Power). As for other locations, those have various different reasons why they are excluded from the map.
In the case of the Mario Kart race courses, trying to include them would mean that they would not only dramatically change the face of the kingdom, but also I fear some of the racecourses might overlap with each other. A big example are all the racecourses that have Princess Peach's Castle incorporated into the track (including that one course where you actually drive into the castle in Mario Kart 7). It makes it even worse that each racetrack shows a different layout for the castle grounds, which makes my job for creating a reasonable map a lot harder. True, the layout of the Mushroom Kingdom changes dramatically for each game (the whole Mushroom Kingdom in Partners in Time is mostly unrecognizable compared to its direct sequel counterpart), but I do want to keep some level of consistency with my version. Besides, even though this map is mostly based on the Paper Mario one, I ditched how Peach's Castle and grounds look in that game in favor of how they look in Super Mario 64. As a result, I'm not above with making a few creative differences when I need to. By the way, before you ask, I'm not up for making multiple versions of Peach's Castle throughout the kingdom. I can understand why Bowser would have multiple version of his own castle, but does the Princess need to have more than one castle (especially with the questionable state of the Mushroom Kingdom's economy)? Sure, the idea of having multiple castles as decoys could work, but still…
Now, in regards to why I didn't include almost any specific Mario levels for the platforming game, it's just that I did not know how to include those properly without causing a lot of clutter. I know those locations are the heart and soul of the Mario franchise, but if you really look at them, they are (for the most part) nothing more than a collection of platforms and the like scattered around. There is no reason why I needed to include them in full depth, so I mostly omitted them. On top of that, the other reason why I didn't include them relates to a similar idea I had about why the Mario Kart tracks are not on the map. I think Bowser was the one who arranged the layouts of those levels in the first place, so they were more or less temporary deals that may as well fall into decay or demolished to make room for new levels. The same an be said about the various Mario Kart tracks. Someone probably built them for that moment in time and then dismantled some of them when they are no longer needed. It would probably explain why there are multiple racetracks that have Peach's Castle as a landmark. Of course, with all that said, I did at least include the first four or so levels from the original Super Mario Bros. Considering the iconic status of World 1-1, it would make sense to keep it around as a historical landmark.
There's a similar reason to why I didn't include specific worlds on the map (specifically anything from the New Super Mario Bros. games and Super Mario Bros. 3). They are just hard to include without cluttering the whole map up. I understand how important those games are to the Mario canon, but hear me out on this idea. What if I make some of the currently existing locations fall within the boundaries of those levels (i.e. make some of the Super Mario RPG overworld part of Pipe Land)? I know it's not the most optimal approach, but it's either that or I somehow squeeze them in as their own locations (or probably make them islands or something). On top of that, with the exception of New Super Mario Bros. U (trying to make that overworld fit logically will be a nightmare), non of worlds in the New Super Mario Bros. games have specific names. That means that, for example, the desert overworld in the first game or two could either be in Gritzy Desert or Dry Dry Desert. Also, if you're worried about the kings from Super Mario Bros. 3, don't be. My plan is to replace several of them with other government officials who may or may not be kings to begin with. People like King Nimbus and Booster to rule Sky Land and Pipe Land respectively come to mind. Of course, I'll see it as a great achievement if I successfully incorporate the King of Water Land into my stories. If you recall his appearance, you'll understand why.
As for Sarasaland, including it would mean that I have to include Princess Daisy. It's not that I have much of a problem with her. It's just that her character does not have any specific history compared to Peach's character. Even though she has a better, more active personality, she is basically Luigi's answer to Peach and I don't find that extremely interesting. Even though I'm willing to put her in there, I just won't do it without a major overhaul of her character and history. She'll still be as active as she is now, but the ideas I have in mind would be a huge departure of her own character that might make some people uncomfortable. It won't be anything that perverted, but let's just say that I'll be taking a little inspiration from a piece of Mario media some people wish it didn't exist. I know it's silly to include Mario Land and not Sarasaland, but the reason why I'm including the former is that it contains a moment in my Mario fanon that deeply develops Mario's character and shapes him into the hero he is today. It just didn't feel right to include it. Who knows? I might end up including both Sarasaland and Daisy in the future. If that were to be the case, then I'd put Sarasaland in the southern ocean as an island nation, like how Australia is.
Whew! That certainly was a mouthful! Now that I talked about why certain locations are not on the map, I'll share a little insight on some of the locations on the map. One thing you'll notice right off the bat is that I included not only the worlds from the Rare Donkey Kong games, but also a few places from Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie. I realize that those locations are more like Microsoft locations than Nintendo ones, but since those are two of my favorite games growing up and they were originally Nintendo worlds, I just had to include them. Besides, since I heard from somewhere (probably the Rare Scribbles) that Banjo is part of the Brother's Bears, it makes sense to include Spiral Mountain as part of their territory. Also, before you say anything, I know that where the Brother's Bear live is supposed to be an island south of DK Island and I heard that Spiral Mountain is part of the Isle o' Hags. It felt right to me that these places should be on the mainland as opposed to making them islands. On a related note, I actually wanted to include the Kingdom of the Fairy Panther King on this map (it would have been north of the Brothers Bear's land). I just couldn't make it fit in a good way, so I had to drop it.
Speaking of the Brothers Bear's land, I know it's supposed to be called the Northern Kremisphere. My logic is that the Northern Kremisphere is not just one place, but rather the entire northern half of the planet this world is on. Basically, my reason is that I needed to call the planet something. I originally went with the generic, uninspired name of Virtual Planet many years ago, but when I went to Lemmy's Land, I adopted Plit as its name. That went fine for a while, but I eventually dropped the name when I found out that the world "plit" actually has a very dirty meaning. After a while, I recalled the name of the Donkey Kong Country 3 overworld and used it as a base for a completely new name: Kremis. On top of that, it even leads to a possibility of exploring the history of the planet and the Kremling race. Now, even though I have a new name for the planet, I still lack a good name for the Brother Bear's world. I would go with Bear Country, but that's already taken…
In regards to places like the Golden Pyramid and Crocodile Island, I know that they are destroyed. I just put them on the map to show their general placement because just showing an arrow wouldn't do those places justice.
I noticed this right after I drew Poshley Heights. It seems like the track for the Exsess Express is a bit shorter than the track leading to Mt. Rugged. I know that this is due to my failure to scale things properly, but I find it ironic that the fastest locomotive in the Mushroom Kingdom takes three days to travel on a track that is shorter than the one traveled by an ordinary locomotive that can easily clear in a fraction of that time. ^^;
Even though I labeled most of the locations, I didn't exactly label all of them because I figured that you could use your general knowledge of the games to identify some of the places on your own. Of course, I thought it would be necessary to lable some places that you might not recognize right off the bat, such as Joke's End and the Old Clockworks.
As for original locations, I didn't exactly include many. I did have plans to do such a thing, but I didn't want to invest too much in ideas that'll easily be shot down. Heck, even placing the ruins of the Mushroom King's Castle was a bit of a risk because I'm not sure if you guys would like my story involving a French Revolution-like event that took place a few hundred years ago that was a revolt lead by Toadsworth's ancestor that overthrew the tyrannical Mushroom King.
Well, that's all I have to share for now. I'm terribly sorry I basically wrote a novel about something as simple as a map from a game about plumbers stomping turtles. There was a lot for me to cover and I wanted to discuss it when it was still fresh in my mind. If there are any questions you wish to ask, please let me know. I'm also up for suggestions to fix the geography for this map because some of the locations are places in very improbable areas. Heck, I'm not pleased with the locations of Cavi Cape and Plack Beach because I just threw them in at the last minute since I forgotten about them.
![[+]](images/collapse_collapsed.png "[+]")
No new parts this time, but I thought that it would be best if I were to show you the map of the Mushroom Kingdom. I gotta warn you that it is not only a big image, but also it is ![[Image: fdXSljB.png]](http://i.imgur.com/fdXSljB.png)
In spite of that, I think I did a good job linking together the Shiver Mountain Range and Forever Forest with Fahr Outpost's area and the Twilight Town area respectively. Heck, the main reason why I even wanted to make this map in the first place was to show how the overworlds from the first two Paper Mario games linked together in my fanon. Of course, since I knew that the Mushroom Kingdom had more than those two places and there's actually some places that I do want the characters to visit that haven't appeared in other Paper Mario games (World 1-1 is a recent example), I just had to squeeze as many of those locations in there; however, I wasn't exactly able to include all the locations seen in Mario games. There are good reasons why I did not include places like Flipside and the worlds from Super Mario 64 (in the case of the latter, I think that they are more like pocket dimensions created by Bowser and the Star Power). As for other locations, those have various different reasons why they are excluded from the map.
In the case of the Mario Kart race courses, trying to include them would mean that they would not only dramatically change the face of the kingdom, but also I fear some of the racecourses might overlap with each other. A big example are all the racecourses that have Princess Peach's Castle incorporated into the track (including that one course where you actually drive into the castle in Mario Kart 7). It makes it even worse that each racetrack shows a different layout for the castle grounds, which makes my job for creating a reasonable map a lot harder. True, the layout of the Mushroom Kingdom changes dramatically for each game (the whole Mushroom Kingdom in Partners in Time is mostly unrecognizable compared to its direct sequel counterpart), but I do want to keep some level of consistency with my version. Besides, even though this map is mostly based on the Paper Mario one, I ditched how Peach's Castle and grounds look in that game in favor of how they look in Super Mario 64. As a result, I'm not above with making a few creative differences when I need to. By the way, before you ask, I'm not up for making multiple versions of Peach's Castle throughout the kingdom. I can understand why Bowser would have multiple version of his own castle, but does the Princess need to have more than one castle (especially with the questionable state of the Mushroom Kingdom's economy)? Sure, the idea of having multiple castles as decoys could work, but still…
Now, in regards to why I didn't include almost any specific Mario levels for the platforming game, it's just that I did not know how to include those properly without causing a lot of clutter. I know those locations are the heart and soul of the Mario franchise, but if you really look at them, they are (for the most part) nothing more than a collection of platforms and the like scattered around. There is no reason why I needed to include them in full depth, so I mostly omitted them. On top of that, the other reason why I didn't include them relates to a similar idea I had about why the Mario Kart tracks are not on the map. I think Bowser was the one who arranged the layouts of those levels in the first place, so they were more or less temporary deals that may as well fall into decay or demolished to make room for new levels. The same an be said about the various Mario Kart tracks. Someone probably built them for that moment in time and then dismantled some of them when they are no longer needed. It would probably explain why there are multiple racetracks that have Peach's Castle as a landmark. Of course, with all that said, I did at least include the first four or so levels from the original Super Mario Bros. Considering the iconic status of World 1-1, it would make sense to keep it around as a historical landmark.
There's a similar reason to why I didn't include specific worlds on the map (specifically anything from the New Super Mario Bros. games and Super Mario Bros. 3). They are just hard to include without cluttering the whole map up. I understand how important those games are to the Mario canon, but hear me out on this idea. What if I make some of the currently existing locations fall within the boundaries of those levels (i.e. make some of the Super Mario RPG overworld part of Pipe Land)? I know it's not the most optimal approach, but it's either that or I somehow squeeze them in as their own locations (or probably make them islands or something). On top of that, with the exception of New Super Mario Bros. U (trying to make that overworld fit logically will be a nightmare), non of worlds in the New Super Mario Bros. games have specific names. That means that, for example, the desert overworld in the first game or two could either be in Gritzy Desert or Dry Dry Desert. Also, if you're worried about the kings from Super Mario Bros. 3, don't be. My plan is to replace several of them with other government officials who may or may not be kings to begin with. People like King Nimbus and Booster to rule Sky Land and Pipe Land respectively come to mind. Of course, I'll see it as a great achievement if I successfully incorporate the King of Water Land into my stories. If you recall his appearance, you'll understand why.
As for Sarasaland, including it would mean that I have to include Princess Daisy. It's not that I have much of a problem with her. It's just that her character does not have any specific history compared to Peach's character. Even though she has a better, more active personality, she is basically Luigi's answer to Peach and I don't find that extremely interesting. Even though I'm willing to put her in there, I just won't do it without a major overhaul of her character and history. She'll still be as active as she is now, but the ideas I have in mind would be a huge departure of her own character that might make some people uncomfortable. It won't be anything that perverted, but let's just say that I'll be taking a little inspiration from a piece of Mario media some people wish it didn't exist. I know it's silly to include Mario Land and not Sarasaland, but the reason why I'm including the former is that it contains a moment in my Mario fanon that deeply develops Mario's character and shapes him into the hero he is today. It just didn't feel right to include it. Who knows? I might end up including both Sarasaland and Daisy in the future. If that were to be the case, then I'd put Sarasaland in the southern ocean as an island nation, like how Australia is.
Whew! That certainly was a mouthful! Now that I talked about why certain locations are not on the map, I'll share a little insight on some of the locations on the map. One thing you'll notice right off the bat is that I included not only the worlds from the Rare Donkey Kong games, but also a few places from Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie. I realize that those locations are more like Microsoft locations than Nintendo ones, but since those are two of my favorite games growing up and they were originally Nintendo worlds, I just had to include them. Besides, since I heard from somewhere (probably the Rare Scribbles) that Banjo is part of the Brother's Bears, it makes sense to include Spiral Mountain as part of their territory. Also, before you say anything, I know that where the Brother's Bear live is supposed to be an island south of DK Island and I heard that Spiral Mountain is part of the Isle o' Hags. It felt right to me that these places should be on the mainland as opposed to making them islands. On a related note, I actually wanted to include the Kingdom of the Fairy Panther King on this map (it would have been north of the Brothers Bear's land). I just couldn't make it fit in a good way, so I had to drop it.
Speaking of the Brothers Bear's land, I know it's supposed to be called the Northern Kremisphere. My logic is that the Northern Kremisphere is not just one place, but rather the entire northern half of the planet this world is on. Basically, my reason is that I needed to call the planet something. I originally went with the generic, uninspired name of Virtual Planet many years ago, but when I went to Lemmy's Land, I adopted Plit as its name. That went fine for a while, but I eventually dropped the name when I found out that the world "plit" actually has a very dirty meaning. After a while, I recalled the name of the Donkey Kong Country 3 overworld and used it as a base for a completely new name: Kremis. On top of that, it even leads to a possibility of exploring the history of the planet and the Kremling race. Now, even though I have a new name for the planet, I still lack a good name for the Brother Bear's world. I would go with Bear Country, but that's already taken…
In regards to places like the Golden Pyramid and Crocodile Island, I know that they are destroyed. I just put them on the map to show their general placement because just showing an arrow wouldn't do those places justice.
I noticed this right after I drew Poshley Heights. It seems like the track for the Exsess Express is a bit shorter than the track leading to Mt. Rugged. I know that this is due to my failure to scale things properly, but I find it ironic that the fastest locomotive in the Mushroom Kingdom takes three days to travel on a track that is shorter than the one traveled by an ordinary locomotive that can easily clear in a fraction of that time. ^^;
Even though I labeled most of the locations, I didn't exactly label all of them because I figured that you could use your general knowledge of the games to identify some of the places on your own. Of course, I thought it would be necessary to lable some places that you might not recognize right off the bat, such as Joke's End and the Old Clockworks.
As for original locations, I didn't exactly include many. I did have plans to do such a thing, but I didn't want to invest too much in ideas that'll easily be shot down. Heck, even placing the ruins of the Mushroom King's Castle was a bit of a risk because I'm not sure if you guys would like my story involving a French Revolution-like event that took place a few hundred years ago that was a revolt lead by Toadsworth's ancestor that overthrew the tyrannical Mushroom King.
Well, that's all I have to share for now. I'm terribly sorry I basically wrote a novel about something as simple as a map from a game about plumbers stomping turtles. There was a lot for me to cover and I wanted to discuss it when it was still fresh in my mind. If there are any questions you wish to ask, please let me know. I'm also up for suggestions to fix the geography for this map because some of the locations are places in very improbable areas. Heck, I'm not pleased with the locations of Cavi Cape and Plack Beach because I just threw them in at the last minute since I forgotten about them.