MAP QUEST

The diehard GAMEFAQS user who’s drawn over 3,500 maps

- Lauren Morton

When a post praising the thousands upon thousands of game walkthrough maps created by a GameFAQs poster named StarFighters76 circulated on Twitter, the astounded responses weren’t only from people seeing them for the first time. Tons of replies were from players who’d used his maps before, but had no idea just how many he’d created. “These maps have gotten me out of SO MANY jams bro,” says one. “Shout if you’ve been using these maps for the FF Pixel Remasters,” says another. The collection of over 3,500 maps that StarFighters76 has created is impressive, but the number of players he’s helped through more than 300 games may be even more so.

For nearly 20 years, StarFighters76 has been posting maps to GameFAQs, one of the few surviving institutions from the ’90s era of videogame websites. Although his maps have changed some over the years, it’s no surprise that people recognised them. Since the early 2000s, StarFighters76 has created maps with bright, basic colour palettes and thin black lines that make no secret of their Microsoft Paint origins.

They look simplistic at first – and some of his early maps were certainly more pared-down versions of what he now produces – but even his early work contains numbered legends, helpful arrows, and other instructions that elevate his maps from artistic recreations to actual visual walkthroughs with puzzle solutions and directed paths. They stand out on GameFAQs, which most of us associate with guides submitted as plain text files.