I am currently reading ‘Desktops and Dungeons,’ a wonderful book about the evolution of the cRPG (computer role playing games).

The book got me thinking about a time before automapping, when players were expected to draw maps by hand as they played the game, so they could navigate through the games levels later.

As a teacher reflecting back on my own experiences the skills gained in doing this were numerous. I remember playing many games with my brother and having scraps of paper with notes scrawled all over them and graph paper to help with the mapping.

One of the first games I remember playing was a classic first person dungeon crawler called 'Dungeon Master' on the Amstrad CPC 464. This game was vast and if you did not map you wouldn't survive long. I wish I had kept my old maps and notes as I'd like to look through them now.

Dungeon Master on the Amstrad CPC 464.... hardcore can't even describe the difficulty of this game.

However I did find a video which shows a young man showing the map his mum made for him for 'Metroid' on the NES, it's like the Turin Shroud of gaming maps! So do you remember mapping when you were younger and what games did you do it for?