All posts filed under: Popular Culture

Unofficial Map: Portland MAX Light Rail – Super Mario 3 Style

March 29, 2013
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Mash-Up Maps, Popular Culture, Unofficial Maps
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Here’s the latest “Mario Map” from the incredibly prolific Dave Delisle (seriously, how much cool stuff can one guy pump out?). This one is of my home town of Portland, Oregon, and Dave actually enlisted my help in checking the accuracy of the route layouts and the spelling of the station names. Considering the ridiculous length of some of the station names in the system and the limitations of the 8-bit art style, Dave’s done […]

Fully Playable Ms. Pacman Game Based on the Washington, DC Metro Map

January 26, 2013
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This is what you get when you trawl the internet late at night…easily one of the strangest things I’ve come across on the Web lately. You can actually play this map as if it was a game of Ms. Pacman – note the bow in her hair and Cindy Crawford-like beauty spot, just like the original game. Instructions on how to play are here. (Hint: it’s much easier to use the R O Y G […]

London Underground Map Tin in the Doctor Who Christmas Special, “The Snowmen”

December 29, 2012
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Historical Maps, Popular Culture
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It’s not very often I get to combine two of my absolute favourite things in one post: Doctor Who and transit maps! Without giving too much away (spoilers, sweetie!), the tin is presented in-story as being from 1967, and it looks like the BBC props department did a pretty decent job. The map shown on the tin is indeed Paul Garbutt’s 1964 map, which can be differentiated from the very similar 1970 map – even on-screen […]

Timecowboy: It’s Been a Year…

November 27, 2012
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timecowboy: I’ve tried making comics about my time in New York in the past but I couldn’t articulate the feelings. It’s a strange feeling missing a city, especially when it’s not your home town but I think most people understand the feeling of wanting to belong or feeling like they don’t. Anyways these have been some words.  A nicely poignant little web comic, cleverly using the New York subway map as part of the narrative.

Fantasy Map: Grand Theft Auto IV Liberty City Subway

September 19, 2012
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Fantasy Maps, Popular Culture
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By all accounts, Grand Theft Auto IV is a pretty awesome game. However, it would seem that the game’s designers are lousy urban planners, as this has to be the most ridiculous subway layout I have ever seen. Seriously, it looks like two racetrack layouts from a 1990s video game have been superimposed on the city with some stations added at random. What is the point of the northern track between Huntington St and the […]

Montreal Metro Board Game

September 13, 2012
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Sent my way by Twitter user @andrewsalzberg, here’s another board game based on a transit system – this time, Montreal’s Metro! (Readers may remember this post about “The London Game”, a board game based on the London Underground.) Looks like a pretty simple “race” game, but it captures the aesthetics of the actual map quite nicely. Source: Openalex website – link no longer active

Mario vs. Mario

June 13, 2012
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So every man and his dog is sending me links to the new Toronto TTC/Mario World mash-up map by Dave Delisle (prints for sale here). It’s definitely well executed, but I couldn’t help but think I’d seen something similar before… A couple of minutes of Googling later: a similarly-themed (although aesthetically a little different) map of the Boston MBTA done last year by Adam Summerville (prints here). I’d just like to make it clear that […]