Theory

[Mathis]

Many early CRPGs had grid-based combat systems that bear a passing resemblance to later SRPGS - the SSI Gold Box games, Ultima III-VI (although VI and the two Worlds of games removed the abstract overworld and made everything take place in the same kid of map, including combat, which was pretty unique for the time). Not many of them really stand up today though.

http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?t=2761

I think Mr. Iron Savior has been reading Tim Rogers too seriously. I mention this because it's the only other instance where I've read such a claim. Here are some choice quotes from Rogers' Super Mario Bros. 3 review.

So it was in that great centrifuge Super Mario Bros. 3 was born. The “adventure” was pried away from the “action”, and the “world map” came into being. No platform-action-adventure game that mattered would ever be without one again. (Seriously, Bubsy doesn’t matter, and Sonic doesn’t count, because he was something else.)

Years of hindsight have opened my ears to the truth: though I had at first, at age ten, been admittedly disappointed that the music playing in World 1-1 was not the original Super Mario Bros. theme, I have grown, and changed; now that I’ve been laid more than a few times, I can see that the music in Super Mario Bros. 3 is, in fact, the champion; the main stage themes are deeper and bolder, and the fourteen-second pop-symphonies (my absolute favorite) that cycle over those superfluous world maps only grow more musically amazing with time.

Super Mario Bros. 3’s greater game design is about throwing caution to everything; other developers failed to sell more copies than Super Mario Bros. 3 because they tried to make it “better” or “cleaner”. Take the world map, for example: in the future, in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, Nintendo themselves would try to “clean up” the world map by making it a straight line. Literally: all of the levels are oriented on a straight line, with a pastel, sketch-like background. Each stage starts roughly where the last one left off — there’s some kind of sketchy internal continuity. Yoshi’s Island was recognizing that the world map scenes in Super Mario Bros. 3 were kind of superfluous, though it was simultaneously dead scared to excise them completely. This is the kind of Nintendo we 21st Century Man-Boys grew up alongside with: when it came time to make a baseball game starring Mario characters, Nintendo would include a Goomba as a playable character, because Goomba was their property, and when it came time for Goomba to step up to the plate, well, the bat was just going to have to hover outside Goomba’s head, because it doesn’t matter if Goomba didn’t have hands — he was Nintendo’s property, and they were going to use him.

Mario 3 had a superfluous world map, and an ever-present, eyesore-sized heads up display...

Obviously “multiple stage exits” is a brilliant idea, though wouldn’t that make the “world map”, as executed in Super Mario Bros. 3, kind of even more superfluous?

[icycalm]

There's no connection between what the dude is saying and what Tim is saying, beyond the fact they both use the word 'map'.

The dude is, correctly, saying that it was a great idea when CRPGs melded the overworld map with the combat map, so that everything happened on a single screen.

Tim is talking about action games with linearly connected stages, in which overworld maps are superfluous (though, as far as I am concerned, there's nothing wrong with that: everything from The Super Shinobi to Klonoa GBA and countless other such games have overworld maps, and these just give you some sense of connection between the stages. I find them to be pleasant additions.)

[Mathis]

The connection I was making (and communicating poorly) was that both Dark Savior and Rogers consider the overworld map unnecessary for the games they were discussing, which, in the case of Super Mario Bros. 3, I don't agree, and here's why.

Besides doubling as a menu screen and letting you scroll through items and use them to prepare for the next challenge, the overworld map gives you the ability to skip some of the levels and mini-games (or worlds, with the warp whistle) if you want, or complete them in a different order. Another thing it does is eliminate the need for cutscenes between levels to give a sense of interconnectedness, like when Mario exits the castle at the end of World 1-1 in Super Mario Bros. and then walks into a warp pipe leading underground; now, the transition from one level to another takes as long as you do. There is also the chance to battle a friend and take their item cards and turn any time they scroll over your avatar.

At the beginning of the game, you are transported to the world map rather than thrown right into the action, and you see a castle in the lower-right corner of the screen, as well as a flashing speech bubble with the word "Help" inside of it. For me, it was the first Mario game I had played, and it communicated a semblance of a story with mere visuals and a single word. I, like you said, find it to be a pleasant addition.

[icycalm]

The connection I was making (and communicating poorly) was that both Dark Savior and Rogers consider the overworld map unnecessary for the games they were discussing

Yes, but this is not much of a connection, seeing as the games they are discussing have nothing to do with each other. You seem unable to grasp this. I'll try to explain it in a bit more detail.

Dark Savior is talking about CRPGs. He is not saying that overworld maps are a bad thing -- he is saying that overworld maps are a great thing, but only when merged with the battle maps. Or, to put it another way, that the battle maps are bad, and that it was a good idea to do away with them and play out all the battles on the world maps.

So you see, he is FOR overworld maps, not against them. And this is not in any way a controversial position -- this is accepted wisdom since the early '90s, if not even earlier than that. So he is not saying anything new there.

What he IS saying that IS new, however, is this:

Many early CRPGs had grid-based combat systems that bear a passing resemblance to later SRPGS - the SSI Gold Box games, Ultima III-VI [...] Not many of them really stand up today though.

Which is a lollerific comment, since the reality is the other way around. The new games are the ones that do not stand up to the old ones -- not vice versa.

Trust the artfags to get everything wrong. Like I've said before, the artfag is almost a criterion of truth: 99 times out of 100 the opposite of what they claim is true.