Mailbag call: Symphony of the Night and the brief death of metroidvania
Why did exploratory platformers vanish in the '90s? We'd love to field your theories.
The time has come once again for us to recount the evolution of exploratory platform action games with a return to the ’90s and the games we were going to talk about last time, before we all got sidetracked by Chris' maiden journey through Super Metroid. The big topic for this upcoming session will definitely, unquestionably be Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. But a bigger question stands: What the heck happened to metroidvania games in the late ’90s? We went from a glut of them in the 8-bit era to an absolute famine, with practically nothing in the genre appearing between Symphony of the Night's 1997 debut and the arrival of Shantae and Metroid Fusion in 2002. That's five years in which you can count the metroidvania releases on one hand! And most of them were the actual metroidvanias — the Metroid-inspired Castlevania games. What happened? That's what we intend to discuss, and we'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter.
(Oh, and if you have an opinions to share on mid ’90s exploratory platformers like Monster World IV, Demon's Crest, and of course Symphony of the Night, those would be great, too.)
Drop me a line at jparish [at] retronauts.com between now and Wednesday morning to weigh in for this episode! We long to read your letters aloud.
