Episode 157 brings our metroidvania journey to a close

Now on to New Game+!
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Mission control for ; former EIC of and ; taking dapper (and frogs) back from the Nazis.

It has been almost exactly one year since Chris Sims, Benj Edwards and I began a historic survey of the evolution of the metroidvania genre. (Yes, it's a real word and genre now — sorry, haters.) What I originally intended to consist of a single quick episode, maybe two, has now stretched to... um, five episodes. But this one is the final one, honest! Episode 157 brings us through the genre's renaissance on Game Boy Advance, through indie games, and totally current with the release of Team17's Yoku's Island Express (which combines metroidvania and pinball and inexplicably works perfectly). There's nowhere to go from here, except the future, and we can't see that. Otherwise I would be sitting on a lot of Apple stock right now.

A lot of this episode covers ground Retronauts has trodden over the past couple of years, but with different line-ups. But Benj and Chris do love them some GBA metroidvanias, so I hope you don't mind my indulging them here, even if there's not all that much new being said.

If you'd like to catch up on the metroidvania episodes to date, you'll want to have a listen to these shows first. (No big deal, right? I'm sure you have 10 hours to spare.)

And some other episodes relevant to the topic at hand:

That's a lot of listening, huh?

It is almost as though... we really like this style of game, or something.

Retronauts Episode 157
Metroidvania: The finale
MP3, 53.6 MB | 1:49:31
Direct download | Retronauts on iTunes | Retronauts on Libsyn

Episode description: Jeremy, Benj, and Chris bring their multi-episode history of metroidvania games to a conclusion with a look at the genre's resurgence on Game Boy Advance and its new lease on life thanks to plucky indie gaming upstarts. Now, on to New Game +…