Metroidvania | Code Like It's 198x

When Edge reviewed Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in November 1997, it went looking for a comparison and did not find it in Konami’s earlier Castlevania games. “A more accurate reference point,” the reviewer decided, “would be Nintendo’s 16bit classic Super Metroid to which this latest saga pays almost religious homage. Witness the gradual opening out of the map, the uncompromising puzzles and, perhaps most significantly, the burning of copious amounts of midnight oil in playing it.” Fans later joined the two names into one word. A Metroidvania is an action game set on a single connected map, where the player keeps meeting places they cannot yet reach, and each new ability opens some of them up.

Fast facts

The pattern: one large map instead of separate levels; obstacles that need a particular item or power; going back through explored areas once you have it.
The template: Metroid (Nintendo R&D1, Famicom Disk System, 1986), refined in Super Metroid (1994).
The second name: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Konami, PlayStation, 1997), which added experience points, equipment and spells.
The word: found in a fan’s Usenet post in 2001, used by 1UP.com’s Scott Sharkey in 2004 and in American magazines by 2005; widely associated with, but not coined by, the journalist Jeremy Parish.
Other names: “Castleroid”, and “Igavania” after Koji Igarashi, who worked on Symphony and later became the series’ producer.
Today: a staple of independent games, from Cave Story (2004) to Hollow Knight (2017), alongside Metroid Dread (2021) and Igarashi’s Bloodstained (2019).

How it works

Metroid is still the clearest example. Samus Aran lands on the planet Zebes with a short-range gun and no map. A gap is too low to walk into until she can curl into the morph ball; a floor will not break until she has bombs; a ledge is too high until she has the high-jump boots. Because the planet is one connected space, every new item sends the player back through places already explored, looking for the obstacles it now clears. Nintendo Power’s advice for one tall pipe was that some “Metroid maniacs like to use consecutive bombs to cannon ball up and over the pipe”,, or players could bomb a single loose brick and roll underneath.

Super Metroid made the approach deliberate. Its director, Yoshio Sakamoto, told Retro Gamer that his team “really didn’t want to explain things to the player using too many words. We just wanted to let them play and be able to work things out for themselves.” The map was built so that the player could not move on without exploring, and would sometimes find themselves back where they had started, made to stop and think about the area.

Before the name

Metroid was not the first game to open up a world as the player gained abilities. Below the Root, a 1984 adventure for the Apple II and Commodore 64 from Windham Classics, based on Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s Green-Sky novels, let players “gradually unlock new areas in open-ended game world by collecting items and abilities”, as the historian Phil Salvador describes it. But it is Metroid that later games copied and that the genre is named after.

Konami’s first Castlevania (1986) was a stage-by-stage action game. Its MSX2 version, Vampire Killer, already asked Simon Belmont to find a key before he could leave each stage and let him buy weapons from merchants, and Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest (1987) replaced stages with towns, swamps and dungeons to explore. Retro Gamer’s history of the series says Symphony of the Night’s structure “echoed that of the oft-misunderstood Simon’s Quest, with the player being free to explore each nook and cranny of Dracula’s fortress at will, providing they possessed the necessary items and equipment.”

Symphony of the Night

Symphony of the Night came out in Japan in March 1997 and reached Europe that autumn, a 2D game at a time when, as Edge put it, the 2D platformer was becoming “an extremely rare breed” on the PlayStation. Its hero was not a Belmont but Alucard, Dracula’s half-human son, and it brought in role-playing ideas: experience points, weapons, armour, spells and restorative items. Edge found the first hour “a curiously dowdy 16bit-style platformer” and some of the character design “simply laughable”, but thought the later game revealed “surprisingly deep RPG-based play mechanics”. Retro Gamer later wrote that the game became “a true classic of the 32-bit generation” and a platinum seller in America, while in Europe Konami struggled to sell even the small first shipment of PAL copies.

Koji Igarashi, who worked on Symphony, went on to become the producer of the whole Castlevania series. The 2D games that followed kept Symphony’s structure, on Nintendo’s handhelds: Circle of the Moon (a Game Boy Advance launch game), Harmony of Dissonance, Aria of Sorrow and, on the DS in 2005, Dawn of Sorrow. “Much like in Symphony of the Night,” Igarashi, its director, told Electronic Gaming Monthly, “I wanted to give players a little bit of freedom.” Nintendo’s own 2D series carried on in parallel on the Game Boy Advance, with Sakamoto directing Metroid Fusion (2002) and Metroid: Zero Mission (2004).

Where the word came from

Retro Gamer says Symphony of the Night “spawned the portmanteau ‘Metroidvania’ as an umbrella term for all the Castlevania titles that adhere to Metroid-style gameplay”, and that the game “has, over time, been branded ‘Metroidvania’” because it borrowed so much from Super Metroid. Who first said it is harder to pin down. A search published by the historian Kate Willaert in December 2025 found the earliest known use in a Usenet post of 14 June 2001, in which a fan, Richard Hutnik, jokingly nicknamed Circle of the Moon “Metroidvania”. The word turned up again among fans in 2003, alongside rivals: “Castleroid”, which put Castlevania first, and later “Igavania”, after Igarashi. The first journalist Willaert found using it was Scott Sharkey, reviewing a game for the website 1UP.com in June 2004. His colleague Jeremy Parish popularised it from 2006, on 1UP.com and his own website, and is often taken for its inventor; Parish has denied coining it and credits Sharkey with introducing him to the word.

By 2005 the word was in print, still in quotation marks. Hardcore Gamer magazine’s guide to the Castlevania series that summer said Circle of the Moon “returns to the ‘Metroidvania’ model seen in Symphony of the Night”, and that October Electronic Gaming Monthly wrote that Dawn of Sorrow “faithfully adheres to the established ‘Metroid-vania’ mold pioneered by Symphony of the Night”.

Independent developers take over

After Zero Mission in 2004 and Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia in 2008, Wireframe noted in 2019, both series “went largely silent”, at least as far as 2D exploration games were concerned. Independent developers filled the gap. Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya spent about five years making Cave Story on his own, “an homage to Metroid – before such a thing was commonplace”, and released it in 2004. WayForward’s Shantae: Risky’s Revenge followed in 2010 and DrinkBox’s Guacamelee! in 2013; Tom Happ’s Axiom Verge was, in Parish’s words, the best indie Metroidvania ever made. Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight (2017) was, for Wireframe, among the very best of the new wave.

By 2018 there were so many that they got in each other’s way. James Petruzzi, whose Chasm came out that July after six years in development, told Wireframe: “they called it the Month of the Metroidvania because eight other Metroidvania games came out the same month that we came out. It’s like, how are you supposed to succeed when you have that much competition?”

The genre’s founders returned too. Igarashi left Konami, raised money from fans on Kickstarter and made Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (2019), which Wireframe reviewed under the genre heading “Igavania” and called “a Castlevania game in all but name”. Nintendo announced Metroid Dread at E3 in 2021, co-developed with MercurySteam, the first new 2D Metroid sequel in many years; it added stealth, with Samus hiding from robots called E.M.M.I.s. Team Cherry’s long-awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong came out on 4 September 2025.

Sources

Edge issue 51, November 1997: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night review (PlayStation, KCET, £45; the Japanese release in March; the Super Metroid comparison; the rare 2D platformer; the RPG mechanics and the art).
Retro Gamer Collection volume 4, 2010, “The complete history of Metroid”: Metroid’s release on 6 August 1986; Symphony of the Night and the portmanteau.
Retro Gamer Collection volume 4, 2010, Castlevania series history: Symphony of the Night’s structure and Simon’s Quest; “branded ‘Metroidvania’”; Alucard and the RPG elements; platinum status in America and the poor European sales; Koji Igarashi joining and becoming producer; the handheld games.
Nintendo Power issue 8, September/October 1989, p. 36: the bomb “cannon ball” technique in Metroid.
Retro Gamer Collection volume 5, 2011, “The making of Super Metroid”, interview with Yoshio Sakamoto: the design without words and the map.
Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 196, October 2005, p. 64: Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow preview, with Igarashi’s comments and “the established ‘Metroid-vania’ mold”.
Hardcore Gamer volume 1 issue 2, July 2005: Castlevania series guide (“the ‘Metroidvania’ model”).
Andrew King, “Making the perfect Metroidvania”, Wireframe issue 19, July 2019, pp. 44–49: the series falling silent after 2004 and 2008; Shantae: Risky’s Revenge, Guacamelee!, Axiom Verge and Parish’s verdict; James Petruzzi on Chasm and the “Month of the Metroidvania”.
Wireframe issue 19, July 2019, p. 56: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night review (genre “Igavania”; Igarashi, Kickstarter and ArtPlay).
Wireframe issue 68, November 2022, p. 32: Daisuke Amaya and Cave Story (2004). Edge issue 215, June 2010: Cave Story on the Wii, “released in 2004”.
Wireframe issue 25, October 2019, p. 16: Hollow Knight “among our very favourites” of the recent Metroidvanias. Issue 61, March 2022: Hollow Knight released in 2017.
Wireframe issue 52, June 2021, p. 24, and issue 57, November 2021: Metroid Dread, MercurySteam and the E.M.M.I. robots.
The Castlevania and Metroid sources as cited in the Castlevania, Metroid and Yoshio Sakamoto entries (Vampire Killer, Simon’s Quest, Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission).
Kate Willaert, “Exploring Metroidvania: the history of a word”, A Critical Hit!, 20 December 2025 (web, secondary): the 2001 Usenet post, the 2003 uses, “Castleroid” and “Igavania”, Scott Sharkey’s 2004 review and Jeremy Parish’s part. https://www.acriticalhit.com/exploring-metroidvania-meaning-history/ Damien McFerran’s report of the research, Time Extension, 22 December 2025 (web, secondary), gives the same 2001 and 2003 dates and says Parish has denied coining the word. https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/12/who-created-the-term-metroidvania-gaming-historian-critical-kate-tries-to-find-out
Phil Salvador, “Below the Root”, The Obscuritory, 25 January 2020 (web, secondary). https://obscuritory.com/platform/below-the-root/ Ahoy! issue 9, September 1984, p. 8: Below the Root “(based on the Green Sky trilogy)” due on disk for the Commodore 64 in October.
Team Cherry, announcement on X, 31 August 2025 (web, secondary): Hollow Knight: Silksong “will be available on 4th September”. https://x.com/TeamCherryGames/status/1962330350681735642