Retro Metroidvania explorations

[ommadawnyawn2]

Hey everyone. Been updating my retro metroidvania/platform adventure/sagasu katsudou quick reference guide pretty heavily this year and it's going well, just finished the entry for Kirby & the Amazing Mirror (GBA). Just thought I'd check what people are interested in seeing covered next. 

docs.google.com/document/d/1b5xX0jBpcigBEQStfhJ_DzDocBwkJ4PzNZOO3Z8DHWs/edit?usp=sharing
platformadventure.weebly.com/

If the to play list looks messy, games are currently ordered roughly in order of my own interest (haven't played most of these yet) balanced with release date. 

A couple of people have mentioned Tomba 2, La-Mulana and Kingdom Hearts so far. 
Other games mentioned in this thread:
Chibi Robo
Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines

At this rate I'll be mostly done around this time next year I think, with the cutoff point at 2009 preliminarily, and that means the most important games as well as the good and most fitting the genre label games are fully covered (besides sequence breaking which is difficult to cover for some games). In my view of course. I'll update more seldomly after that, focusing on other stuff.

[Deleted]

The site is pretty extensive now, it really makes a handy resource to find all the games nicely categorised - I'm sure it takes a lot of work so it's nice to see you stick with it.

I adore Chibi Robo, so I'd be interested in reading your thoughts on it. That said, one word of negativity would probably make me die inside a little.

I'm quite interested in trying Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines for myself, so I would like to hear about that also.

If you decide to cover La-Mulana be prepared to spend more than the 15-30 hours on it unless you choose to rely on a walkthrough. Puzzling this game out is incredibly difficult/rewarding, but it is built around the old fashioned idea of different people playing alongside one another and sharing their discoveries so finding them all for yourself is a substantial task.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Thanks, it does and I'm sometimes struggling with what to mention or not in the bullet point lists as later games tend to be more complex. The complementary excel file on the useful links page (under "more") is more brief and focuses on what I see as the core features of games in the genre.

Hehe I think I'll like Chibi Robo, just not sure it's that much of a MV. If I don't well I still try my best to mention only the good and relevant stuff for a game's site entry and keep those thoughts in the mini review linked below.

I'll keep those in mind. I have tried Mulana at one point, I should be a bit better prepared for it now. But I expect to start using a guide for it at some point as I'm not great at sticking with one game for more than a week or so.

[Deleted]

You are right about Chibi Robo. It is more like an open world than a Metroidvania. There are items to unlock to help you explore but they are bought rather than found.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Right, though buying or finding an item matters less than if they add to your moveset or exploration/traversal ability I think.

I started playing the original version of La-Mulana. While it's not really my kind of game in some ways (more 80s-style controls, money gating and puzzle design) I'll try to beat at least half of it before moving on to either the remake or something else. I do like the aesthetics a lot, how the world seems more interconnected and open ended than usual, and the overall enemy and boss design so far.

[retr0gamer]

Nobody should be interested in Kingdom Hearts.

I absolutely adore La-Mulana 1 and 2 but I'm pretty sure you'd need a faq or have to be playing it with a lot of other people in tandem to figure it out. La-Mulana has some very obtuse puzzles and while 2 is less obtuse it does have a few stinkers that will hold you up (and one that held me up for days until I looked it up and found out it was actually stupidly obvious...)

[ommadawnyawn2]

And why is that? I generally avoid crossover stuff but if the gameplay is good I'll give it a try. We'll see.

This original version of La-Mulana is obtuse indeed, and it seems the remake keeps most of its design. Like I have no idea how you were supposed to figure out certain parts of the ankh puzzle in the mausoleum and asking at the subreddit, neither do the fans. General navigation and combat is still pretty enjoyable even if I have to frequently use a guide for the puzzles though. But I hope someone mods the original at some point with some QoL improvements and better clues at times. 

What do you want to see covered then, if anything?

[retr0gamer]

Honestly would love to see la mulana. Sure I had to use a faq a lot but it was an incredible experience. Also 15-30 hours.... Took me closer to 80.

It's a game if you want to play properly that you need a note book at all times to take notes as there is text clues all over the place that don't make sense unless you write them down so they are within easy reference and have a way of organising them.

Chibi robo as well is a little gem.

As for kingdom hearts it's a pretty standard button masher with no depth with a dreadful story. The first though isn't entirely a dumpster fire. Kh 2 onwards though.... Other than birth by sleep which is good.

One note is return of egypt. I played it recently and it seems that the only version you can find online is a demo version which is much shorter than the actual full game. It also has two characters. It's seems to be completely lost now. The only evidence of it existing I could find is a youtube video someone made of the second character playthrough.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Yeah I've played some more and watched a bit of a let's play and it's starting to feel really big and sprawling. Luckily I found a text dump page for the game so I don't have to write everything on the tablets down.

Huh, that's kind of interesting regarding Return of Egypt.

Hmm maybe I should start putting together a top ~10 per decade when this year is over. Or top hidden gems.

Edit: And the mausoleum man is down, finally. Damn long invincibility period but still a cool boss. 

[Woody Alien]

Nov 17, 2020 14:34:18 GMT -5 retr0gamer said:

One note is return of egypt. I played it recently and it seems that the only version you can find online is a demo version which is much shorter than the actual full game. It also has two characters. It's seems to be completely lost now. The only evidence of it existing I could find is a youtube video someone made of the second character playthrough.

Return of Egypt has a stealth sequel in the form of Pharaoh Rebirth, which is available on Steam. I wrote an article about it for the site, it's interesting in the sense that it's not a single huge world but rather a series of self-contained stages that can be replayed as much as you want after completing them. I think it's a worthy addition to the guide.

The Addams Family games for 8-bit consoles and the one for the Turbografx-16 CD can be considered metroidvanias, but they mostly all suck so I don't think anyone would care if they're missing

[ommadawnyawn2]

Huh, didn't know that was a sequel; wouldn't have made the connection from looking at them.

I've covered a bunch of those level-based and otherwise segmented ones, was debating on what "x"-like to call that variation on the genre formula earlier. This mindmap/family tree is an early WIP, might also add horror to it as a distant relative (more readable if you open in a new tab).


Yeah those AF games aren't so hot. The SNES/MD/AMI one is decent but had no ability gating. I might cover the SMS game at some point maybe, the others are on the site with a few preliminary notes so far.

[ommadawnyawn2]

'90s mindmap/family tree WIP:


Not sure if I should separate dizzy-likes from the others more (fantastic dizzy has just enough ability gating to fit in but idk about the others). 

[dsparil]

The Dizzy games seem a little questionable to me because the abilities are tied to inventory items. That aside, Treasure Island Dizzy is the only one with a console port to have anything like ability gating in the diving equipment which was also all I saw in the parts of Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy I played. Wonderland, Adventurer and Mystery World don't have any, and presumably the original computer versions (Magicland, Prince of the Yolkfolk, Fantasy World) don't either. Technically Mystery World has a tiny bit with needing diving equipment for the one screen under the well, but that's about it. 

[ommadawnyawn2]

So in the entry for Fantastic Dizzy I mention these: the fins, the scuba gear and the rope which lets you swing between platforms via hooks. The last one's use isn't as involved as the grapple hook in Turrican or Metroid though, and yeah since they are inventory items and your inventory is super limited it's kinda different. I might split those off from the main tree. 

What would you say is your favorite besides Fantastic Dizzy?

[dsparil]

I'd say Mystery World Dizzy. As more or less the final NES game, it's more refined than the earlier ones. Wonderland is a fairly close second, but it sticks half the stars in a sky area that's pure padding; it doesn't take long to get them all, but it is very boring and feels like they just wanted to hit 100 stars no matter what. Dizzy the Adventurer is in the middle, and Treasure Island the worst. I really hate that one since managing the inventory is a huge pain, and accidentally dropping the snorkel while underwater instantly kills you unlike the other ones.

I actually don't like Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy that much, but I think I was starting to burn out on them since I was playing them in original release order and not by their NES sequence. Fantastic was the first to get a console release, the only one that isn't a remake or port so it reuses concepts that end up showing up in later NES games, and is about two or three times the size of the others. Did you play the NES or Genesis/MD version? The Genesis one has 250 stars instead of 100 and moves items around.

Forgot about the rope in Fantastic. Wonderland has one spot where a whip can be used in the same way, but it's totally optional.