Antiria - The first Metroidvania!


By all observation and everything I've read about it this game does seem a lot like Metroid, especially for its time. But I don't like that games like Metroid are considered part of the "Metroidvania" genre now.

Metroidvania is what you'd call those Castlevania games that combined prominent elements from Metroid (exploration in a large interconnected area with a map, gaining powerups that give you new gameplay moves to get to new locations) with a bunch of RPG elements (stats, levels/experience, equipment, items, money/shops, NPCs, some level of dialogue and plot progression). You could call games that fit this precise style Metroidvania genre (like Dust or Valdis Story) but not games that are merely like Metroid (Axiom Verge, this game) and certainly not retroactively applying to Metroid games that predate Symphony of the Night entirely.

Even worse would be considering the old pre-Symphony (and especially pre-Rondo) Castlevania games to be part of this genre, like this video seems to.
 
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