Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 157: Metroidvania: The finale

Episode Date: June 25, 2018

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 +…

Everyone is Jeremy. Before we jump into the episode proper, I wanted to indulge in a tiny bit of self-promotion. Retronauts has teamed up with fan gamer and engineer Mike Choi to create something for fans of classic gaming and Nintendo's Switch. Flip grip. Flip grip is the missing piece to Nintendo Switch. It's a simple plastic controller grip that allows you to play the system sideways in handheld mode. A lot of old arcade games ran in what is known as Tate mode, where their screens and their cabinets were rotated sideways to be taller than wide. Lots of games on Switch offer vertical display options, which the system can take unique advantage up thanks to the way the entire console consists of a portable screen with detachable controllers, but until now you've needed to set the screen on a desk stand in order to play Tate mode games. Flip grip allows you to rotate your switch and use it as a portable by securing the screens

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We just need the cash to pay for it and have it produced and distributed. In fact, since the Kickstarter has already blown past its goal, we've already set the production wheels in motion, so the FlipGrip will be in your hands this fall. FlipGrip is just $12 plus shipping. So if you love classic gaming on Nintendo Switch, head over to Kickstarter before July 9th and check out FlipGrip. This week in Rentonauts, once we finish the final battle, it's time for the inverted castle. Hi, everyone, and welcome to this, our final Metroidvania episode, I hope. It's me, Jeremy Parrish, and I am in the studio, by which I mean my guest room, with such illuminous personalities as Dan Edwards and Chris Sims.

Okay, well, that's great. So we've done like 20 or 30 episodes about the history of Metroid venia games. There's been some semantic dickering. There's been some preposterous claims that certain games are Metroidvania is when they clearly are not. And we're bringing this all home. This was supposed to be the last episode was supposed to be our final episode of Metroidvania games. But that so didn't happen. And therefore, this is going to be the end. This is it. We're wrapping it up. I don't know why you're so eager to be done with. I enjoy the time that we spend together on this life.

But what if we spend our time together talking about different things? Why would we do that? New subjects. This is the most important subject after all. Yeah. Why will we do that when we have Dracula to talk about? I know that two out of three of us, this is our favorite game genre. I'm pretty sure.

Yeah. The Metroid venue. You and me? Yeah. I like soccer games best. So I was going to say something and I don't remember what. Yeah, video games, Metroidvania. Okay, so we have covered the pre-history of Metroidvania games, the evolution of the genre on NES. the evolution of the genre beyond NES,

the kind of the downfall of the genre during the PlayStation era, and now we're going to bring it into the modern era. Rebirth. That's right, the rebirth. Renaissance. Although actually Castlevania Rebirth was not a Metroidvania. I'm so sorry.

Yeah, we are going to talk about the actual Metroidvania games, like the Castlevania games on handheld systems. Yes. Those are the actual Metroidvania's. But we have done an episode on those, so we're not going to labor too long on this subject. We're also going to talk about the indie revival of the genre because it was pretty much more abundant

outside of Metroid and Castlevania and a handful of other games that occasionally came out. And then independent publishing came around and every independent publisher said, I love either a Castlevania Metroid kind of hybrid or I love a Rogue-like kind of hybrid or I love a Castlevania Metroid-Rogelike kind of hybrid. And that's what every indie game has been.

since then, that or a walking simulator. So there's really a lot to cover in this next hour and a half, and I don't know why I'm rambling so much. I should just shut up and get on with it. So after the decline of the Metroidvania game during the 3D PlayStation N64 Saturn era, there wasn't really much left. There was, you know, Symphony of the Night and it was amazing. There was Tomba, which was weird, but Metroidvania-ish, and kind of like an RPG, and it It had like a quest structure. It was very ahead of its time in some ways.

But also you were biting pigs, and it was really hard to understand what was supposed to be going on. That is weird. Didn't we talk about that in the last? We didn't really talk about Tomba. I can't really say too much about Tomba, because I've never quite wrapped my head around some of the quests.

There's like one critical quest fairly early on, and I'm like, what the hell am I supposed to do here? And I never figured it out, and I never bothered to cheat and look it up. I played Tomba. I tried to get into it, but there's something about the graphics that just look horrible, blocky that's a PlayStation game right

yeah the first game is fine it's 2d like 2.5d it's like scaled the I think the sprites are scaled in a really weird way that I found yeah that happened a lot on PlayStation ugly yeah that I just could not it was offensive to my eyes

played on a PS2 with the texture smoothing on it works a lot better it was the same thing with Kloa like Klonoa when you play on PS1 you're like what the hell is every single sprite in this game and then if you played on PS2 with the smoothing on You're like, oh, look, it's a little guy with a hat and ears. Oh, I get it.

Everything, like, it makes sense now. It's just one of those things that the tech wasn't quite there for what they wanted to do. But for the most part, the genre was dead. And then Nintendo published or released, manufactured, the Game Boy Advance. And a few people were like, oh, we could do something with this. We could make, like, the super NES games that no one ever bothered to make. And they did. They also remade a lot of Super NES games.

But everything else was like, hey, this was the Super NES game. We didn't quite have the memory capacity for or the hardware power for. Yeah. And so we got a lot of indie games or a lot of Metroidvania games. I think it's a direct correlation between hardware and where games were moving on consoles at the time. Like I talked about in our last episode about Metroidvania's that first person shooters killed the Metroidvania because everybody wanted a 3D experience. And even Castlevania and Metroid.

actually, had moved towards 3D games, whether it was first-person shooter-style Metroid games, or... Which was still very, very much in the Metroidvania structure. It just wasn't 2D. And you follow that line of development, and it leads you, as I've said before, to Arkham Asylum, which is very Castlevania and very Metroid. But Castlevania had flirted with the 3D action game with Castlevania 64, obviously. That was just called Castlevania.

For the sake of clarity. But if those games had been a success, I feel like I'm not sure if the Metroidvania handheld revival would have happened when it did and the way it did. Because it's really the Igavania games that kick it off on the Game Boy Advance. Well, sort of. We actually start with the very early release on GBA of Castlevania Circle of the Moon. That is not an Igna game because Igga did not work on it. Koji Ikarashi. That is true.

I was very confused about that point for a long time because I knew the guy who directed Symphony in the Night was Koji Igarashi. And there is a credit in Circle of the Moon for a guy whose handle is Koji, but that is not Kojiigarashi. It is a weird coincidence that the director is named Koji. I'm also learning things. Circle of the Moon was produced by Konami Computer Entertainment Kobe, which was the company that the studio that had also produced Castlevania Legends for Game Boy. a monochrome in like 1998, which was sort of positioned as a prequel to Symphony of the Night.

Yeah. It was not very good. Those two games, though, that makes a lot of sense. I didn't know that before just now, but that makes a lot of sense. I learned you good. Well, those are both games that try to do something different with the format,

uh, with, uh, introducing Sonia Belmont as a definitive, like, founder of the Belmont clan, which is then almost immediately retconned. Right. And whereas Circle of the Moon, starts you

underneath the castle. You fight your way up instead of fighting your way in, which is a really interesting development. You actually start with like the introduction is a confrontation with Dracula. With Dracula?

Bye. Which I think is very evocative of Simpheionite as well because the first thing that happens in Sylvania night is you meet death and he does the same thing. Well, you actually fight Dracula at the beginning as like a prologue.

That's a Dracula. Rondo of Blood. The first thing that happens to Alucard. Alucard. So Circle of the Moon was sort of an homage to Symphony of the Night by those developers or something. I don't think it was an homage so much as just like they said we should do something with this new hardware

that we could not do with the original. And Castlevania Legends tried to add some systems to the basic, you know, linear Castlevania game. But man, it was a really badly made game. It was just like super stiff and not fun to play, like the original Castlevania on Game Boy. And you certainly weren't going to make a 3D game on the GBA. No. I mean, there were some 3D games, but it was, like, that was not the highlight of the system. It was definitely not its strength.

So why did they make a game that was similar to Symphony of the Night? I think because, I mean, they had the concept there. Like, here was Symphony Night, a game that was pretty well beloved and actually sold pretty well, even if it wasn't a blockbuster. And, like, the formula was there. Like, here's, you know, how you kind of structure a castle, and here's how you make the systems work. And Circle the Moon does build on a lot of the systems you saw in Symphony the Night, but it does a lot of things that are really extremely bad. Like, it has, it's dark.

You move at a really slow pace until you get the running ability, which happens very early on, at which point you're like, why do I have to double tap to run everywhere? If they gave me this like as my first item, why didn't they just let me run by default? Yeah, you feel like you have concrete shoes. Yeah. And you really need a lot of consumable items, but there's no shop. So you have to get consumables as random drops. Also speaking of random drops, there is a skill system where you combine, yes, dual setup system. You combine two different cards and it gives you special powers, which is kind of cool.

You can like customize which two you pair up and that's really great, but most of them drop at random and a lot of the best ones, you have to just like farm enemies endlessly. And if you don't have a fact, you don't know where to go. It is such a good idea that is not a. intuitive and bad. It's such a great idea. They did it again in the next game, Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance,

in a much better way that is far more intuitive and more, I think, fundamentally presented in a way that seems innate to Castlevania. Circle of the Moon brings so much interesting stuff and so much clever stuff to the table that it's a shame. It's very, very bad. And it especially suffers... It's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. It's pretty bad.

It's the worst of them. It's the worst, but it was so great to have something that was like Symphony It was extremely impressive when the Game Boy Advance first came out. I remember in a very brief time I lived in New York, New Jersey, and I would take the train into New York City every once in a while, like every few days, and I would just like sit there and play, and I was like, I can't believe I'm playing a Castlevania nonlinear game on a handheld system. But then I went back after, you know, a couple of years, like four or five years later. It was just like, wow, I can't believe how extremely not good this handheld non-linear

Castlevania is. Did I tell you guys about that game was so dark? You know, this was before backlit Game Boy Advances existed before the SP. Oh, I know. So the only option was either to play outside in direct sunlight or two inches away from a 100-watt bulb, and you burn your face. So I bought this modification kit for the Game Boy Advance you could get that would actually put a TV out on it. and you could plug it into your TV and I played halfway through that game

the second half on the TV and that's before the Game Boy Player came out. Yeah, I remember playing it on the Game Boy Player and I remember playing it on the Game Boy Advance SP once I bought that. And I played that game to start to finish because I'm a big obviously a big

Castlevania guy for those games and I when I went back to it I was like, oh right, this was the one that was really dark and impossible to see. And I thought that was the problem and it's not right it's a it's non-intuitive it doesn't come together and it especially suffers by comparison to symphony the night which as i previously said is the greatest video game of all time all time uh and so if it had been the first one like if if if if that had been what uh super

castlvania was it would be considered it would be remembered as an all-time classic you know because all the ideas are there and the approach is there and the the the battle arena is positioned in a really clever way and in a clever space. And starting from the bottom of the castle and working your way up is really cool. And, you know, there is an appeal to trying to figure out what those cool tarot-card-looking DSS cards do by trying, by, you know, just hitting the button and hoping for the best. But unfortunately, it is not good, especially for its vintage. Yeah.

I still think you're being too hard on it. I've played through it three times, and it's frustrating. Did you try the different modes, like wizard mode and stuff? No, I'm not that kind of guy. I'm not a wizard kind of guy. I'm more like a page boy. That explained your haircut. So, yeah, okay, so you're willing to stand up a little bit for Circle of the Moon.

Yeah. Well, I give it so much credit for reviving the Symphony of the Night style game when we were so hungry for it. People like me and you, we wanted more. It was an act of desperation. Yeah, so it was so exciting. and I give it credit for that. It's not the greatest game. They improved on it dramatically in the next few games.

And it's kind of painful to play at times, especially when it's dark and slow and stuff. But, you know, I thoroughly enjoyed it when it came out. Those games? Oh, sorry. And after that, when I played it. For games that are, like, all about mobility, like, every upgrade you get in Cynthia Night is about moving faster, you know, turning into a wolf, you move faster, turning into a bat, you move in different directions, the- Getting items of candles. Yeah. It's, it's all about moving. And I feel like they got that with Circle of the Moon.

And that's why you start off so achingly slow so they can artificially build in that level of improvement. But then that's still the default is like having to double tap to move anywhere at a decent clip. Yeah, I remember the double tapping. I also feel like every copy of Circle of the Moon sold should be retroactively considered a copy of Symphony of the Night sold because that's what sold that game. Okay. You're also stuck with a whip the whole game, right? Yeah, but you can. Can you upgrade your whip?

You can do the Whipsman. Oh, the Wipsman. That was cool. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, so not so great. Okay. The next game to kind of come out that made people say, oh, yes, nonlinear games. How nice was Shanty.

Just kidding. That didn't actually make anyone say that because no one bought it. But if Capcom had printed more than 10,000 copies of it, I'm sure that it would have been a big hit. I didn't even know that was a Capcom game. It was published by Capcom. They had this weird little thing. I talked about this recently with the guys from two tribes who also had a game published with Capcom Toki Tori for Game Boy Color,

but Capcom was like picking up these kind of oddball little games on PlayStation and Game Boy Color and like, you know, supporting games that they were only going to publish a few thousand copies of and saying, let's take a chance on these, let's see what happens. We have Resident Evil to make us a lot of money so we can afford to take a chance on something that might be a breakout hit. And I don't know that any of those games were breakout hits, but I'm really grateful that Capcom did have that sort of line for a while

where they were publishing weird stuff. They don't really do that anymore, and I miss it. Yeah. So Shantay is a Game Boy Color game. I didn't hear about it until maybe 10 years later. Oh, so it was not affordable at that point. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't know there was.

I played on an emulator or something at that point, I think. I didn't know there was a first Shantay game until I played the second one, and it started with references. I thought the series started with Shantay, too. It's weird. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that game flew below the radar. I kind of take for granted that people had heard of it,

but that's because I was like really, not fixated, but really determined to do what little I could with my blog at the time to raise the profile of 2D games. And, you know, so like the 200 people who read my blog were like, wow, 2D games. And everyone else was like, whoa. So you guys didn't read my blog back then. That's okay.

That was a long time. It was 2002. We were babies. I do feel like I might have gotten, the later Shantae games, thanks to you, though. So that probably counts. I was very quick to, like, sing the praises of Shanty. I want to say that I went down to Wayforward's offices to do a preview on Shanty for D.S.

But maybe I'm misremembering and getting that conflated with something else. False memories. Could be. I did a lot of trips back. I was there when they developed Shantay. I remember this. Yeah. So, anyway, video games.

So Shantay happened, and no one noticed. But then a few months later, Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance happened, and a lot of people did notice, although mostly they were like, this game has got problems. People actually liked that less than Circle of the Moon at the time, which to me says, people need to stop and take stock of their lives. Agreed. Now, that's with Castle A and Castle B, right? Yeah, I mean, Harmony of Dissidence has some problems, for sure. The Castle layout is really confusing, and the music is very difficult to listen to after Circle of the Moon, because Circle. of the Moon used, like, all of its storage space on sampling, like, music from other systems.

Like, all the, all the, all the, all the music is, uh, basically, like, streaming music. The, the best thing about Circle of the Moon is if you play it with headphones, because the soundtrack is amazing. It's got a lot of static because of the low sampling rate, but still, it's very good. Whereas Harmony of Dissinence is pretty much all generated from the Game Boy hardware, which was not that good by comparison, and it's pretty rough. And not only that, but, I mean, the, the composer really, went in, or composers, tried to create more atmospheric music and even dissonant music,

as hinted at in the title. And the hardware just was not suited for that. They needed to use more samples, I guess. The best music on Game Boy Advance was sampled. Yeah. Harmony of Dissinence was fine. You know, it's very clear that they knew what they wanted to do. They wanted to make Symphony of the Night again. And they knew that it had sold Circle of the Moon. which was, that was a launch title, wasn't it, for GBA? Or very close. It was very close to launch. I can't remember in the U.S.

because I imported the system from Japan in advance. But it was like a month after the Japanese launch, the game came out. It was really early. So they knew that there was a market for it and an audience for it. And even by that time, there were definitely, there were people like me who were writing articles on the burgeoning blog scene about how Cynthia Knight is amazing. So they knew that they wanted to do that again, and they stumbled the first two times out of the gate, I feel like, you know? I agree. This was a different team stumbling, though. This was Koji Ikarashi's team. Yeah. But, you know, some of the people who worked on Symphony the Night did not work on Harmony of Dissonance.

So I feel like, you know, you really feel their absence. I don't know exactly which people it is. I just know that it was a different staff. And so there was, I think, some struggling to kind of match the good ideas in Symphony. While also kind of returning it to a more Belmont-focused play. So you play as Juiced Belmont, one of the kids, the Belmont kids. Juiced. And so you wield a whip, but he's like also descended from Cycle Beldades so he can cast magic. So in addition to having, you know, the subweapons, the holy water and the boomerang and stuff, you also acquire spells. And so this becomes a better version of Circle the Moon's DSS system.

where you can combine magic spells and subweapons and create really cool stuff like you know an ice spell and a boomerang that you throw it and it stops and it just like spins while spitting fragments of ice everywhere. It's so good. There's like some real customization available there and all these things are you know

they're compulsory within the game. They're not random drops so you don't have to... I like this game a lot. I mean, at the time it came out I read about it in advance, and I actually had a Game Boy Advance flash cartridge that could hold one game at a time. I downloaded the Japanese ROM and played it on my original Game Boy Advance, you know, for a while.

And actually, the Game Boy Player came out around that time or shortly after it, and so when I bought the real copy, it was a pleasure to play. And, you know, the Game Boy Advance, you could hook up the link cable with the Game Boy Advance and use that as a controller on the GameCube. You know, I did that,

that all the time with the game boy player and it was so much fun so i was excited just i was just consuming these games as they came out i was so excited they're making more um castlvania uh metrovania kind of games so that's my memory what hurts it i think is the castle layout and i feel like the castle a castle b stuff was meant to be as big a reveal as the inverted castle but the castles like individually felt smaller and also we after you get the inverted castle you kind of expect it. Well, yeah, and it's also really hard to get around the castle. I don't think it has a transporter, does it?

They're not very convenient. They're not very convenient. And there's two different kinds because there's the ones that take you from A to B. And there are the ones that take you around the castle you're in. So that part of it could be more intuitive. Right. But overall, pretty fun. And also it was a reaction to Circle the Moon in the sense that Circle the Moon was such a dark game.

And they said, well, why don't we make this one brighter? So it is an, if you play it on anything except, original Game Boy advanced hardware. It's like my eyes are bleeding because everything is neon. Here is your bright red protagonist who is always glowing blue. Actually, that's fine. I'm fine with that, but it's like the backgrounds are all

like puky green and purple. It's just like, they're so garish. Isn't this the game that well, it had a slide mechanic where you could slide backwards? Yeah, you have like a backdash and a forward dash. So you end up dashing around everywhere. Yeah, so you pretty much control with the shoulder buttons, which

was also not, it was like one step better than Circle the Moon, but still not great. Might as well just make it run faster. And then at this point, Nintendo was like, wait a minute, Metroid, we have this Metroid property. We should do something with it, guys. So they let some studio in Texas make Metroid Prime. And then Nintendo themselves were like, yes, we should make a game internally also.

It should be the next step forward for the series. It should be Game Boy Advance. Yes, 2D. It's so counterintuitive. Like, Metroid Prime was the high. high-tech, groundbreaking spin-off game. And Fusion was the humble, low-tech next step in the franchise. But I think Fusion is a really good game that took a bad rap because it was way too

talky. There were a lot of places here where Nintendo was clearly trying to figure out, like, how do we appeal to a different audience than was playing video games 10 years ago when the last Metroid came out? And so it's much less of a... figured out yourself kind of experience than Super Metroid was. And I think they went a little too far on handholding.

But that was kind of like what Nintendo was trying to figure out at that point. Like, how do we make games that are deep and accessible while making it easier for people to realize how much depth there is without the getting in over their heads? I was sorely disappointed with Metroid Fusion because there is all this, you clear

a whole area, and then you go to the next area, and you clear the whole area, and you clear the whole area. And it felt like the opposite of what I wanted, which was exploring unknown linked corridors of, you know, of Zeebs, whatever. Zebis. So there is that, but I am willing to go to bat for this game and say that the suffocating sensation, the structure of the game, was very deliberate because in the second half of the game, you start to break the rules of the game.

I mean, it's basically, it prefigures what Portal did when Portal is like helping you let you escape into the scenery behind the simulation. Like Metroid Fusion did that five years before portal, where you, you know, you have this computer constantly telling you, you need to go here and you go places and then you're like, well, that's weird. What happens if I bombed this wall over here? Oh, I've gone into the station structure beyond the simulation areas.

And I'm sneaking around and I'm getting things out of sequence and the computer's not happy about this. And I'm finding weird experiments that the federations do. even though I thought they were the good guys. What's happening here? Yeah, I didn't get that far, apparently, because I never... Clearly. So you've uncovered something really amazing about this game.

You blew it. You blew it. Everyone knows. Nobody knows this. Everyone knows. Also, your suit looks dumb in this game, because you're, like, covered with green goo or something. Blue.

Blue, whatever. And you eventually reclaim your original colors. Like, everything that seems weird and off about Metroid Fusion in the beginning is rectified by the end of the game. The one thing the end of the game does wrong is lock you out of exploring the station when it's time to go to the final battle. It really needs to give you just the chance

to go around and collect stuff, but there is a point of no return that sucks. But if it didn't do that one thing, like the Samus at the end of Metroid Fusion is not the Samus at the beginning of the game. She's like her proper self again. The whole point is reclaiming who Samus is. They buried the best part of the game

in the second third or the last third of the game or something apparently because maybe I gave up before that point but I remember beating several areas three two three four I don't know and it felt like it's just okay you go here you beat this okay you go here you beat this and I didn't like it uh I've played it but I for some reason I never finished it which is weird because I will yeah I will grind for souls like you would not believe in the Castlevania games something about it lost me and I don't quite remember what but I really liked everything about it playing it's very linear that might be what through most of the game.

Like, it's very much about, here's what you have to do next. You're not allowed to go anywhere. I've locked the door behind you, Samus. You need to go find this thing now. But again, like, that's the first half of the game. And the second half is about Samus being like, no, screw you. I'm going to do my own thing. You've got to put a lot of time in it to get to that point.

I remember getting to the point where you break out of the glass tube. Okay. The glass walkway. But that's as far as I remember getting. Is that in Super Metroid? Yeah, it is in Super Metroid. Do you do a super bomb and you get break into the water? I might just be thinking of Super Metroid,

which I played for the first time recently and really liked. All right, I can't trust anything you're saying about this game. Yeah. Anyway, I feel like, okay, so before we talk about the next Castlevania game, I do want to talk about the next Metroid game because I feel like Metroid Zero Mission is the good one. Fusion is great, but Metroid Zero Mission with that game, they really, I think, put together the perfect Metro game.

To me, it is, I know I'm just, spoiling a polygon feature down the line. But to me, Metroid Zero Mission is the best Metroid game because it takes all the like the structure and the ideas from the original Metroid and it modernizes them and it turns everything into a semi-guided quest where it gives you hints. Like you need to go over here. Now you figure out how to get there. And then the whole thing becomes like a series of puzzles and like, you know, environmental puzzles and challenges and and boss battles to get from

where you are now to where you need to be and oh, there's a detour here that I wasn't expecting. It's really good. I absolutely loved Zero Mission. It's one of those few games where I think the first time I played it I did not stop until I finished it. I don't know however long it was, you know, maybe just... It's like a two hour game.

Yeah, it's not that long, but I could not put it down because it's a remake of the original Metroid with Super Metroid-like mechanics added to it and there's a secret bonus thing at the end where you have a different suit, like your zero suit or something, right? It might be not secret, but it's...

Yeah, so there's a part where you're... Right, the whole epilogue of the game basically takes the bonus in the original Metroid where if you beat the game in like less than an hour and a half, you could play through the game again as Samus in just like a leotard, like without armor. So instead of doing that with this game, what they said is, what if we made this part of the story?

So at the end, Sammas beats the mother brain and escapes and she, like, gets into her spaceship and she takes off her suit into just like a kind of, I don't know, form fitting. Zero suit? Yeah, they call it the zero suit because it's in Zero Mission. Okay. But it's just like, you know, like an undersuit, basically. Full body suit, but skin tight. Yeah. Yeah, like they've really sexied it up in the Smash Brothers games, but it's not like that in Zero Mission.

It's just like a functional unitard, basically. It's cover, you know, full body coverage. But then she's attacked without expecting it, and her ship crashes, and she's not able to put her armor back on. So then it introduces this stealth sequence where you have to creep through the, uh, the pirate mothership. Yeah. Yeah. And then you, you find a place where you can reclaim, like, better armor for Samus and basically upgrade her to her true potential from the Chosso space bird people, whatever. Love the Chosu.

Yeah. And then basically the rest of zero mission, like the next five minutes, it pretty much amounts to when you get the hyperbeam and Super Metroid and you're just like destroying everything. So it's very like after half an hour of creeping through the ship and basically not being able to do anything except stun enemies and like constantly dying and being reset, suddenly you're super powered and you just destroy everything. It's very satisfying. Yeah, I love that game. I think that's, I mean, it's a good, just like you did with the new Super Mario Brothers, you on your list. you should you could put that as number one in a Metroid series of ranked games

No I mean I really think I would Super Metroid I love But Zero Mission I feel is the best of old and new Yeah if you rank them on terms of Gameplay merit As in what's the most advanced of these games That does it the best And not just like which one's the most legendary

Which one had the most impact Then maybe you could put it ahead of Super Metroid I'd say And that's generally how I approach it. Yeah. That's not how I approach it, but I appreciate that approach. I can't say like what game is most legendary for you, the audience, because it's different. But I can objectively say like this game has the best mechanics. It has the best structure. It has the best refinement. So that's where I put zero mission. It's entirely understandable. I wish that game. I wish Samus Returns had been more

like zero mission and less like. Yeah, me too. I mean, it's good, but it could have been better. Unless like a steaming pile of Zeeves. Wow. Okay. Chozo dropping. Go in some places. Yeah, I didn't like that.

We talked about that game already, didn't we? Didn't we do it like a mini? Yeah, okay. We did. That was cool. Chris, I can tell you're waiting for us to talk about Castlevania, Ariaf Sara. Biting my time. Go for it.

Ariaf Sara rules. Ari of Sorrow was great. It does something that feels like it should have been the next step from Castlevania for like the previous 10 years, it lets you play as Dracula, which is great because you're playing as Dracula, but you still have to fight Dracula. So there's a lot of layers to it. I think more than any other games in the series before or since, Ariya of Sorrow and Donof Sorrow both capture one of the elements that was really good about something in the night, which is that you can get the enemy's weapons. The difference is that Ariav Sorrow does them all this

souls that have different abilities and can slot into different places. So there is that grinding element to it that I think is weirdly kind of important for Castlevania. Like, I don't think I would enjoy as a player a Castlevania game where everything you got was, you know, was regulated. Like, the only things you got were from bosses, you know? I think that would be fine. But I kind of like the idea that they have to make it.

fun for you to run back and forth through a corridor and kill the same enemy over and over. It can get to the point where it's not fun anymore, but Ari of Sorrow and Don of Sorrow both do it really well as far as balancing it. Yeah, so we should talk a little bit about the system that they have, the soul system. What is it called? I think it's just called the soul system because there's bullet souls are like subweapons. And I can't remember what they're all called. They're red, blue, and yellow. Yeah. So there's three different types. There's like weapon and support and skill. Yeah. So you can have three equipped at once, which ties into the secret ending of the game, which is very cool. And also into the failed ending of the game, which is also very cool.

Yes. Yeah, I really feel like Ari of Sorrow is probably the best of the nonlinear Castlevania games. I know you say symphony that is the greatest game of all time. Okay. I love that game but I really feel like aria of sorrow is where the design of everything really hit its peak and I don't think they were able to best the the soul system like Don Osaro tweaked it a little bit but like are aria is just good and it has like great atmosphere despite the low resolution and the sort of staticy sound like it it you know the the the presentation with the sort of Ayami Kojima paintings for characters instead of the anime-style characters they brought in with the DS games to reach a younger audience. And I get why they did that. Okay, fine. But, like, it really is

important for telling a story that's actually pretty dark. Like, you are, oh, crap, the bad guy. And there's an even worse bad guy who wants to be you, which means he's going to, like, kill you and steal your essence so he can become the ultimate bad guy. And then the good guys are like, we're keeping an eye on you because we know you're the bad guy. even if you don't realize it, and if you get out of line, we're going to kill you. It's like, it's super kind of grim. Yeah. And it's, I, I, are kind of grim, brothers.

Super kind of grim. I knew you were going to say that because it's in line with what you were just talking about, which is, it is probably a technically better game than Symphony of the Night. But, you know, we have this deep love for Symphony Night that it's hard to shake. I mean, I do too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I've talked a little bit about Symphony Night through the year.

Innovation. You have to give credit for innovation of Symphony of the Night being the first to do those things, even though, you know, Ari of Sorrow could be better in almost every way, which it's a wonderful. It's like a 10 of 10 game, that game. And I think the same for the follow-up, but we can, are we going to talk about that? I like. I like Don of Sorrow a little bit better, but it's like super close. And I think what I actually like is playing on the DS. Yeah, like playing on the advance. I do like the D.S. better. I think the main quest of Dawn of Sorrow is a little worse than Arias. but the second game that you get from getting the worst ending is extremely good extremely good it's only been bested by bloodstain curse of the moon because that's basically the same thing yeah like hey here's castellvania three go for it kids the thing that aria of sorrow does that i think makes it appeal the most is that it's the game that really goes back to symphony the night because Alicard's in it. Like, it's very clear that they're telling you...

Wait, that guy was Alucard? Yeah, Ericado? Yeah, turns out he was Alicard. But from the start, that's then telling you, hey, this is what we're doing. We're doing another Symphony of Night, like as close as we can get it. And it does have those cool moments.

Like, there is a Belmont that you can't play as. There's, you know, Alicard's there. There's the idea of collecting things. And it also adds to the storyline in a really cool way, in that we find out how Dracula works. works. Like the big question that you have playing through so many Castlevania games is why is Dracula the devil? Like, why is Dracula, why is death itself Dracula's sidekick? And the answer that you get in, uh, Ari of Sorrow is, he's not just Dracula. He's every monster. Well, he's chaos, basically. Yeah, he's chaos. He has every monster. When Alucart says the castle is a creature of chaos in Symphony of the Night, he's actually talking about like, His dad, too, because his dad is part of the castle. They are one in the same entity.

Yeah, it's chaos with a capital C. Right. As it turns out. You guys are blowing my mind here. Yeah. You need to go and pay attention to the story, young man. I know, but I haven't played, well, I've played Ariasara two or three times, but that was a long time ago. But that game, isn't it set in the future?

Yeah, it's set in the year, just the year 2030. It's not that far in the future anymore. Well, it was. The thing is, it's a cool fusion of futuristic ideas with the sort of 18, 17th century sort of monsters and stuff of Castlevania, you know, together. I think that's a really cool fusion of ideas. Like early on you fight soldiers

who fell in the war against Dracula in 1999 and they're like, they, you know, drop grenades at you. And there's a laser gun in there. Yeah, it's the perfect... There's handguns. You can walk around just like shooting guys with gats. And those are great because they're hit scans.

So you shoot it guys and they immediately get hit. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's, again, it's the Castlevania game where you get a gun. It's so good. And I love that, like, much like with Alicard, you never get whips. You have to use swords and spears and hammers. There's a, there's like a chain sword, which is pretty much a whip, but it's just the one.

Yeah, but you're not the guy with the whip. And I look, everything about that game builds on itself. It is kind of, I feel like that is kind of the apotheosis of Castlevania, is Ari of Sorrow and Don of Sorrow. Because they are very closely linked. Aria's castle layout is probably better. It's creepier, which is cool. Yeah, the hanging gardens where it's just like all this disconnected stuff floating above the castle. Yeah.

It's really disorienting and it ties into the finale, so it's pretty rad. Again, I think Don, for me, edges it out, but honestly, that's a matter of hardware. If there was like a switch re-release of Aria Sorro, geez, don't even... Don't taunt us. Yeah, that would be amazing. They already got it. They've got it there.

They could just put it out. They could just stop making it. mobile games for five minutes. That's why they're the richest company now. They just make mobile stuff. They could be a slightly richer. They wouldn't be. It costs more money to make real games.

No, no. All they got to do, they already made the best ones. All they're going to do is put those back out. So you want them to stop making trick games that milk every one of every dollar they've ever made and make like art again? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, that's like backwards. This is the 21st century.

I could, like, I could not be more. excited about bloodstained and i don't even like read the emails i just like is the game out no okay into the trash you go because i just want that game again you know yeah well it's great i like donna sarah a whole lot because um the increased resolution and the you know the platform was more comfortable to play on the music sounded a lot better too yeah higher quality audio those two games, they are very pinnacle. talking about Dawn now? Are we going straight into... I think we talked about it. There's not too much to say more

about it. It's kind of like the other one. The one thing that I think... The one thing that I think really holds it back is that they have to do it in a slightly gimmicky style. Like, you have to have the touchscreen mechanics because it's a... It's a DS launch title, which is why it's Castlevania DS.

But it really holds up. I've played... That's probably the one I've played... That and Ecclesia are probably the ones I've played most recently. And I really, really like it. And I think the DS is the perfect system for a Castlevania game of that type, because you get the map right on the screen.

You don't have to continually go back and forth between the map and the subscreen. Like, you can display whatever you want on the screen that the action's not on. Although, isn't there one of those games where you don't actually get the map on one of the screens later? And it's really frustrating. One of the Castlevania games? No. No. You can always put it on the top screen.

You can also have a status screen. Like, I know Portrait of Ruin, I would often keep the status screen. Oh, yeah, you can switch it. Okay. So let's talk about Portrait of Ruin. What do you guys think about that one? I think it's really good.

Like, it's not quite as good as Don of Sorrow, but the thing it does really fun is the switching between characters. That's also the thing that it fails to deliver on the premise of, because you never want to play a Charlotte. That's not true. Her magic is so good. Yeah, but you can't play as her for, long periods of time. Like, if you're navigating the castle, it's always going to be

Jonathan. Really? Oh. Oops. Well, maybe, look, maybe I'm completely wrong. But I would always, like, because your magic's limited. And because there's often, like, a lead-up time, it's a lot easier to play it as Jonathan. I mostly use Jonathan for, like, the weird stuff he could do. Like, one of his special weapons is a paper airplane. And one of his special weapons is curry that you just, like, throw in the ground. And it's, I guess, it's really spicy. And it kills enemies. Yep. Yeah, that's how you get the, you can get a form of the, Persephone soul with that one, just throw food at her until she dissolves. I do not like games where you can play as two different characters or switch between them.

There's something about it that feels unsettled and uncertain for me. Like I just, something like I enjoy maybe projecting myself as one character throughout the game. So in game, and there are party games and things where you have to switch, you know, and RPGs and stuff, switch guys and you just do a little side quest while they're doing this or that. I don't like it. I just don't. Yeah, but this game isn't, you're not like sending one character off to do other things. You're just alternating between which weapon genes, basically.

If you're two people, who are you? You know what I mean? You're neither. You're still you controlling two. So why is one person controlling two different people? Because it would be really difficult to do that game with co-op. So you just push one button and one guy disappears and turns into a woman. No, the other character doesn't disappear.

You just cycle out who's in the lead. They even take that much. So the other character is behind you and you still control them. Like you can cast spells with Charlotte when you're playing as Jonathan by I've seen the right button. Man, it's been a long time since I play this game. Clearly. I know I completed it, though.

And I think the game does some really clever things with the multiple character set up. Like, when you fight Astarte, the Egyptian goddess, she has a charm spell. And if you are playing as Jonathan, you'll lose control of Jonathan if he gets hit with the charm spell. And he'll, like, start fighting for Estarte. So you're forced to fight that entire battle as Charlotte. And, like, the best thing you can do for that battle is, like, render Jonathan as impotent as possible, like, give him the worst stuff. so he can't hurt me that now I've just been

my memories have been tainted by other games where you could swap characters instantly the East games do that too and they're very good wise get out of

no I really like that battle and I really like the idea that the other character is always present they're always attacking they're always taking damage which drains your magic

but I feel like it doesn't do enough like you I feel like I feel like if it did more, it would become gimmicky. Maybe so, maybe so. Maybe I just want it to be a slightly different game. Maybe. I do like the idea of it building, like, hey, if you liked that game where you could go up just 200%.

Here's a game where you go up to a thousand percent because every, you know, you go into all the different maps and each one has their own percentage completion. Right. The ones in the second half that are just inverted versions of the other one, of the original ones, those could be better. Yeah, I agree. Like a lot, especially the ones that are like the inverted castle and symphony. The inverted cast is perfect and beautiful I don't know what you're talking about By the time

Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun done done done done Anyway By the time Portrait of Ruin came out I felt like they were just reaching For a new mechanic or gimmick or something That's the last Castlevania game I finished I think all the way through Because after that

I don't know like I thought the dual character system was great And I love the fact that when you fight the final battle, Dracula is like, wait a minute, you're two people? I'm going to be two people too. So he teams up with death. And he's like, death and Dracula fighting Jonathan and Charlotte. It's like a really fun idea where the bad guy is like, that's no fair. I'm going to balance things out.

Also, Bronner is a really good boss fight. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. And it has the great mode where you can play as the sisters. And it's entirely stylus controlled, but not in like a stupid way. It's like they, you know, they float around. so basically whenever you have them float it drains their magic bar a little bit

which then refills and then each sister has a different spell like style one of them like uses slashing attacks and the other uses like projectile attacks what year did this 2007 I want to say 2006

that explains it I was married that's why I didn't play it more than once I okay my wife really likes that game I really like the item crash mechanic in that game too where they both do their cool signature pose

I love that Charlotte's double jump she gets the broomstick from the trainee witches in Symphony the Night that's really cool and I actually really like the voice samples when they switch Jonathan Charlie! Charlie! Jonathan! Oh my God! That's why I'd sit there and do that over and over again

just so I could hear it. Also, wind. Which game has like a... I just have this weird memory of like a left portion of the castle with clowns and stuff, stuff in it and you're going a loop and you're sort of lost. That's a quarter to run. It is. I love that sequence, whatever that was. I remember thinking that was awesome. Got to get that cool card. So, yeah. Also, I really like the idea of a Castlevania game that plays like a Castlevania game, but it has quests. Like, and the quests are like, not entirely optional, but there are certainly like stuff that you can do without

needing to think about it too hard unless you specifically want to do this one thing. And I feel like that's what they really built on with Order of Ecclesia. Like, yeah, the, the, the quest concept. The quests in Order of Clesia, I thought, were really good. Because they also contribute to the plot, and they make... Order of Ecclesia is... The worst Castellanian game ever made. What?

I don't like it. I didn't finish that one. Really? It was too hard or something. Worst it ever made, though? Yeah. That was just kidding. It's not the worst.

That's just ignorance speaking, I'm afraid. Yeah, that's ignorance. I'm not in love with Order of Ecclesia like a lot of people are, but I at least recognize that it is very good. Order of Ecclesia is... It's not very good. Because I didn't finish it. it and I didn't want to finish it.

It is very good. Too hard. It's extremely good, actually, as it turns out. I have a piece of paper right here that says Order of Ecclesia is not very good. Hang on, I'm going on Wikipedia. We just wrote that right now. It says Order of Ecclesia is a video game that is very good. No, but I feel like Order Ecclesia was them consciously going back to Castlevania 2,

not just in terms of like level up mechanics and building a contiguous environment that you could move through. But like, here's villages. Here's manners, basically. Like, here's how all this stuff would work if we did it today. Wait a minute. What year did this come out? 2008. Ah, that's why I didn't finish.

Was that the year that you just had really bad taste? I got married again. The Liz Taylor of not finishing video. Yeah. I moved. I don't know. Portrait of ruins sub-levels, like the environments, are interesting. but they're not like they often lack character like I think the coolest one's the city one where you go through the city and then down into the cathedral like that's a really cool uh environment shift the environments in ecclesia I think are actually really good and they all have really strong character like whether you're going through a swamp or whether you're going through like the mountain ridge or prison or the prison is super cool with that awful tin man monster that kills you stone dead the first time

Yeah, really strong stuff. The, the, what is it, glyphs, they're not souls anymore, they're glyphs. That system's fine, you know. I like the idea that you can interrupt enemies casting spells by stealing their power. That's a pretty cool idea, but, you know, a decent plot. I should know him. I mean, I kind of feel like bloodstained ritual of the night is basically Order of Ecclesia, too. Yeah.

They're not very subtle about it. She's even got the back tattoo. They're called shards now, not glyphs. Excuse me, sorry. Glyphs and shards. Also, also, it was like, I'm glad that we got two Castlevania games in a row with, like, a female playable character. You know, like, that was, that feels like it should have been happening more often. Yeah, especially since apparently Koji Igarashi at one point was like, oh, we have to take Sonia Belmont out of the line because it would be really hard to have a female protagonist in Castlevania.

Wild. Yeah, that didn't go over so well. Yeah. Um, so okay. But we got, but we got, uh, what's his, we got Gabriel as the founder of the Belmont clan now. Yeah, we're, he's great. That, that doesn't count. Um, Lords of Shadow is not a real thing.

Loors of Shadow is non. Technically, there is a Lords of Shadow Metroidvania. Uh, I love that game. Are we going to talk about that? Are you serious? Didn't we talk about that the first time we ever got together? I feel like we did because we've definitely talked about it. I'm like, man, I love that game.

Mirror of Fate. What? What? Mirror of Fate, HD. Oh, God, that game. I can't believe you hate a close. You don't like mirror of fate. That's bonkers.

It really makes me question a lot of things about you, Benj. I will say this. I'm like the inverted castle. You are. Everything you say just sounds like the final to-cata. I'm just like, stop. I will say this about mirror of fate. You have to respect the sheer audacity of it to be like, oh, Simon Belmont is Dracula.

Well, guess what? Trevor Belmont is Alicard. Right. and Simon, no, Gabriel Belmont is Dracula. Simon Belmont is a Scotsman. Which one becomes Alicard? What one becomes Alicard? I think Trevor becomes Alicard.

I did not pay attention to the story. It's, come on. Bad. I mean, if you didn't like the story, then what did you find a like in that game? When it first came out on whatever the heck it was, 3DS. I could not stand it just because of the graphics or something. But when they did the HD remake on Steam or something, I played through the first half of it and I thought it was okay

I could see it but you didn't like it enough to finish it no I mean it's not the greatest game of all time or anything the one thing that I think it actually did really interestingly was play like a Metroidvania but occasionally the camera angle would change and so you get these big sweeping shots of like approaching the castle

but it still played like a flat 2D game it's not good it's all of those games are bad that whole line of Castlevania the first Lords of Shadow has merits after that it's look I think the combat cross

is close to being the like it's almost stupid enough to loop back around to go yeah it's so terrible I can see that yeah the combat cross okay anyway so so the Castlevania series

ended with Order of Ecclesia in 2008 there's never been another Castlevania game and it's very sad but fortunately we have Bloodstain coming out soon but if it's like Order of Ecclesia I'm going to be totally lit down

because that game was horrible So I do want to talk about very briefly the other games that real publishers put out in the Metroidvania genre after this because there were a few. We should talk about them very briefly if you guys even played them. Did you ever play Monster Tale?

Nope. No, I don't think so. It was a charming little platformer by the creators of, I want to say Henry Hatsworth, and you had like a little monster that ran around. You were a little kid and you had a monster friend and basically all your powers and stuff were kind of controlling your monster.

monster, but it wasn't like a boy in his blob. Like, it was a more active role. What platform is this? It was on DES, I want to say. Huh. What year are we talking here? 2009-ish. Oh, thanks.

All right. So you're useless for talking about anything after, like, 2005? 2006. Okay. May 1st, 2007. Wow, the end of your life. I see. Okay.

Here's your commenter that's going to come out. 2007 is not retro anyway. Yeah. 2008 is retro now. Yeah, it's 10 years ago. Okay. What about Alien Infestation? Did you guys play that for DS?

Nope. Oh, you missed out. It was so good. I think I did for a little, a little bit. I know it was good. Do you ever finish games? Not after 2006. Okay.

We've already gone over this. I only finished Castle R&E games. I did not buy it. I played on R4 or whatever cartridge. Oh, I don't want to know about that. You should need to support Way forward. Come on. Gosh, I had so many Nintendo DS games.

I bought more than you. Okay, alien infestation was the best alien game until alien isolation came along. It was a game where you play as a squad of space marines and each space marine represented basically one life

and you could lose that life. If an alien got you, then you lost that marine. So you had like a limited number of marines and you were exploring and traveling through different spaces. It was really good. And sometimes you could find a marine

that had been captured and you could free them, you know before they were impregnated by an alien that's gross it was very gross but that's the point yeah I think I played a little bit you haven't you haven't you haven't played this does not sound like it has Dracula it I mean aliens are kind of like space Dracula

acid for blood drinking blood it's pretty similar did they did they say anything about did they define what a man is because that's kind of a man is basically food for an alien yeah but no that's wrong An incubator. An incubator for alien babies. Guys, I tell you what. So what comes next?

Let's see. Some other games. Strider, the remake. Yeah. That was a few years ago. It's not really retro at this point, but it was kind of retro because it was sort of like a combination smash up between the NES game and the arcade game. I don't dislike that game, but it doesn't have the cohesiveness that I would. that I have come to expect. My problem is that's too cohesive.

It needs a teleportation system. You have to get around everywhere on foot, and it really sucks. So is that what you wrote in your review? Yes. Extremely cohesive. No, I said it was too cohesive. It's so cohesive, it sucks.

So cohesive. Like, there's good things about it, but yeah, it didn't grab me. It just didn't have the feel. It needed a little bit of fine-tuning. It was really close, but not quite. Oh, there was Shadow Complex, which was, I think, the first attempt anyone,

any like, you know, kind of visible publisher, not indie made to say, let's take Super Metroid and just rip it the hell off. And I, I came down too hard on it to my original review. I was like, I like Super Metroid, but this game is just Super Metroid, but with like some weird political, like, right-wing activism in it. Yeah, that's why I never played it because I was a lot of Scott Card. But it was recommended to me as being like, hey, if you like Castlevania, you like this. I mean, yeah, the Orson Scott Card and Chair, like they, I'm not really on board of their politics, but if you, it's kind of like Ratatoui or The Incredibles, like if you don't know that it has this political philosophy behind it, like Ratatoui and the Incredibles are Brad Bird, so it's like super iron rand objectivism, like, you know, glory to the individual. Don't do other things for other people. But if you don't know that, then it's just like they're great stories.

Oh, thanks a lot, man. Shadow Complex does a good job of distilling the Metroid's, like Super Metroid's structure and style into sort of a cover-based third-person shooter. That just happens to be seen from a 2D perspective instead of like over the shoulder. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, I didn't get an Xbox 360 until this year. So I did not play it until, didn't they do an HD remaster on Steam or something? Yeah, it was weird.

They like, they put it, Microsoft put it on. backward compatibility and then like a month later the remake came out for xbox one and ps4 i was like i think you guys maybe did that in the wrong order for your profits i played the remake a little bit maybe earlier this year or something and i thought it was pretty neat but it wasn't like 2006 neat like it would have been whenever it came out whenever that was i think it was 2009 2009 neat you missed out yeah that's during my amnesia period okay um i mean i have some spaces in my life where I'm like, did I do that? There's like entire seasons of retronauts

that I've forgotten about. Yeah. So that's why we're doing this episode because even though I've covered this topic, I don't remember it. Yeah, that's good. You can play the same games you love over and over again if that's the case,

which is, yeah, it's great. I love not remembering my life. So then finally, let's see, is there anything else? I feel like I'm forgetting something off the top of my head. But, yeah, you started to see sort of in the DS era

and in the move, you know, the advent of Xbox Live Arcade and that sort of thing like, you know, self-published smaller games on HD consoles, people started to say, oh wait, this Metroid thing, that's actually not so bad. We should do some games like that. But I don't think games like Shadow Complex would have come along, if not for the indie revival of the Metroidvania concept. And that's what we're going to talk about in the next section. But this once, can I impose on you to hear me, the end of course on you to hear me out. Ads help us continue to keep this show free to download

while still allowing us to invest the time and energy into making retronauts the best possible exploration of video game history we can create. So we'd like your feedback on what kind of ads you'd actually want to hear. If you enjoy retronauts, we'd be grateful if you could take a quick and painless survey. It should take less than five minutes, and it's completely anonymous. So please take a moment and go to www.podcast1.com slash my survey. or go to www.podcast1.com and click on the survey banner. If you filled out a survey for us in the past, thanks.

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That's meundies.com slash retro. I'm trying to I'm trying to I don't know. I'm trying to save me for myself. I know. I don't know. the whole mirror of fate order of Ecclesia thing.

There may be no saving you. You might be drunk currently. You might be beyond redemption. Just staring at those windows. All right. So, as I mentioned at the end of our last segment, the Metroidvania series of games, you know, the Metroids and the Castlevania's that came out,

inspired a lot of independent developers. And we really saw indie development take off in, like, 2005, 2006. You saw things like, I guess maybe. No, Steam wasn't like a haven for that yet, but you did have Xbox Live Arcade launch with Xbox in 2005 and it came out with, you know, geometry wars. And I think that was kind of really the point at which there was a sensation like, oh, old video, like, you know, small video games, arcade style video games. Those have a place if we find the right venue for them and selling them for $10 is the right venue. Digital releases. Yes, let's do that. So that really kind of spurred the growth and the movement toward independently developed and published video games. And one of the big, you were going to say something? Yeah, I feel like the rise of blogs also powered that because it let indie games get a lot more exposure that they wouldn't have had before, you know, their mainstream publications. I mean, you were just telling us earlier you were writing a blog trying to glorify 2D games and stuff.

no one read it, but then, you know, stuff like the one-up show was covering independent games and giving it tons of exposure. I think, I mean, I'm not saying blogging wasn't important because I did a lot of that and I feel like, yes, I was important. But I do feel like, you know, once indie games hit Xbox and PS3 and so forth, you know, you saw people in the press, the mainstream press with, you know, huge reach say, wait, this is good. We should write about this. You know, people that I worked with at one-up. like Nick Sutner, went on to work with PlayStation, and, you know, he currently works as kind of like a whip for spearheading independent game development. So, you know, I look at stuff like pixel junk and so forth, and I really feel like that coincided with a change of philosophy within the mainstream games press. Could there also be a rise of a new generation of developers that was looking back to create the experiences of their youth, their favorite genres? 100%. And that's where you see people start to say, I loved Metroid when I was a kid and frickin' no one else is making them even Nintendo. So screw you guys. I'm going to make my own.

In fact, forget the blackjack. So yeah, so you started to see indie games in the shape of Metroid. And it was pretty great. So for this final segment, instead of going through like, you know, a cut and dry history of indie games in the style of Metroidvania, I wanted to ask you what your five favorite indie Metroidvania games are and we'll talk about those and hopefully kind of chart the progression of that movement through these standout titles certainly the best one I've played in recent memory is SteamWorld Dig too. The first one also being very very good but two being a

really good build on what that first game accomplished. Yeah the first game was randomly generated dungeons. Basically, you were digging into the ground and the layouts of everything was randomized. Yeah. SteamWorld Dig is, Dig 2 is instanced and very carefully designed and has some

really, really challenging puzzle rooms within it. Yes. But I love the idea that it makes a mechanic out of backtracking. Like, you have to backtrack. You know, because you're digging in search of oris and gems. And

so you have to keep going back up to the of us to sell it to get the stuff that allows you to go deeper. Well, also, you only have so much light. Yeah. So you're running out of light and fuel and stuff. That's what I don't like about that game. I like Steam World Dig, too, in general. I've got it on the switch. Is that what it is? And don't

you run out of air or something like that? Or is it energy? Light. I didn't like that. I mean, you can still dig when it's dark. But the thing is, like, it doesn't take long for you to build up more light. And so this is something that I've said many times about the Steam World games is that they have

the play loop of a great dungeon crawler, where you go in, you explore. Initially, you can only go like a very short distance because your resources are so limited. You only have so much storage space on you to, you know, carry the stuff that you've collected. Enemies are really strong, so you feel overwhelmed. So you're going back to the surface like every five minutes. But the further you dig, the more you build up your abilities and the more progress you make and the more checkpoints you activate. And so then you start, you know, by the end of the game, you're digging for half an hour at a time. And you're really going on these deep explorations. It really captures the vibe of something like Etrian Odyssey or Wizardry or something where at the beginning you're like, this is scary and I am very weak.

And at the end, you're like, I am God. Yeah. And it has a, like that progression is very smooth and very well done. Yeah, it's very good. And I really like that they did. Steam World Dig 1 is exactly the story you expect because you dig deep enough and then you uncover human civilization. And that's a pretty fun idea. And you eventually go so deep that you're fighting, you know, the machines that caused the apocalypse an unspecified amount of time ago.

And then SteamWorld Dig 2 does a very different story with a very different ending that's extremely... Yes, the ending like completely changes the status quo for that series. Endings bananas. Like I was, I had to go look it up to make sure I didn't like get a bad. one right or something was the world supposed to sorry so spoilers everyone was the world supposed to explode oh apparently it was did i do something did i cause the apocalypse did i do that yeah uh super i probably my like one of those games that on the e-shop that i would absolutely recommend if you get a switch today like that would be it's not just on switch it's on yeah why would you play it on anything

else. Okay, but let's assume that not everyone understands how great the switch is. So if you're one of those weirdos who still plays Xbox or PS4, yes, played on there too. Or Vita. I think it's on 3DS. It's on everything. It's on 3DS. Yeah. They put it on everything. But super good game. Yeah. And we did an, I did an episode where I interviewed Brian from Image and Form, which has a new name now. They merged like shortly after that episode. But that was probably like four or five months ago. So check that out if you're interested in hearing more about the origins of that game it's yeah steamworld is one of my favorite series in recent years like new i new series it's really great i also really like the idea i guess

metro does this but like the idea of castlvania being start at the front door and work your way up to the highest tower you invert that to start in the town and dig your way down and rather than following the set path of castlvania or metroid you have at least the illusion because you're you're going to go to the same places in the same order regardless of that you're going to go to the same place in the same order regardless, but you literally are digging your own tunnels and digging your own path as far down as you can and trying not to get stuck underneath. It's a really good game. Well, we didn't talk about Cave Story. We didn't. Although Chris has an opinion. Yeah, it's not a Metroidvania. That's why we didn't talk about it. So I put Cave Story as my

first injury on here, even though it's not like a full-on Metroidvania, but it's very close. And I feel like it was an essential game in the move toward creating. these indie Metroidvania's. It was the point at which people were like, this is a game very similar to like, you know, a full Metroid game. It was made by one dude, what? It also used this like very, very simple pixel art style that made it possible for one person to create it. Ben, why don't you talk about it? Yeah, I mean, you've touched on everything. It was a groundbreaking game because of its indie status. It was very good. It was very well animated. And the graphics were, you know, it was one of those pioneering pixel art graphics games.

And, you know, it's really fun. And I actually played it mostly. I remember when it was a freeware game on the PC, and I tried it there, but I played it mostly on the Wii when it came out on Wiiware around 2010 or somewhere around there. And I just, I loved it. I played it through. It's very fluid. You can, it plays well, it controls well.

It's got great animations. and there's something about the fluidity of the animations and your movement and your guns that you build up. I really, I just enjoyed it and the exploration element to it. And in retrospect, I mean, the art style isn't the strongest, but it's consistent and it's really, you know, I just, it was a groundbreaking game. I think there were a lot of imitators after that came out with similar style.

Wasn't it developed by a Japanese guy too? Yeah, that's a guy. am I also known as Studio Pixel. Yeah, so I looked at this list that Jeremy prepared of indie Metroidvania's, and a lot of them looked a lot like Cave Story. I think they were inspired by the graphical look of it. I don't think there are that many games that look like Cave Story,

but there are a lot of games that basically, I feel like the creators looked at Cave Story and said, oh, low-resolution pixel art, that's valid again. We could do that. So I think it was a breakout game in that sense. And even though it's not totally nonlinear, it definitely has a sense of backtracking to it. And there's a sense of, yes, go ahead. I feel like maybe I played it completely wrong then.

Because I did not get the sense that there was a lot of backtracking that was necessary in the way that backtracking is in Castlevania. Like there didn't seem to be, cave story is very good. Do not get me wrong. I actually picked it up on Switch, the Cave Story Plus. version. It's super good. I really like playing it. But as I was playing it, like, I remember being in

Target looking at it and Googling is K of Soria at Metro and then buying it and coming to the conclusion? No, it's definitely not. I don't know. Like, there's a lot of areas where you go in, accomplish something, and then have to track back to like the hub. There's a map, right? Yeah, and you go back to the little

mimiga village at the beginning a couple of times. And so you're like venturing out into new areas, but you're also kind of using that village and a few other places as sort of like, you know, the hacker's home, Arthur's home, I think, is, I can't remember exactly. But you're using that as sort of like a base of operations. So it definitely has a sense of persistence and a world in a way that, you know, like a linear metro, a Mega Man game does not. And you power up your character over time. So I think the spirit is there. Like, it really does feel like, you know, it is a world that exists below the surface and you are, you know, trying to find the end and trying to find your way out. Yeah.

And you're becoming stronger in the process and finding stuff and beating bosses and meeting characters. So even if it's not, you know, like, by whatever weird illusory definition we add to Metroidvania games, if it's not quite hitting all the points, that's okay because I feel like it's status. and its legacy is really important and really open the door for all these great, you know, developers to come in and say, let's make, you know, games that we, in the style that we love that no one else is doing. Yeah, again, it's really good. I personally found it extremely difficult. It's a very, very hard game. And here's the secret listeners.

I'm not good at video games. But I found it, like, difficult and, like, very complex in a way that I respected. But in the way that, like, you know, I'll know a Metroidvania when I see it, it didn't strike me as having that kind of, you guys are going to think I'm just trolling you. But it felt more like Super Mario World than Metroid or Castlevania. Oh, so it is a Metroidvania in your opinion. Well, I don't even know what you're talking about.

Yeah. Well, I don't remember Cave Story being that hard, and I know I completed it. It's super hard. It must be really good if I actually stuck with it. Yeah, I must have liked it. In fact, here's my secret videotape of me finishing. Sorry. That episode hasn't come out yet.

So, yeah, it's weird because I played it through for the first time. I might be the only person in the world who can say this on the GP32X, which was a Korean handheld. But there was a port of the game to GP32X. I always wanted one of those. I played that. It was okay. Never got one. You can see me playing it on a few episodes of the,

one-up show, I don't know, it's whatever. Do they still exist? There's still, there's still some episodes on the internet. But yeah, like, I don't remember having any trouble with it, but then I played the Steam or the Switch version last year and was like, this is destroying me. There was one boss I just could not get past like midway through the game. It was nasty. Maybe they made it harder in the other words. I don't think so.

There's an easy mode on the Switch, which is what I didn't do that. So I guess that was my mistake. I don't know. I remember beating it. My, that's, your, my first daughter was born. I remember playing it with her and my arms, like, sleeping all I was playing it on the wee, and it's really neat. Oh, you're probably just, you're probably too sleep deprived to remember how hard it was.

Yeah. Or maybe you got, like, maybe you got in a zone. Like, you have to push yourself past human limits. This is not nearly as difficult as having a baby, so I'm good. There is, easy. There is one element of cave story that I feel like, in my mind, at least, is maybe like a hard divider now that I'm, like, trying to. figure out why you guys think it is, and I'm so sure it's not.

And that's that in terms of, like, story, there's a moment where it penalizes you for trying to upgrade. Like, you can only get certain endings if you don't get the better weapons, which is very contrary to how Castlevania works. Yeah, I don't know anything about that. Yeah, there's a few different ways to get, like, better weapons, and it's, you know, the marshmallow test. Like, can you defer gratification now in favor of something better later?

No. Okay. May I have a marshmallow please right now? The marshmallow test has been debunked, so it doesn't matter. Well, okay, you guys have named two of the five games on my list, Cave Story and SteamWorld Dig. So I want to call out Guacamale, which I think is a really, like more than any other game on the planet that is not a Metroid game.

It is so super Metroid. Like it uses the same colored doors that you have to like break through. But instead of being a zombie whipping game or an alien shooting game, it is a game where you are a Mexican wrestler and you are doing like suplexes against bad guys. Your power-ups are wrestling moves. And that's wacky. I really love it. It's, um, it's very unexpected. And I don't normally like melee combat games, but this doesn't have that sort of like super twitchy platinum game feel.

It's more of a, like, how do we describe it? It's almost like a fighting game in a sense, but not nearly as complex. Yeah, it plays like Castlevania, except if Castlevania was a fighting game, but not Castlevania judgment. Yeah, it's like the only way to put it. It's really, I feel like it's really intuitive. The wrestling controls, the grappling never becomes too burdensome or complex. Some of the boss fights can be pretty challenging.

Jet Jaguar is a bastard. But, like, it's just a very colorful, free-spirited game that does something interesting with a very, very templated approach to structure and design. I think it's incredibly refreshing that the theme is something unusual compared to most video games. Yeah, I don't know that it necessarily handles its themes as gracefully as it could. Like, it feels a little, I don't know, you've got to, you've got to, you've got to, you've a playable female protagonist named Tostata. I'm like, I don't know about that. Compared to Coco or Grim Fandango even, it feels like a little bit of sort of like

glossing over the surface of another culture as opposed to really embracing it and understanding it. There is a, there is a dent of appropriation to it, which is, I like Guacamile a lot. It's also was on my list that I was thinking of when I came in today. Castlevania, Symphony of the night with wrestling moves should by all right to be the greatest game of all time. Like, it's the only way to improve Symphony of the Night is by putting... Super Metroid, Super Metroid, also good. Also very, very good. Don't get me wrong.

But a thing that I think it does well is Castlevania, Metroid, a lot of the games, Cave Story, even, I'm sure we're about to talk about another one that does this. By their very nature as games where exploration and moving through a map and, and upgrading yourself by fighting tougher and enemies are usually about the feeling of being alone and trapped. You can't leave Castlevania. You're there until you fight Dracula.

If you're Samus, you're literally trapped on Zebis. You've got something to do. Well, Camilla is fun, and I think it's kind of the most notable of the games that take the mechanical ideas and the exploratory ideas, and they're like not super dark.

It's still like a game where you have to go fight, bad guys and everything, but it's never, there's never that feeling of being up against overwhelming odds, I guess, like in isolated and dark in that way, when you're playing through Guacamayle. Well, you have, you know, more companions in that game. You have someone always talking to you. But it does have, like, you know, the fact that you're dead. I feel like that kind of puts a damper on things.

Minor setback. But yeah, it's very colorful, very stylish. I really like it. There's a game, man, what is that game? I forgot what it is. There's one on Steam that I loved a lot, but my favorite Metroidvania of recent times was Shante half-geny hero,

if that counts as a Metroidvania. Yeah. On the Wii U. You do have a central hub world you come back to, but you don't like traverse a castle with a map. I actually feel like the Shante games have become less and less Metroidvania as they've advanced.

Well, it was a, it's an action. platformer. Half Gini Hero is more of a DuckTalesvania. I think that's pretty accurate. I love that game. Minus the Vanya. It's just Ducktails. Okay, so it's not a Metroidvania. I did. Name some other games. I'll tell you if I played it. I did look up, like, because I've played so many

and I was like trying to think of ones that I might be missing. So I just googled the word Metroidvania. Obviously you came up, Jeremy. But there was also like, you know, when you Google something, you've got like the list of things across the top. Ducktails was in there. That's not a Metroidvania, guys. That's just a great video game. Just because it's a good video game doesn't make it a Metroidvania.

Google's algorithm is confused about that one. But there is a giant picture of Jeremy's face when you Google Metroidvania up in the corner. Did you mean this guy? That's bad. Did you mean? Are you serious? No.

No, I'm never serious. That's good. Don't call me Shirley. I mean, I feel like the biggest one we haven't talked about yet is Axiom Burge, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a good game. Which is another one-man show.

Yep. I love that game. I haven't completed it or played it more than six hours, but I've enjoyed it thoroughly. I've played it a considerable amount of time, and I never finish. And I don't know if that's just I just get sidetracked or because it gets to a point where it's no longer intuitive for me. Yeah, I get stuck somewhere. It does get really complex toward the end, and it doesn't really go out of its way, kind of like strider to, make it easy for you to get around

from one area to another. But it does a lot of really cool stuff. I'm a big, big fan of Axiom Verge. Love the music. The music's great. The music's great. The boss fights are super good. Yeah. I appreciate the fact that it really goes back toward the original Metroid. It doesn't

really feel like Super Metroid at all, which is uncommon for games like this. Axiom Verge really kind gets into the experience of playing the original Metroid and feeling like this place is so huge and I feel so lost and it's so glitchy. Like it turns glitches into a play mechanic.

You have this beam that causes like the environment where you zap it to glitch out. And it can turn enemies into weird stuff. It can expose, you know, new paths. There's like these weird, um, randomly generated areas that you have to fight through where you're like, what's happening? Yeah, when you go into the weird little glitch worlds, that stuff's pretty cool. Like all of that really, really captures what it felt like for me as like a 10 year old or whatever, playing the original Metroid and being like, I'm so in over my head. I don't understand

what's happening. This is amazing and terrifying. Like Axiom Verge is the only game that I feel like has really tried to capture that essence of just how enormous and overwhelming the original Metroid's felt in 1986, 87. I agree completely. It did feel like that at the time. And yeah, Axiom Verge is sort of terrifying. There's something existential dread going on underlying that whole thing, especially when your entire world is glitching under your feet and stuff, you're like, what the heck's going on? So, yeah, it's pretty amazing.

It also, like, the scale of the boss fights is really cool. Because, like, obviously, Castlevania had giant Dracula's, and Metroid has big, huge enemies, but the way that it pulls back in a lot of those big boss fights, and even when you go back through that room, it doesn't pull back

like that again, is really cool. Like, it's a small touch, but a really cool one, I think. Yeah, the graphics are great in that game, very, very well done. Visually super, super good. Just, I always get to a point where I'm just walking around for two hours being like, do I, do I, like, try to get through this one? They convincingly replicated the NES palette, like a limited palette and not something that's, oh, it's low-res, but it has a thousand colors, or it's, you know, it's low-res plus there's different resolutions taped onto it with menus and things, you know. I hate that. So it's consistent with its resolution.

Yep, that was another one on my list. But yeah, I am a big fan of Axiomberg, and I've talked about it on this podcast. So one you have guys have not mentioned is La Moolana, which is a game that I really need to finish someday, but it's crazy hard. Yeah, it's too hard for me. It is a, have you, you, you look bewildered, Chris. No, I don't know this one. You don't know it. Okay, so La Moulana is a game that came out on.

PC, like 10 years ago, more than 10 years ago, from a small, like, three-man team in Japan. And it really tries to capture the essence of those screen-by-screen exploratory MSX platformers from the mid-80s. Or like an NES game, mostly stuff that didn't make it to the U.S. There were games called like Pharaoh's Curse on Atari and things that work similar to that single screen. Pharaoh's curse was nowhere near as complex as, as LaMalana. LaMalana has like a huge inventory of stuff. It has all these cryptic puzzles that you have to solve. Like some of them are, you know, word puzzles.

It's a very, very complex game. There's a sequel coming out this summer, actually. It's finally, finally coming out. Yeah, I feel bad because I have a pretty good relationship with the guys who made it because I was one of the first, I think American journalists, maybe the first to, like, seek them out and try to, you know, talk about their story and present their game to the public and gave it a lot of promotion back when it was being ported to Wii, I think.

Yeah, I remember the Wii port. I was excited because I felt like it was a successor to Cave Story in terms of the next indie kind of Metroidvania thing. Kind of, yeah. But it's a very different kind of game. And it was super hard. It's really challenging. I can get into it.

But yeah, it's like even though, like, you know, I keep seeing those guys at press events or things like BitSummit and we're always like, hey, what's up? and chat for a while. I still haven't finished their game because it just destroys me. But I really like the concept of it. And I feel like the next mapping project I do needs to just be to like sit down and map La Moulana and say, here it is. Here is an actual honest to God map.

And that's one that I don't have very many games from limited run games, but I did get their Vita version of La Moulana because it's just a great little game. And it does take a different approach. to the Metroidvania concept because it's not so much about like running and gunning, but it's much more like each screen is its own self-contained death trap that will destroy you if you're not careful. And there are a lot of puzzles where you have to like take knowledge from one part of the game and bring it someplace else and think, oh, wait, I saw something like this a long time ago. Did I write it down? I didn't. Time to go back and find it. So yes, it's a tough one. I remember, There's another game to talk about another one, is Rogue Legacy. Does that count? Because it's sort of... It kind of does, yeah.

It feels like a Castlevania and Rogue mixed together. I mean, that's what I was... I was kind of joking about that when I said. Developers were like, we love Castlevania, we love Metroid, we love Rogue Likes. Let's stick Perma Death into here. This was the one where they finally said, let's do them all. Yeah. I played Rogue Legacy a whole lot, but I don't feel like I got anywhere.

I know that they, like, I played that game a lot more than any other game for a while, and I just, I think you're supposed to progress somehow, but I didn't really, like the castle kept changing, I think, every time I died. Yeah, it's procedurally generated. Like, every time you die, your successor comes along, like your child, right? And the castle by then has changed, and, like, some things carry over, but some of them are like good things to carry over. And also there are like flaws that carry over from your previous generation. So every time you go into the castle, it's with a different character,

with a different layout. And so it's kind of hard to like take your expertise in there. I feel like it would have been stronger, at least for me, if they had kept one castle that was procedurally generated per game. So you could actually explore it and know it and make some progress. But without that, I did play it over and over and over again. Then I just gave up. I'm like, I'm not, actually really getting anywhere and still extremely hard at points, but I enjoyed it for that time. I played it. I thought it was well done. Yeah, if you want something that's kind of similar, but a bit more structured and persistent, definitely try Flint Hook. Have you played that? No. Oh, my God, Flint Hook is great. It has the best grappling mechanics since Bionic Commando.

It is like, it's on everything at this point. It's also on Switch, so you can play it on Switch. but I highly recommend it because it's very much in this sort of spirit of Rogue Legacy but it's really about mobility like they really spent time focusing on the movement and freedom of that game

and so you're going through like you know screen by screen these randomly procedurally generated dungeons in search of treasure but yeah it just it feels great and Rogue Legacy I always felt like I didn't enjoy the

combat in it, the controls in it, whereas Flint Hook is the opposite. It's just like one of the best feeling games I've ever played. The only thing that I've played recently that really kind of works the same way is an upcoming game called The Messenger, which is like a Ninja Guiden inspired game, but then like the second half is Metroidvania 16 bit style. And it really captures like a great sense of movement where if you screw up and die, it is because you screwed up. It is not because the game wasn't, was like, unfair. It's because you messed up. That's good. Well, I need to try a flint hook. Yeah, definitely. I

can't recommend it enough. And the Messenger. I think Messenger is out like in August or September, so. Chris, anything you want to add to this survey of Metroidvania indie games? I like Dust, an Elysian Tale. I didn't play that. It was too furry for me. I played that a little bit.

You just talked about playing Klonoa. It's the same thing. I know. On the internet. I'm giving Chervie such a look. No, dust was really fun. You are you a furry, Chris? I mean, no, but, you know. Is that a tail you're wearing? No, I'm joking.

I've actually been playing a game lately called Fox and Forests, which is like super furry, but it is like an amazing distillation of the 16-bit European platformer, but not totally bullshit like the way most of those games were. Look, if you've played Sonic, if you played a game with tails and... Yeah, I just never got around to playing dust. No, dust is really fun. Like, it definitely got, uh, like, I remember there being a lot of commentary about the aesthetic, but like, like, animal heroes are not new. Like, Dust did not invent them.

I like cute animal characters. They're fun. Even punky skunk. Uh, no, it's like really fun. Um, very, uh, very pretty, actually, good graphics, um, solid play. Ultimately, I wanted it to be like the first game in a series so I could play the next one that would improve. prove on it, which there was never another one, unfortunately. Yeah, dust and insanely twisted Shadow Planet are two games that I always meant to play and

never got around to. But what is it about dust that you enjoy besides the fact that it's pretty? It's the environments feel very distinct. It's been a while since I've played it. But the environments that you go through are cohesive in the way that like a Castlevania is cohesive, but they all feel like they are distinct in the way that. that you get from Order of Ecclesia, which is broken in two distinct areas,

as opposed to being one contiguous play field. And I thought that was, like, really interesting. Also, like, you know, fun plot, interesting mechanics, kind of a little bit of puzzle stuff that you like to see in Castlevania. I like the weird stuff in Castlevania, like when you have to use the big strongman thing in Portrait of Ruin, the carnival game, to get stuff. Dust had a little bit of that feel to it.

So, recommended if you ever play Dust. So, we should wrap it up. So Ben, any final games you want to call out? Does Apotheon count? I mentioned that. I don't know, does it? I haven't really played much of that one. It was really hard.

Is it nonlinear? I don't remember. I can't know. But there's another game on Steam I have that's really cool, and I just cannot remember what it is. It's like, it has this guy with a violin, like a skull face, and he, like, Undertail?

Maybe. I don't know. Maybe with, yeah. Not Undertale. What's the one that's like, I don't remember what it's called? What's the one that's like super goth that's relatively new?

Salt and Sanctuary, is that what it is? Oh, yeah. That's more of a Dark Souls clone. But I guess if you take Dark Souls into 2D, it's Metronvania. I have not played that one, but I was curious to see if either of you had it. What about Wonder Boy 3? Oh, yeah, yeah. That's a fun game.

But we talked about Wonder Boy 3. Yeah. But that's a, that was. cool. It was. Yeah, the remake was great, and we've talked about that on the show. Yeah, we talked about it when we talked about the original Wonder Boy. Yeah. Excellent. And there's another

Wonder Boy 3 inspired game coming out soon called Monster Boy, I think. And that's from, gosh, what's his name? Nishi, I can't remember its full name, but one of the guys who worked for West One, or sorry, Westone. Westone. My bad.

Do you guys consider Blaster Master Zero to be a Metroid? Yeah, absolutely. I feel like it... That's another old one. Yeah. That's just what was tweaked for a new... It's good. Yeah.

Good? It is. I like the original Blastermastermaster, but we've talked about that already. We have. I don't think it's a Metrodvania, but I do want to say Celeste is very good. If you like Metroidvania, you'll like Celeste, probably. Yeah, that's one that is on my list of things I really need to play, but... One of my favorite games of the year, for sure.

I think I've played it, but I don't remember now. But right now, I am playing actually the most recent Metroidvania. release, which is Yoku's Island Express. By Team 17, I was like, the people who made worms, what do they know about creating a Metroidvania game? And it turns out they totally nailed it and they did it in a completely weird and different way. This is a pinball game that is also a Metroidvania that also has like the point of view of like the kind of pulled out, zoomed out point of view of a worms game. It's like super crazy. But you're this little dude who's pushing around an egg and trying to basically get from one place to another and people

keep putting obstacles in your way. Like, one of the first things you do is try to cross a lake and this dragon pops out and says, you can't get past here unless you bring me a thing and it's up over here in the map. So then you have to use the pinball mechanics to get up to that part of the map and get the thing that you need to collect and bring it back down to the dragon. So he'll let you cross the lake. And you like, I kept hearing. like there's this Metroidvania pinball game and I thought that's stupid. That couldn't possibly work, but it absolutely does. There's collectibles in the environment like fruits that you use as kind of an inventory or not as a currency or the economy and you can use them to unlock

bumpers that will help you reach new areas. It's really like this game kind of came out of nowhere and I absolutely did not expect it to be any good and it's really, really fun. It's got a very fun, simple art style. I feel like it's some sort of weird play on Yoshi's Island because you're like a little guy pushing around eggs on an island, but it doesn't play anything like Yoshi's Island.

Yeah, I want to buy this right when it popped up on the switch store, but I haven't devoted the money to that yet, but I'm looking forward to it. It seems like a cool, really cool idea. There have been other games that merged pinball with RPGs and

things. Yeah, but like Pinball Quest was crap. No one wants to play that. There's another one for the Genesis or something, or Super Nintendo. There's some Japanese ones. I don't remember what any of them are called. You mean like the Crush series? Alien Crush, Double Crush. There were some that were like actual, like Pinball Quest kind of thing where you actually progressed in some way or another.

Yeah, but none of them worked until now. This is the first one to say, hey, what if pinball but also an adventure? And it works. It's crazy. I love it. There's a game called Odama for the game. Cube is kind of pinball. Yeah, that was a strategy game, though.

It was like pinball plus strategy and also voice-activated command. That was a weird one. Yeah. Well, I haven't played Yoku's Island Express. Well, I recommend that along with whatever the hell I was recommending earlier. Yeah, I don't remember anymore. What was I recommending earlier? New amnesia period.

Oh, man. I've already forgotten. It's been like five minutes. Well, anyway, whatever I said was awesome, that was awesome, and also this is awesome. Chris, you're just, like, sitting quietly. You haven't tried Yoku's Island? No. Why not?

I told you guys to familiarize yourself with it before you came. I thought this was like a Hiankyo alien thing where it was just like a private joke between you two. No. I was like, guys, you should check out this game before you talk or before you come to this podcast. Also, I'm broke. But I didn't buy it because I didn't buy it because I don't believe in YouTube. Okay, you can look at Vimeo. I only go to Daily Motion.

If it's on Daily Motion, it's no good. There's probably like GIFS of it on Twitter. I only watch. Google video back in time when it was still around. Okay. Well, anyway, I feel like that brings us up to date with indie Metroidvania games. We didn't touch on all of them, but

we touched on most of the good ones. I'm sure there's something I'm forgetting. Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's lots of, there have been so many of them and we can't possibly name them all. Zeodrifter's fun? No. You know, I didn't really like Zio Drifter that much. I did. I had a, like, the guy who made it doesn't like me

anymore because I kind of panned it in a review. He was like, check it out. You're going to love this game. And I played it and it was like, no, sorry. I like it a lot. I mean, he's not my friend. I got it on a day when I was too sick to get out of bed and just played it for the day.

But I like Deo Drifters. Maybe me and that guy can be friends. I hate the boss battles. That's what really kills it for me. They're like super repetitive. It's just the same thing, but harder every time. And that's not interesting. I was, like Super Mario World was it? Was it only on the 3DS, or was it on some other platforms, too? I think it's been

on everything at this point. Okay. Yeah. I thought it looked neat, but it was derivative and simplistic, and I didn't enjoy it. Yeah, I feel like it was the start of something, but I wish that it spent more time in the oven and, you know, turned into that something that it could have been. Yeah, but oh, well. Oh, well. We're not in this to make friends, right? No, clearly. I absolutely am.

Well, good luck with that. Okay, so like I said, we did it. We did it, guys. How fives? That sounds like you're not my friends, David. High fives. We finished a metric. We got through the Metroidvania series.

So we can move on to other things. There's so many other things in video games to talk about. It's time to start over, right? Like we're going to get back to the next time I'm talking about Metroid, right? That's right. We're caught in a time loop. We'll do new game plus. We'll go back through and cover the same territory, but armed with the knowledge of what came.

Invert the castle. We go backwards this time. We go back down to Metroid. Actually, I think I'm going to take a nap. That sounds great. Yeah, me too. All right. So that round.

it up for this episode of Retronauts and this little sub-series that we've been doing for the past year and a half of Retronauts. So thanks everyone for enjoying this wild non-linear ride. It's been amazing. Benj, Chris, thank you for your participation in these festivities. Thanks for having me. Yeah, this was super fun. Great. Well, hopefully the next series of stuff we do will also be fun. We're going to do a 10-part series on Deadly Towers and its meaning. So anyway, if you guys want to introduce yourselves or you know sign off with where people can find you on the internet binge i'm benj edwards you can read my stuff at benge edwards dot com i also run vintage computing dot com and you can find me on twitter at binge edwards b-enj edwards i'm chims and you can

find all of my stuff by going to t h e dash isb dot com and put symphony and night on switch you cowards. Put everything on Switch. Uh, so yes, I'm Jeremy Parrish. You can find me on Twitter as game spite, even though I'm really not that spiteful, despite what the creator of zero drift from I tell you. Um, you can also find me at retronauts.com on YouTube, where I do videos. Uh, you can find Retronauts itself on Retronauts.com and at the podcast one network and on the iTunes store and other assorted places that host podcasts. We're for it's great. You can listen to many, many episodes without paying a dime. But if you do want to pay a dime, you can support us through Patreon. Patreon. Patreon.com slash Retronauts, which pays the bills and allows me to buy people coffee and gin when they come to record podcasts here. And send us to Japan. Yeah. You'll find out more about that soon. It's nonlinear.

That episode hasn't come out yet, Benj. Totally nonlinear. New Game Plus. So thanks everyone for listening. We'll be back on Friday with a micro episode about King of Kong. And next week with a podcast about what was that going to be, I can't remember, but it's going to be cool and positive. So look cool. The Mueller Report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released. next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving

of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it.

It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.