Why the term “Metroidvania” is awful

Guys, why do we do this? It doesn’t make sense.  Metroidvania is a term that defies gaming logic. It stands alone.  Half of its name comes from a series that contributed almost nothing.

For those who don’t know, “Metroidvania” is the almost universally accepted term for what might otherwise be classified as a platform adventure game, usually side-scrolling, its principle example being the Metroid series. Some Castlevania series games use this style as well, notably Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest (for the NES) and Symphony of the Night (for PSX).  In a Metroidvania game, you explore an open world which is initially not fully accessible to you.  By collecting items (sometimes hidden, sometimes not), you open up more and more of the world.

But why call it “Metroidvania”? We don’t call a traditional side-scrolling platformer a “Mario-Sonic” or some blend of those two names. We don’t call fighting games “Street Calibur” games. You would be laughed out of the room for calling a first-person shooter a “Doomquake” game. And nobody in their right mind calls a game where a ship is on the bottom of the screen shooting up a “Galaga Invaders” game. Sure, you might say a game is “Space Invaders-like” or “Galaga-like” if you’re trying to describe the gameplay of a particular game to your friend, but classifying an entire GENRE based on one or two games is utterly ridiculous. These are typically defined as “shooting” games, or “space shooting” games.

The only other example I can think of for a genre based on one game is “roguelike,” which, in a similar fashion to Metroidvania, describes procedurally generated (i.e. they’re never the same) dungeons based off the old computer game Rogue. This is similarly stupid. Why not just name the genre “dungeon” and leave it at that? It’s just as vaguely descriptive as the accepted term, and the name actually comes from a word commonly in the English lexicon.

So what should you call the “platform adventure” genre? Surely nobody wants to keep calling it something that unwieldy. I certainly don’t. If you’re so keen on creative blending, why not “platventure”? If you want to say that New Game Z is like Metroid, don’t let me stop you. Describe a game as “Metroid-like” or even “Metroidesque,” but don’t use that term to try and shove an entire square-shaped genre into a round single game. That only opens  the floor to copies and outright clones of the original. “Metroidvania” makes the game sound like it will be nothing but a mix of those two games. It’s a disgrace to excellent original games like Shadow Complex to give it such a base term.

But if you don’t like “platventure” and you want to create a new designation, then be my guest. For now, I’ll keep it at “platventure.”

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