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80-477: Xeodrifter is a Metroidvania video game developed by Renegade Kid . The game was first released for Nintendo 3DS and Microsoft Windows in 2014. A Wii U port of the game was released 2015, and after Gambitious Digital Entertainment acquired the rights to the Microsoft Windows version of the game, it was also released on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in 2015. A Nintendo Switch version

160-463: A Kickstarter campaign for Castlevania -influenced Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (2019), which was the highest-funded video game on Kickstarter at the time. While the word "Metroidvania" is commonly used presently to describe games in this genre, or games that have elements of this genre, the origins of the term are unclear; Igarashi notes that he did not coin the phrase, though is grateful for

240-575: A 100% speedrun of Metroid Prime done by Pflug. Six months later, SDA began accepting runs from all games. Unlike its predecessor websites, SDA did not compile leaderboards for their games; they displayed only the fastest speedrun of each game. Until SDA's expansion into games other than Quake in 2004, speedrun video submissions were primarily sent to early video game record-keeper Twin Galaxies . The videos were often never publicly released, creating verifiability concerns that SDA aimed to address. It

320-431: A Metroidvania featuring "soft locks" – obstacles in the form of boss characters that are difficult but not impossible to defeat when the player-character is starting out, and become much easier to defeat with increased experience and abilities. The third-person action/brawler Batman: Arkham series also uses similar concepts as a Metroidvania, with Batman collecting new gadgets to access new areas. The 2017 title Prey

400-438: A combined 5.7 million and 6.5 million views, respectively, as of January 2024. Dream later admitted to the runs being cheated about five months after his runs were rejected, although he claimed he did not know he was using a modified version of the game. Nearly two years later, the player who helped uncover Dream's cheated runs, MinecrAvenger, was also found to be using similar luck manipulation in late 2022. While all of

480-582: A large interconnected world map the player can explore, although parts of the world will be inaccessible to the player until they acquire special items, tools, weapons, abilities, or knowledge within the game. Acquiring such improvements can also aid the player in defeating more difficult enemies and locating shortcuts and secret areas, and often includes retracing one's steps across the map. Through this, Metroidvania games include tighter integration of story and level design, careful design of levels and character controls to encourage exploration and experimentation, and

560-448: A means for the player to become more invested in their player character through role-playing game elements. While early examples were usually two-dimensional side-scrolling platform games, the term has since been applied to top-down and 3D games. The first Metroid game in 1986 established principles of the non-linear platformer that were refined through multiple iterations, with Super Metroid in 1994 considered to have polished

640-411: A photo of this time, he was called by Activision, who asked him to verify how he achieved such a score, because they had programmed a 'perfect run' of the game and were unable to achieve better than a 5.54. The game's programmer David Crane would later confirm that he had a vague recollection of programming test runs, but did not remember the results. In 2012, Todd received a Guinness World Record for

720-406: A runner. It is common for category restrictions to require a certain amount of content to be completed in the game. Each video game may have its own speedrun categories, but some categories are popular irrespective of game. The most common are: Speedrunners compete in these categories by ranking times on online leaderboards. According to Wired , the definitive website for speedrun leaderboards

800-402: A sense of community is vital to speedrunning because it motivates players and aids in the development of routes and tricks used in speedruns, and Milan Jacevic highlighted "years of research" and collective community efforts that contribute to world records. Speedrunners use media-sharing sites like YouTube and Twitch to share videos and livestreams of speedruns. The speedrunning community

880-428: A single large, interconnected map, generally with discrete rooms or sections. Not all areas of this map are available at the start, often requiring the player to obtain an item (such as a weapon or key) or a new character ability to remove some obstacle blocking the path forward. Often, this item is protected by a boss character , providing story-driven challenges throughout the game. Maps are non-linear, and often require

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960-456: A variation of splicing, includes speeding up cutscenes or compressing transitional black space. Again, such methods are likely to be detected by a speedrun moderator, although some games, especially where PC speed can have an effect, may actually vary depending on hardware. Finally, another common cheating method is to play the game using frame-by-frame advancement or in slow motion, which is similar to normal tool-assisted speedrunning but without

1040-590: A vein similar to "open world". CBR has also proposed "platform-adventure". An equivalent Japanese term is 探索型アクション or "search-action", which is used alongside the romanised メトロイドヴァニア (Metroidvania). Speedrun Speedrunning is the act of playing a video game , or section of a video game, with the goal of completing it as fast as possible. Speedrunning often involves following planned routes, which may incorporate sequence breaking and exploit glitches that allow sections to be skipped or completed more quickly than intended. Tool-assisted speedrunning (TAS)

1120-440: A video demonstrating a TAS of Super Mario Bros. 3 garnered widespread attention on the internet; many speedrunners cite this as their first introduction to the hobby. It was performed and published by a Japanese user named Morimoto. The video was lacking context to indicate that it was a TAS, so many people believed it to be an actual human performance. It drew criticism from viewers who felt "cheated" when Morimoto later explained

1200-515: A video of the hands on the controller or keyboard ("handcam"), in addition to the screen recording, so that game-specific moderators in charge of authenticating a submission can ensure that the inputs are really done in the specified combination and by a human. Other methods include forensic audio analysis , which is a common method for detecting telltale signs of video splicing; this is why runs without high-quality audio streams are often rejected on speedrun boards. Additional detection methods are

1280-602: A website for tracking Quake speedruns. In June 1997, Pflug released a full-game speedrun demo of Quake called Quake Done Quick , which introduced speedrunning to a broader audience. Quake speedruns were notable for their breadth of movement techniques, including " bunny hopping ," a method of gaining speed also present in future shooting games like Counter-Strike and Team Fortress . In April 1998, NSD merged with another demo-hosting website to create Speed Demos Archive . For five years, Speed Demos Archive hosted exclusively Quake speedruns, but in 2003 it published

1360-456: Is Speedrun.com . As of July 2021, the site hosts leaderboards for over 20,000 video games. Runners usually record footage of their speedruns for accurate timing and verification, and may include a timer in their videos. They often use timers that keep track of splits—the time between the start of the run and the completion of some section or objective. Verification is usually done by leaderboard moderators who review submissions and determine

1440-446: Is a subcategory of speedrunning that uses emulation software or additional tools to create a precisely controlled sequence of inputs. Many online communities revolve around speedrunning specific games; community leaderboard rankings for individual games form the primary competitive metric for speedrunning. Racing between two or more speedrunners is also a popular form of competition. Videos and livestreams of speedruns are shared via

1520-400: Is a very noticeable manipulation, especially in highly competitive areas, since the speedruns in the upper area of leaderboards are repeatedly analyzed by other players in order to check their legitimacy and playback reproducibility, including a temporal check known as "retiming". This often reveals discrepancies between one's recording time and a speedrun in the leaderboards. Another method,

1600-408: Is by far the most popular cheating method in speedrunning. Here, a speedrun is not recorded continuously, as is usually the case, but instead composed of various video snippets recorded at different times, sometimes with gameplay stolen from TAS composers or legitimate players. At SGDQ 2019, speedrunner "ConnorAce" used a spliced run to illegitimately claim the world record on Clustertruck for

1680-576: Is credited with establishing key principles of Metroidvanias through his work on other Castlevania games. In the 2010s, a resurgence in Metroidvanias came about due to several critically praised, independently developed games . While not the first game of its kind (for example, Below the Root was released in 1984, or Brain Breaker in 1985), Metroid (1986, Nintendo Entertainment System )

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1760-462: Is divided into many sub-communities focused on speedrunning specific games. These sub-communities can form their own independent leaderboards and communicate about their games using Discord . Many communities have used the centralized leaderboard hosting site Speedrun.com since its founding in 2014. Speedrunning marathons, a form of gaming convention , feature a series of speedruns by multiple speedrunners. While many marathons are held worldwide,

1840-480: Is generally considered the most influential game for the Metroidvania genre. Nintendo 's goal for the title was to create a non-linear adventure game to set it apart from other games at the time, requiring the player to retrace their steps while providing permanent power-ups in contrast to how other adventure games only offered power-ups with temporary effects. The series was popular, and future titles refined

1920-495: Is the act of developing an optimal sequence of actions and stages in a video game. A route may involve skipping one or more important items or sections. Skipping a part of a video game that is normally required for progression is referred to as sequence breaking , a term first used in reference to the 2002 action-adventure game Metroid Prime . Video game glitches may be used to achieve sequence breaks, or may be used for other purposes such as skipping cutscenes and increasing

2000-483: The Metroid series, and borrows elements from another Renegade Kid game, Mutant Mudds . Xeodrifter has been generally well received upon release, with critics praising its gameplay and mechanics, but criticizing its repetitive bosses and short length. The Nintendo 3DS version of the game holds an aggregated Metacritic score of 73/100 based on 17 critic reviews. Metroidvania These games usually feature

2080-740: The COVID-19 pandemic . Races between two or more speedrunners are a common competition format. They require players to be skilled at recovering from setbacks during a speedrun because they cannot start over. Occasionally, races are featured at marathons; a 4-person Super Metroid race is a popular recurring event at Games Done Quick marathons. The Global Speedrun Association (GSA) have organized head-to-head tournaments for multiple games, including Celeste , Super Mario 64 , and Super Mario Odyssey . In 2019, GSA organized an in-person speedrun race event called PACE. Their efforts have drawn criticism from some speedrunners who believe that they "undermine

2160-614: The "NoAbility%" category, depriving the legitimate record holder from being invited to the event. The run was treated with suspicion due to it not being submitted officially to speedrun.com, with the video being unlisted on YouTube prior to ConnorAce's acceptance into SGDQ. In October 2019, ConnorAce's run was exposed by the YouTube documentarian Apollo Legend. In a typical case, splicing allows difficult segments to be repeated to perfection and edited together afterwards into one seemingly continuous effort, which can sometimes dramatically reduce

2240-542: The Metroidvania.com site that has attempted to catalog all known Metroidvania games, acknowledges he helped to popularize the term but had learned it from his former co-worker at 1UP.com , Scott Sharkey, who had used the term to describe the games in the Castlevania series that had adopted some elements from the Metroid series. The term 'Metroidvania' is most often used to refer to a platforming game that features

2320-437: The Night distinguished itself from prior non-linear platformers via the incorporation of console role-playing game elements with the means for the player to improve their character's attributes through an experience system . The changes for Symphony of the Night proved popular with players, and most subsequent games in the series would follow this formula. With the releases of Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of

2400-496: The Night , the formula these games presented would form the foundations of what are considered Metroidvanias today. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night had also become a critical and financial success over time, establishing that there was a desire by players for Metroidvania-style games. As this neologism started to be adopted, Igarashi reacted Symphony of the Night was more inspired by Zelda , not Metroid , although he stated that Metroidvania "fits very well". Other figures in

2480-522: The Wizard (1987), and Adventure Island IV (1994). They argued that such games, while having 2D platforming gameplay and power-up based progression systems, lacked good level design, which at their time had not been well-refined in the industry, and provided little or no information relayed to the player to help them to know where to go next, exemplified by the cryptic clues from Simon's Quest . The three also agreed that as games transitioned from 2D to 3D,

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2560-465: The ability to redo inputs. Playing in slow motion is often effective for games that require very precise movements. While it is often possible to use traditional cheats such as a GameShark to increase character speed, strength, health, etc., such cheats are generally quite easy for an experienced moderator to detect, even when applied subtly. However, the modification of internal files to improve RNG can often be much more difficult to detect. One of

2640-518: The aforementioned Shadow Complex , or with Metroid Dread . The exploration and character development concepts of Metroidvanias can be used in other genres, though these games typically are not categorized as Metroidvanias. For example, the Metroid Prime trilogy is a first-person action adventure game that builds on the same style of exploration play as Metroid . Dark Souls is a third-person action role-playing game loosely considered

2720-570: The aforementioned methods are deceptive in nature, the simplest way of cheating is merely to lie about a time. One of the most infamous cases of this was done by Todd Rogers . Several of his records have come under scrutiny for being seemingly impossible or lacking sufficient proof. In 2002, Robert Mruczek, then chief referee at Twin Galaxies, officially rescinded Todd's record time in Barnstorming after other players pointed out that his time of 32.04 seconds did not appear to be possible, even when

2800-413: The amount of time needed to grind out a comparable score. However, a spliced run is not considered cheating if it is announced to be a multi-segment run upon submission; for example, this community-made multi-segment compilation for Super Mario Bros. When ' TASbotting ', the player records their controller inputs as a tool-assisted run in an external device in order to then have this device reproduce

2880-609: The best-selling downloadable titles on the Xbox 360 service. Due to games like these, the Metroidvania genre began to take off in both publisher-driven and independent games development. Drinkbox Studios ' Guacamelee! (2013), Moon Studios ' Ori and the Blind Forest (2015), and Team Cherry's Hollow Knight (2017) are examples of modern indie Metroidvanias that have reached critical acclaim. The genre's indie renaissance did not go unnoticed by Igarashi. In May 2015, he released

2960-414: The community spirit", citing cash prizes as incentives to avoid collaboration with other speedrunners and ignore games without prize money. Video game randomizers— ROM hacks that randomly shuffle item locations and other in-game content—are popular for speedrun races as well. Tournaments and other events have been organized for randomizer races, and they have been featured at speedrun marathons. Splicing

3040-404: The community. In 2014, Speedrun.com was created, which had less stringent submission guidelines than SDA and was intended to centralize speedrun leaderboards for many different games. Speedrunners' move towards using Speedrun.com and social media platforms like Skype and Discord contributed to SDA's relevance waning in the 2010s. Routing is a fundamental process in speedrunning. Routing

3120-484: The console's controller ports, a process known as console verification (as some exploits are possible on emulation but not console). To differentiate them from tool-assisted speedruns, unassisted speedruns are sometimes referred to as real-time attack (RTA) speedruns. Due to the lack of a human playing the game in real time, TASes are not considered to be in competition with RTA speedruns. Speedruns are divided into various categories that impose additional limitations on

3200-449: The creation of YouTube enabled speedrunners to upload and share videos of speedruns and discuss strategies on the SDA forums . Twitch, a livestreaming website centered around video gaming, was launched in 2011. The advent of livestreaming made for easier verification and preservation of speedruns, and some speedrunners believe it is responsible for a shift towards collaboration among members of

3280-442: The exploration approach while adding more story elements to the title such as with Super Metroid (1994, Super Nintendo Entertainment System ). Super Metroid refined several aspects from the previous Metroid games, including a diverse array of locations and adding many secrets for players to find; these secrets also enabled players to find ways to break the expected sequence that the designers had envisioned players would approach

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3360-452: The game frame by frame to play the game more precisely, retrying parts of the run using savestates, and hex editing . These tools are designed to remove restrictions imposed by human reflexes and allow for optimal gameplay. The run is recorded as a series of controller inputs intended to be fed back to the game in sequence. Although generally recorded on an emulator, TASes can be played back on original console hardware by sending inputs into

3440-472: The game industry have since used Zeldavania interchangeably, with the Zelda series recognized as following the same formula. The concept of Metroidvanias started to gain more attraction when other parties began to develop games in the same style. Cave Story (2004, Microsoft Windows) was developed by Daisuke Amaya as an homage to Metroid and other classic games; the game was critically praised showing

3520-552: The game was hacked to remove all obstacles. Upon further investigation, Twin Galaxies referees were unable to find independent verification for this time, having instead been relying on erroneous information from Activision. As listed on the Twin Galaxies leaderboard until January 2018, Rogers's record in the 1980 Activision game Dragster was a time of 5.51 seconds from 1982. At the time, Activision verified high scores by Polaroid . According to Rogers, after he submitted

3600-558: The game, making it a popular title among speedrunners . However, in retrospect, Super Metroid was still considered an example of a highly polished non-linear platformer. During this time, the gothic horror-themed platformer series Castlevania was gaining popularity. The original Castlevania (1986, NES) featured discrete levels that the player completed in a sequential manner. It was followed by Vampire Killer (1986, MSX ) and Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (1987, NES) which experimented with non-linear adventure gameplay, before

3680-571: The game. The Doom speedrunning community emerged in November 1994, when Simon Widlake created COMPET-N, a website hosting leaderboards dedicated to ranking completion times of Doom 's single-player levels. In 1996, id Software released Quake as a successor to the Doom series . Like its predecessor, Quake had a demo-recording feature and drew attention from speedrunners. In April 1997, Nolan "Radix" Pflug created Nightmare Speed Demos (NSD),

3760-583: The genre focuses on exploration of a large world map, and advancement of the player-character abilities over time. Metroidvanias are sometimes referred to as "platform adventure games" due to this scope. Metroidvania is generally associated with game levels/maps that are laid out as two-dimensional side scrollers, with the player character moving left, right, up and down through the level. These games typically are rendered using two-dimensional graphics, but can include 2.5D -rendered games using 3D graphics engines but limiting player movement to two dimensions, such as

3840-426: The genre that draws in players, working off the natural human instincts to explore, and giving the players the sense of discovery and self-control during the game. Donald Mustard of Chair Entertainment, the creators of Shadow Complex , said that a good Metroidvania helps the player come to epiphanies that enables them to progress in the game, describing an example of a ledge that is initially too high to reach, and as

3920-402: The genre. These include designing maps that encourage exploration but which still guide the player on a main path through the game and providing means where the player can be aware of where they are in the game world at any time. This can be accomplished by graphical themes through the game's world, visually unique milestones at key game point, overall map and player status information screens, and

4000-399: The inputs on a real console. As with splicing, the inputs of individual segments can be combined and, as is usual for tool-assisted runs, inputs can be made frame by frame. As long as these inputs are authentic and seem realistic for a human being, such manipulations are much more difficult to detect in the resulting video product than splicing. If, on the other hand, a TAS is not outputted on

4080-470: The internet on media sites such as YouTube and Twitch . Speedruns are sometimes showcased at marathon events, which are gaming conventions that feature multiple people performing speedruns in a variety of games. Speedrunning has generally been an intrinsic part of video games since the early days of the medium, similar to the chasing of high scores, though it did not achieve broad interest until 1993. Some groundwork for what would become modern speedrunning

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4160-414: The invention of the term. Igarashi noted that with Symphony of the Night the goal was to have exploration closer to the top-down Zelda approach, but with the side-scrolling nature, it was compared more to Metroid , and believes this is how the portmanteau came about. A similar portmanteau "Castleroid" is sometimes used as well for describing this genre. Video game journalist Jeremy Parish, who manages

4240-806: The largest event is Games Done Quick , a semiannual marathon held in the United States. As of January 2022, it has raised over $ 37 million for charity organizations since its inception in 2010. The largest marathon in Europe is the European Speedrunner Assembly , held in Sweden. Both events broadcast the speedruns on Twitch and raise money for various charity organizations. Speedruns at marathons are done in one attempt and often have accompanying commentary. Many people consider marathons to be important to runners and spectators in

4320-404: The later parts of the game. Access to new abilities can also open up shortcuts that reduce travel time, as well as discover secrets that help to improve the character's abilities. For example, gaining access to double jump or wall jump abilities can give players more mobility, while obtaining the ability to transform into a smaller object can let the player slip through narrow corridors. As such,

4400-447: The longest-standing video game score record, for his 1982 Dragster record. In 2017, a speedrunner named Eric "Omnigamer" Koziel disassembled the game's code and concluded that the fastest possible time was 5.57 seconds. With a tick rate of 0.03 seconds, the record claim is two ticks faster than Omnigamer's data and one tick faster than the reported Activision 'perfect run'. In order to prevent most of these methods, some games require

4480-579: The means of moving around the map quickly. Russ Frushtick from Polygon observed that many modern Metroidvanias not only have these qualities, but also find a means to tell a narrative through the world's environments without necessarily relying on cutscenes or dialog. In a 1UP.com video discussion between Parish, Sharkey, and Chris Kohler of Wired in 2007, the three discussed some older games that had elements associated with Metroidvanias but would not be considered true Metroidvanias, including games like Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (1987), Legacy of

4560-514: The most infamous examples of file modification was several cheated runs by the speedrunner Dream in 2020, whose luck was considered so extreme in a series of Minecraft speedruns that they were considered exceedingly unlikely to have been done without cheating (with an approximately 1 in 20 sextillion chance of occurring, as estimated by Matt Parker from Numberphile ) by both the moderators at Speedrun.com and various YouTubers, such as Karl Jobst and Matt Parker, whose videos on Dream gained

4640-626: The official hint book, which was available via the same mail-order system used to distribute the game at the time. His intention was that players would attempt to beat his times. The development of a strong speedrunning community is considered to have originated with the 1993 computer game Doom . The game retained the "par time" mechanic from Wolfenstein and included a feature that allowed players to record and play back gameplay using files called demos (also known as game replays). Demos were lightweight files that could be shared more easily than video files on Internet bulletin board systems at

4720-413: The original hardware but, as usual, on emulators, it can sometimes be alleged from the resulting video that such auxiliary programs were used; additionally, some emulators never perfectly imitate the desired hardware, which can cause synchronization issues when replayed on a console. Modifying game timers, especially on computer games, is another common method to improve one's recorded times. However, this

4800-412: The player acquires abilities, will discover how they can reach that ledge on their own. From a developer's standpoint, the Metroidvania genre also provides benefits. The genre encourages tight connection between level design and game story, and can give developers opportunities to create an immersive world for the player. Level design of such games can also be challenging as to make sure the challenge to

4880-443: The player to traverse the map multiple times during the course of the game. Weaker monsters will inhabit other parts of the level, re-spawning when the player revisits those rooms, and often can be defeated to gain health, ammunition, or experience points . Larger games generally feature save points as well as the ability to transport the player quickly between certain rooms on far sides of the map, eliminating tedious backtracking in

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4960-513: The player's abilities to be tested more rigorously throughout all of the levels. Ori and the Will of the Wisps executive producer Daniel Smith said: "I don't think people generally consider how difficult it is to make a Metroidvania game. Everything is so interconnected that if you change one aspect of the game, it's just inevitable that it's going to influence the rest". There is some opposition to

5040-495: The player's speed or damage output. Some people, called glitch-hunters , choose to focus on finding glitches that will be useful to speedrunners. In some games, arbitrary code execution exploits may be possible, allowing players to write their own code into the game's memory. Several speedruns use a "credits warp", a category of glitch that causes the game's credits sequence to play, which may require arbitrary code execution. The use of glitches and sequence breaks in speedruns

5120-423: The players of the game is fair and enjoyable, and achieving this goal can be seen as a sign of a success for a developer. Thomas Mahler of Moon Studios, who developed Ori and the Blind Forest , said that it was important to design a cohesive world with memorable settings for a Metroidvania, since "players remembering the levels is part of the core design". Large-scale development in this genre requires one change in

5200-427: The process by which he created the video and apologized for the confusion. In December 2003, after seeing Morimoto’s TAS, a user named Bisqwit created TASVideos (initially named NESVideos ), a site dedicated to displaying tool-assisted speedruns. The creation of video-sharing and streaming websites in the late 2000s and early 2010s contributed to an increase in the accessibility and popularity of speedrunning. In 2005,

5280-407: The scope of what one person could do, and highlighted another take on the Castlevania and Metroid games, as well as vitalizing the 2D platformer genre as a viable indie game format. Shadow Complex (2009, Xbox 360 ) by Chair Entertainment was developed based on the premise that Super Metroid was "the pinnacle of 2D game design". The game received highly positive reviews, and remains one of

5360-410: The series returned to the more linear style of the original Castlevania . Series lead Koji Igarashi found that as they continued to produce sequels to cater to fans of the series, experienced players would race through the levels, while new players to the series would struggle with some stages. To try to make a title that would be more widely appreciated across play levels and extend the gameplay time of

5440-653: The speedrunning community. Peter Marsh, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation , says that the Games Done Quick events provide an inclusive space for women and the LGBTQ community in contrast to the related cultures of gaming and Twitch streaming. Alex Miller of Wired says the events have played an important role in connecting people and supporting international humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières during

5520-421: The style of gameplay core to Metroidvanias. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in 1997 is considered the defining Metroidvania game, incorporating role-playing game elements from The Legend of Zelda series with non-linear traversal within the Castlevania series; most subsequent Castlevania games followed its approach and refined the genre. Symphony of the Night 's assistant director, Koji Igarashi ,

5600-601: The time. Internally, in January 1994, University of Waterloo student Christina Norman created a File Transfer Protocol server dedicated to compiling demos, named the LMP Hall of Fame (after the .lmp file extension used by Doom demos). The LMP Hall of Fame inspired the creation of the Doom Honorific Titles by Frank Stajano, a catalogue of titles that a player could obtain by beating certain challenges in

5680-488: The title, Igarashi and others on his team looked toward the ideas used by The Legend of Zelda series into the development of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997, PlayStation ). With Symphony of the Night , Igarashi introduced new concepts into the Castlevania series from Zelda such as a large open world to explore and the need to acquire key items to enter certain areas, elements already present in non-linear platformers like Super Metroid . However, Symphony of

5760-406: The true meaning of "Metroidvania" had become diluted, as 3D-based games can hide facets of Metroidvanias. The popularity of the Metroidvania genre is stated to be tied to the ease with which platformer games can be learned, while giving the player a character that they can grow over the course of the game. Many developers of independent Metroidvania titles cited the exploration as a core element of

5840-434: The use of mathematics (as in the aforementioned Dream case) or human moderation of suspicious inputs (in games which record them such as Doom and TrackMania ). Cheat detection software created for TrackMania was used to analyze over 400,000 replays and isolate a handful of cheaters, leading to hundreds of world records being determined to have been cheated using slowdown tools. This included those of Burim "riolu" Fejza, who

5920-465: The use of the term Metroidvania, as it is derived from specific games rather than being a more direct description of gameplay. Comic Book Resources compared the use of Metroidvania to "Doom clone" in the 1990s, a term which was eventually replaced by "first person shooter" as the medium developed. Game Developer has also suggested that the term is too broad, as it encompasses a wide range of 2D and 3D games, and instead proposed "unlocking world", in

6000-409: The validity of individual speedruns. According to many speedrunners, community is an important aspect of the hobby. Matt Merkle, director of operations at Games Done Quick , says that speedrunners "value the cooperation the community encourages," and many speedrunners have said that their mental health has improved because of their involvement in the community. Erica Lenti, writing for Wired, said

6080-484: Was developed as a first-person-perspective immersive sim but using Metroidvania level design concepts to require the player to traverse the setting multiple times as they gain additional tools and abilities. An even earlier attempt at bringing metroidvania gameplay to a first-person shooter was the console versions of the game PowerSlave in 1996 and 1997, as opposed to the more traditionally linear PC version. Igarashi described what he believed were key elements in

6160-445: Was established by id Software during the development for Wolfenstein 3D (1992), although prior games such as Metroid (1986) and Prince of Persia (1989) encouraged speedrunning by noting a player's time upon meeting certain metrics, including completion of the game. Wolfenstein 3D recorded a "par time" statistic which was based on John Romero 's personal records for each level. Romero's best level times were also printed in

6240-418: Was historically not allowed, per the rules of Twin Galaxies' early leaderboards. When speedrunning moved away from Twin Galaxies towards independent online leaderboards, their use became increasingly common. A tool-assisted speedrun (TAS) is a speedrun that uses emulation software and tools to create a "theoretically perfect playthrough". According to TASVideos, common examples of tools include advancing

6320-475: Was often impossible to determine what strategies had gone into setting these records, hindering the development of speedrunning techniques. Sites dedicated to speedrunning, including game-specific sites, began to establish the subculture around speedrunning. These sites were not only used for sharing runs but also to collaborate and share tips to improve times, leading to collaborative efforts to continuously improve speedrunning records on certain games. In 2003,

6400-508: Was released in February 2018. Xeodrifter is a Metroidvania video game, where the player controls an astronaut whose spaceship is damaged by an asteroid, and must visit four nearby planets in order to repair it. The game allows the player to explore the planets, each representing a different environment. The planets can be visited in any order, but exploration depends on power-ups to gain access to new areas. The game draws inspiration from

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