Metroid? Castlevania? Why not both? And thus, the metroidvania genre was born. But what exactly is a metroidvania? It’s kinda like if you turned Mario from Super Nintendo into a gorgeous vampire and dressed him up in a sick space suit, then made him platform his way through a labyrinthian version of the Mushroom Kingdom while fighting monsters with an arsenal of cool weapons and gadgets. It’s a genre that’s part puzzler, part platformer, part adventure, and part RPG. Like a Walt Whitman poem or a Lana Del Rey song, the metroidvania contains multitudes, and these are the 1o best metroidvania games of all time.
