The metroidvania genre is as active as ever in 2025, and an upcoming book will explore how this concept was shaped over the decades.
$55 | Releases March 3, 2026
The History of Metroidvania: Decade One by author Jeremy Parish will be published by Dark Horse Books, and it aims to be a comprehensive account of how gaming trends of the early 1980s came together to create the foundation for this genre. Priced at $55, the 232-page book will be available starting March 3, 2026.
“Metroidvania: The First Decade is the culmination of a project I began more than 20 years ago, back when this style of game had largely vanished and the general public had more or less forgotten about them,” Parrish said in a press release.
“As a game reviewer, I eagerly signed up for the handful of metroidvania games that came down the pipeline–which, fittingly, were mostly just handheld Metroid and Castlevania sequels and remakes. Once I’d consumed those releases, I began looking back into the past to trace the origins of those games and how exploratory platform action games had evolved over time.”
Parrish added that the book does more than just list the games created in the style of Metroid and Castlevania, as he broke down the “themes and objectives of the metroidvania format” to explore what these titles truly are.
One of the other big video game books coming out soon is the official Metroid Prime Trilogy retrospective. Published by Piggyback Books, this is priced at $46.49 (was $50) and it explores how the groundbreaking Metroid Prime trilogy–soon to be a quadrilogy–was developed.
The 212-page clothbound hardcover book features high-quality paper, a foreword written by Metroid Prime series producer Kensuke Tanabe, and introductions to its four sections by developers from Retro Studios.