Forerunners
The pre-Metroid era (ca 1979-1986) of Platform Adventure games was a time when basic concepts of platformers and action adventure games themselves hadn't been established yet and as such, you tend to see a handful of what we now see as defining traits represented while others are missing, or traits associated with other genres such as Rogue-likes or Cinematic Platformers being combined with these traits and resulting in games that don't fit neatly into one category. For the most part these games are severely limited by the technology of the time as well.
Games on this and the generational pages are sorted by year, from oldest to youngest. If you're mainly interested in what to play next, I've sorted the games on each year's page roughly in order of how well I think they've held up and what they did for the genre. There's also this page where I keep some personal top lists sorted by decade.
List Format
Games on this and the generational pages are sorted by year, from oldest to youngest. If you're mainly interested in what to play next, I've sorted the games on each year's page roughly in order of how well I think they've held up and what they did for the genre. There's also this page where I keep some personal top lists sorted by decade.
List Format