There are two unrelated metroidvanias based on the classic Little Nemo comics coming out this year, which feels like kind of an obvious cut â of course you'd adapt Little Nemo as a metroidvania, if you were going to adapt it as anything â but it got me thinking: what would be the least suitable public domain media to give the metroidvania treatment?
I feel like a lot of folks in the note are interpreting "worst" to mean "most difficult to justify the protagonist actually going anywhere or doing anything", but that just militates against video game adaptations in general, not against metroidvanias in particular. We can do a lot worse.
Alright, I initially misread this as least suitable public domain cartoon instead of any media, so I'm naming The Outbursts of Everett True.
From a "going out and doing stuff" angle, all it would take to get him involved would be for the antagonist to be a real dick, but also someone sufficiently insulated that he has to do through a whole journey to get them their comeuppance, so he could definitely work as a video game protagonist of some sort.
From an "unsuitable" angle, Everett's a flat and static character whose entire MO is yelling and slapstick violence against rude people. To make him work as a Metroidvania protagonist within his existing character, all the powerups are different ways to flip his shit at enemies for productive effect:
Chase someone while hollering continuously to position them
Run into them to automatically defeat them in a flurry of cartoon violence
Smack them until they curl up in the fetal position to make them a springboard
Hurl them away to hit switches and buttons
Not only does this ensure abilities gained are all vaguely similar instead of a neat spread, later-game platforming challenges involving multiple enemies and environmental hazards devolve into Lemmings (1991) horseshit. I picture having to time your actions to get them and you past obstacles and into very specific spots, with near immediate failure if you get too far (obstacle that one of you dodged hits the other) or too close (Everett automatically grabs them and defeats them somewhere that won't help him platform)
Boss fights are also limited by his Everett's idiom, since an actual drag-out brawl isn't something that happens - instead, each one is some jerk making their surroundings particularly dangerous (street racing, playing with fire, running an unsafe factory, etc). The bosses don't even know Everett is after them and the actual challenge is to get through the set piece surrounding them, at which point Everett is so mad he defeats them in one hit with a newly-developed power-up.
Brief breaks in the usual formula are available in certain situations where the player can do something exceptionally rude, at which point Mrs True will appear to chase them. This gives us higher-speed gameplay where the goal is to make it to a specific dead-end, at which point she will preview an upcoming ability by using it on the player.
It wouldn't be non-functional as a Metroidvania, but the specifics of the character require the design to be both contrived and clunky as hell.























