Map design in Super Metroid · 6:03am Apr 30th, 2018
A long time ago: someone told me this anecdote from when they played the original Metroid game (1986). They were exploring Norfair, and couldn't find the boss just yet. While playing they had drawn maps on paper, required since there was no in-game mapping. Based on the maps, they induced that Norfair was roughly arranged in a rectangular shape, and they had traveled most of it.... except for a small unexplored corner in the bottom right. Yes, that must be where Ridley is hiding! So they go back there, enter a door, and find...
another elevator, going down. 
Ridley's Lair turns out to be almost as huge as Upper Norfair. They had just begun. What a twist.
Intended by the game designers? Maybe just a coincidence?
It's hard to tell, because Metroid was a bit too polarizing. For some, it was too obtuse and difficult to complete. For others, particularly those who were patient enough to draw their own maps on paper, it was a deep nonlinear game. It was inspired by Legend of Zelda, but without the same accessibility that made it so overwhelmingly popular.
When Super Metroid (aka Metroid III) was released in 1994, the series finally included an in-game automatic mapping system. This is regarded as a major innovation, a huge step forward.... despite that The Legend of Zelda had already provided maps eight years earlier. Whatever, because Super Metroid set all the rules for nonlinear sidescrolling games, and everyone wanted to imitate that nice mapping system.
(another note: Zelda 1 introduced and solved the problem of how to recover from a defeat: use medicine or go to a fairy fountain to fill your hearts. Metroid 1 forced you to farm enemies for half an hour to fill your energy tanks. Both games are great, but this shows Miyamoto's priority for thinking of his audience, since he got all these things right the first time.)
For the most part, I think they copied the map on a surface element, without really understanding how or why it was so innovative. I think gamers didn't care, because they were satisfied by the completionist thrill of filling in every square on the map.
Some games give you a map so it can clearly guide you to GO HERE
Other games let you do the mapping on your own, so they can just toss rooms everywhere without any reason or structure.
Even DuckTales Remastered gives you a map, despite being such an easy game. 
Not saying the games are bad, or that the maps are superfluous, because I get not everybody wants to break out pencils and paper when playing a videogame. I just think none of them have realized its full potential, and the way Super Metroid actually used it to direct the flow of the story. The designers were so subtle and organic about it, that I think it went overlooked, because I've never seen anyone write about this subject.
So a warning for those who never played it, here I'm gonna spoil all the interesting story of Super Metroid by looking at the brilliant map design. And by "story" I don't mean the scripted bits of the ending, which is all anyone ever talks about. I'm talking about the sense of exploration by playing the game.... exploration without realizing you're being guided the entire time, as the designers don't want you to get too lost.
Some Japanese game designer said that backtracking isn't necessarily problematic in videogames, only when the player can't remember where they're supposed to backtrack to. I can't even remember who said that, unfortunately. (Maybe it should be amended slightly: backtracking shouldn't be excessively tedious either.)
Going back to the original Legend of Zelda, it created a simple structure to dungeon exploration. You first enter a level blind, and explore where-ever you can. Eventually you find the map, which tells you where every room is. And in that first game, the floor layouts were designed in shapes that are easy to remember, like an eagle, or the letter A (or a buddhist symbol). Once you know the overall shape, you get a compass that marks where the boss room is.
This cleverly solves a problem that most people never noticed. Ever played a typical JRPG dungeon? Exploration there means choosing from branching paths, and usually one path leads to more progress while the other leads to a dead end. However, the dead ends usually have valuable treasures! Therefore, any experienced RPG player will intentionally try to find every dead end, to not miss anything. If they luckily choose the correct path, they'll get anxious and backtrack to the dead end path, just to be safe. 
Zelda's map and compass create much more interesting dungeons just by being there. Still looking for a certain treasure? Go in the opposite direction of the boss! If you think you've cleaned out the dungeon, you know which general direction the goal is. And knowing the overall map shape allows for some subtle hints towards secrets not even marked on the map, such as the hidden room in the middle gap of the A. If you know there's a room on the other side of the wall, you can start searching for hidden doors or tunnels.
Metroid 1's secret tunnels seemed to be placed arbitrarily, and you wouldn't discover some without shooting and bombing every tile on the screen. However, Super Metroid refined the Zelda map structure to something even stronger. (While later Zelda games didn't progress much with the map, mostly sticking with tradition).
Here's the basic structure for every zone in Super Metroid. You explore blindly, and find whatever's available for now. You'll leave the area and come back later. On your return, you'll find a Map Access Room, giving you most of the layout and the boss room location. You'll explore the remaining rooms shown on the map, and then hunt for the unmarked tunnels that lead to the boss. That's it. Every zone does this. (Except Tourian, which is 100% action instead of exploration).
The first time visiting a zone might be intimidating because you don't know where to go, but the designers are only giving you the illusion of free exploration. Really, you're being funneled in a certain direction, to get a specific item. On the way there and back, you'll notice the doors and obstacles, and remember most of them for later. The very first thing you see in the entire game is a small tunnel, and without fail, everyone new to this game intuitively knows to go back and explore that when they get the Morph Ball.
Backtrack to point 1 with your new items. Examine that wall at point 2 for a secret door. You can't reach point 3 yet, but now you know the game's map isn't going to tell you everything. By giving you the map as a handout, Super Metroid has taught you how to play the game. It doesn't force you to explore everything blindly by trial and error (avoid progress! exhaust every dead-end!), and neither does it need to put a big flashy marker saying GO HERE.
Your first visit to Maridia is that short glass tube in the lower left corner. When you find another way in, it'll probably be in the upper right. Notice just how huge the gap is? 
This is one of the tougher puzzles in the game, where that center room just doesn't seem to have any obvious entrance. Yet you've seen a glimpse of it by falling through that tunnel in the background. The subtle hint here is that the secret entrance isn't in the top or bottom, since you've traveled through both, but probably on the left wall.
This point 1 be the most clever map design in the entire game. Three different zones, all connected together at a crossroad. You probably want to rush ahead to Brinstar's boss at point 2 instead of exploring some new mysterious place, but the path is blocked. You get that brief glimpse into Maridia through the tunnel, and the only other option is to take a cautious first step into Norfair. The doors are locked, and the caves are filled with horrible lava, but once you find the Jump Boots you can go back to Brinstar and try again to reach the boss.
By beating the boss, you get the Varia Suit which blocks heat damage, hinting that you should try to go back into Norfair. But even if you decided not to, you'll find that it's impossible to climb back up the vertical shaft at point 3. The only option is to go back to Norfair (passing through Maridia yet again) and explore it further. Once you get a few more items, you can return here and climb back up. Now you can backtrack all the way back through Brinstar, but why not go further up to to the new territory at point 4? It's up to you!
Though once you do, you'll get Power Bombs and.... find yet another obstacle blocking off Wrecked Ship. Back to Norfair again with the Power Bombs, where you can finally get the map and open all those remaining doors!
The trick here is that the game forces you to become very familiar with this important crossroad with all the travel back and forth. And that familiarity helps you to understand the relation between the three zones, so later you can easily move from one to another. When you bomb the tunnel, you've created another shortcut between Brinstar and Maridia, with Norfair being literally next door. No warps or hub level required.
This is surprisingly similar to how Dark Souls 1 designed areas like a spiral or helix, so that shortcuts could be created by vertical movement back to a previous path, while simultaneously teaching you how areas are interconnected. For example, that awful bridge with the firebreathing dragon is directly above Undead Burg. They're seperated as distinct areas, yet both can share the same bonfire as a save point. Instead of just having linear tunnels, requiring warps to backtrack anywhere, like in Dark Souls 2.
(this video explains the Dark Souls spiral structure in more detail)
This is how Norfair looks when you've seemingly exhausted it all. The last corner has this creepy dragon head entrance, but is blocked off by a lava moat that can't be crossed until very late in the game.
It's probably just a quick elevator ride down to the boss, right? So close and yet so far!
And here's how the map looks after beating the boss and escaping his lair. Ridley's Lair is hellish, and takes up almost half of Norfair. How misleading.... maybe that Metroid 1 map design I talked about earlier was an intentional trick. Just an overlooked one because of poor communication. Most players either got lost, or got lucky and had no trouble finding it.... they had no idea there was even supposed to be a twist.
How come modern "metroidvanias" never do any narrative with their maps like this? 
I think these same design concepts can be applied to writing and storytelling too. It's a bit difficult to describe in words, but maybe you'll figure out what I mean. 
Well that was interesting.
oh yeah, did you ever watch Mike Z talk about some of the specific stuff Super Metroid does? I think I linked them before, but for everyone else: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/50686436 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/50686651 (I hope Indivisible is good)
I kinda think it's fascinating how much of being good (in any medium) is really subtle stuff the audience doesn't even notice, so it's hard to pin down and keep applying to new stuff. meanwhile when you get something big and obvious and exciting it just becomes an instant trend and everyone copycats it until it's a tired cliche. art is hard.
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I had to watch it all just to make sure he hadn't already said everything I wrote here. He touched a little on it, but hopefully mine is useful too.
I noticed about half of the points he showed (and the other half I never noticed at all) and was tempted to write about all that too, but one could just go on for hours about every smart design decision in that game. I made the choice to limit this post just about map design, and now I'm glad I did so.
All art goes through trends of obvious surface-level stuff, but it makes me optimistic that the invisible aspects are the ideas that never get old or unfashionable. Once you learn that stuff, you can always use it. It's functional.
I had to think about what other games did this sort of map-based foreshadowing. Super Mario World is another good example; at any given time, while wandering around on the overworld, you would be able to see new regions and/or landmarks that you hadn't figured out how to unlock access to yet. And while you're working through the first island, it pushes you toward the yellow switch to unlock your route off the island and into the main game, showing you in the meantime how your actions change the map elsewhere to encourage you to keep pushing at interesting dead ends.
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I never thought about that before, but it's a good one. A very different design philosophy from the boardgame-style maps of Super Mario Bros 3, even though they look superficially similar.
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Honestly, I'm really struggling to come up with examples that aren't directly from Nintendo. Doubt I would have even thought of that one if I weren't racking my brain so hard.
Skipped most of the blog because I do plan one day to get to the metroid series. :)
But!
You've played Hollow Knight! What did you think of it??
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it's not bad, but had a lot of annoying things, like too much backtracking, that I'll just say it's "not for me"
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Oh, does it have more backtracking than other metroidvania games? See, it's the first in the genre that I've played, so I have zero perspective here.