The pre-Metroid era (ca 1979-mid 1986) of Platform Adventure games was a time when basic concepts of platformers and action adventure games themselves hadn't been fully established yet. For example, the first scrolling platformer, Jump Bug (1981), is a mostly auto-scrolling game while the first major platformer hits are from 1985 (Super Mario Bros. and Ghosts 'n Goblins), and the first proto Zelda-like Action Adventure games, Adventure and AD&D: Cloudy Mountain, are from 1980 and 1982 respectively. 

As such, you tend to see some of what we now see as defining traits represented, such as exploration-focused areas and permanent character upgrades, while others are missing. Or traits associated with other genres such as Rogue-likes or Point & Click Adventure games 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. 

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