If anyone else is fascinated in this stuff, it's probably worth watching Mark Brown's Game Makers Toolkit videos on YouTube. They really go into the thinking behind the Zelda series, Metroid series, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, etc, and the latter follows really well from this sort of article:
It's also a field with a ton of material on YouTube, blogs and industry websites, so yeah, even the sources/citations in the article are only scratching the surface there. Extra Credits, Critical Gaming, Snoman Gaming, Skip the Tutorial and a fair few others are worth checking out too.
Mark Brown is a stellar presenter, and it's especially interesting to watch the model he uses expand and mature as he progresses through the Boss Keys series. He adapts it as he encounters challenges to his existing model in newer titles.
I was really surprised and excited to see this article cite one of Mark Brown's GMT videos! (In the example of using an enemy in Super Metroid to indicate a way to break through the floor)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqHcE6B4OP4
It's also a field with a ton of material on YouTube, blogs and industry websites, so yeah, even the sources/citations in the article are only scratching the surface there. Extra Credits, Critical Gaming, Snoman Gaming, Skip the Tutorial and a fair few others are worth checking out too.