I've got another old-skool story about these games.
First, I'm going to use "metroidvania" the way it was used back then - to refer to the CASTLEVANIA games that were modeled after Super Metroid, distinct from the Castlevania games that follow the linear action focused template of the original Castlevania.
SotN was not my first metroidvania, it was CotM, which I got near launch. I was already a fan of the series and of RPGs, so seeing elements from both combined with the focus on exploration was something quite new to me. I had never played through Super Metroid, so CotM was my first experience with this style of game. I loved CotM so much that I immediately began trying to find a copy of SotN. Back then, I was a kid that wasn't old enough to work, or own a credit card, so getting my hands on SotN wasn't going to be straightforward.
I ended up lucking out - it's hard to believe the following trade happened, but I remember it well. I had just gotten a copy of issue #150 of Electronic Gaming Monthly, it was a really special issue with their top 100 games of all time, along with Seanbaby's worst games of all time, and many other features celebrating the milestone. I took the magazine with me to school, and a friend of a friend saw it, and begged me to borrow it. A few days later, I asked him to return the magazine, but said he didn't want to - that he would trade me something for it instead. He had suggested to trade me his copy of SotN, disc only, for the magazine I let him borrow. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, but he was being serious- the next day he brought me the lone disc, not in the best condition and missing the original case and manual, but I took the disc home and it worked perfectly. I played the HELL out of SotN after that, and still my favorite metroidvania of the series.
Later, when I saw those first screenshots of Harmony in the latest EGM and a website called Madman(madmens?) Cafe, I could not be more hyped. I was excited about the return of Iga to the series, and the super bright, colorful, sort of psychedelic color palette was a welcome change after playing CotM on that original GBA model with no backlight. The color palette was one of that game's defining features, and it was interesting to see the colors swing from one end to the other between CotM and HoD.
Good times. I really think the GBA might have been my favorite era of Castlevania.