Shrink in size and embark on a huge adventure in The Legend of
Zelda The Minish Cap, only on Game Boy Advance.
Welcome to Remember 64, where this week we shrink down to
minish size. Welcome to the show, everyone.
My name, of course, is David Petrangelo.
And this week. It's a special.
Edition of Remember 64, if you have been listening to the
episodes as they are released, not everybody does and that's
part of the point, honestly. So you can go and reference any
of these games at anytime. But in recent weeks I've had a
couple of things. Life gets in the way, My furnace
broke and I was away for a couple of weeks, blah blah blah,
don't have to. Get into it.
But really, what's happening here is I'm going to talk about
one of the. Games that I mentioned on
Patreon a few weeks ago when I began to play The Legend of
Zelda The Minish Cap. I played that on the Nintendo
Switch Online expansion pack and this is sort of an expansion
pack episode, which you may have seen on your feed.
And on the Patreon feed as well. And I had my initial thoughts on
Patreon, so you can check that out.
But I thought right now it would be time to dig into Minish Cap a
little bit. I have this Switch online
expansion pack now. This is one of the Legend of
Zelda titles I've never played. This is going to be a little bit
of a different episode. I would say normally take a few
minutes here and there on Patreon every few weeks.
To talk about some games that I'm not playing on the Nintendo
64, and this is going to be one of them, but I'm going to dig
into a little bit of the development, some comments from
developers and some reviews along the way as well.
I thought I would do something slightly different and not leave
everybody hanging on the podcast feed.
But yeah, you know, without further ado, let's head back to
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Mystic. Microscopic.
Conqueror. You can use the power of The
Minish Cap to get small unlock clues and save High rule The
Legend of Zelda The Minish Cap only for Gameboy Advance,
Greater D for everyone. Released in January of 2005 in
North America, The Minish Cap is one of several titles now under
the Capcom label. Yes, the.
Same studio that brings you the Resident Evil and Street Fighter
series. They had their hand and other
Legend of Zelda games such as Oracle's and seasons on the Game
Boy Color, but Minish Cap was one of the latest ones that they
did around this time and in an interview in 2005, the director
and supervisor of Minish Cap from Nintendo said quote.
Our two development themes for a Zelda on GBA were one, to do
something no one had done before, and two, make something
that would really bring out Capcom's style.
And this personally is one of the things that I loved about
this game love about this era of games as well.
The GBA just has this certain aesthetic and Sprite style to it
that not every game has, but many do and I really love the
art style in this. And they also added in this
interview with Minish Cap. We started off by asking how can
we make this feel like a Capcom game?
Our answer was the feature Capcom's talent for beautiful,
exquisite 2D graphics. Again, my opinion, they nailed
that part right out of the park. They also spoke to Capcom about
making this quote more ominous than linked to the past.
So what would have a similar feel at times to the classic
link to the past? But.
They wanted aspects of this to feel a little bit darker, a
little bit more Moody, and I think at times I felt like this
game had that. It didn't really run away with
that concept, but every once in a while you'd be in a dungeon or
an area that were a little bit more gloomy, such as the marshes
and things like that. But this is exactly what
Nintendo wanted to do with something different.
And that's, to me, What I think Minish Cap excels at is doing
something different, bringing you to high rule.
Your Link Zelda needs to be saved, The world needs to be
saved. And this time there's, you know,
an evil wizard sort of speak, and all of that stuff is still
there, but literally a different perspective on the Legend of
Zelda series, you shrink down to miniature size or in this Minish
size. And you see the world in a
different light, at a different perspective.
And you can do and interact with so many different things, do a
lot of different fun things, and be able to traverse around high
rule and parts of high rule in different ways.
And sure, maybe that's just, you know, the puzzle gimmick or
mechanic and all of that kind of Mcduffin, You know, some people
would use that term. But I think it never felt tired
and never felt forced. There was always rewarding when
you were able to shrink down and then come back up to human size.
I think honestly that Minish Cap is what now one of my favorites.
It is one of my favorite Legend of Zelda titles.
I have not played them all. I have played probably about 60%
of Legends of Zelda titles out there, but the series is
fantastic. I love 2D Zelda's as well and
this one is right up there for me.
And another interview just before the game released.
So this interview was taking place in 2004.
The creators said quote with Menish Cap we.
Decided to include. A number of things that were
really more geared towards 3D, but we tried to make them on a
2D plane. We wanted to impress players.
For example, one room there's a small staircase on top of a
bookshelf. When you become small, you can
walk across the joists on the roof to get there.
The first time I saw this scene, I was taken aback and said,
whoa, that's amazing. The joists themselves were
depicted with great detail and they're very realistic.
At this time, of course, as you sit here and listen to a
Nintendo 64 podcast, you know that. 3D.
In Zelda games was massive at this point, A Green of Time and
Majora's Mask were massive, massive hits.
You know you can hear our thoughts on Majora's Mask on
your podcast feed. It's just a great deep dive and
great discussion we had on that. It was the first time I played
it. And the creators also added to
this and mentioned the fact that 3D was sort of now what people
were thinking when they thought of a Link Zelda adventure.
They said, quote, Zelda games are interesting in 3D, but we're
aiming for Minish Cap on the 2D GB, a field and game that can
compete with the 3D Zeldas. Utilizing all our technological
expertise, we're trying to make something that will be called
the pinnacle of 2D gaming. Now for anyone.
Who may be? Listening to this in Europe or
grew up in Europe at the time, this was the first time that a
game in the Zelda series was released in Europe before it
headed to North America. Fun little thing there.
The main reason was that the Nintendo DS.
With the European DS launch scheduled for Spring of 2005,
Nintendo of Europe wanted to make Minish Cap.
Get there before this they wanted to hit that Christmas
holiday season and that's exactly what they did.
So just a couple of months before in 2004, that's when this
hit European shelves. Sadly, this is something that,
especially at the time and especially in the 80s and 90s,
never happened. Europe always got stuff later.
This was the first exception in the Legend of Zelda series.
Just a few months after its complete worldwide release, The
Legend of Zelda The Minish caps sold over 1,000,000 copies.
That is one of the fastest selling handheld Zelda games of
all time. Reviews at the time gave it very
high scores. It sits anywhere between the mid
80s to mid 90s if you're looking at numbers out there and
Metacritic for example. But some of them criticize the
fact that Minish Cap was a little too short, especially
compared to previous titles. And sure, if you compare that to
the Nintendo 64 games, I could agree with that.
But I actually, personally, and my unofficial review here, think
that that's actually a bonus. I think that Minish Cap excels
at being a little bit shorter than others and being a little
bit more compact. Literally a great experience for
a handheld. Sure, when I played it on the
Switch online, I had Safe States, for example.
You know, you can sort of just put your Switch to sleep, and at
the time you play on GB A. Sure, there's a little bit of a
different experience there, but I actually think that regardless
of how you saved things and how you experienced the dungeons and
exploring and everything, I actually like that this game was
smaller in scale, not literally with diminished abilities, but.
Just the fact that it was a little bit quicker.
I played this over the course of about 7 to 10 days to completion
and that was great. I I loved that experience.
I love the fact that I could get through this and you know what
would essentially be a vacation if it was on vacation at the
time. Despite a little bit of
criticism, every game has it. Not every game is perfect.
It did receive a decent amount of rewards.
GB a game of the year at Game Spy, GameSpot.
And IG N and then on Nintendo Power, the 2005 GB a game of the
year and the 24th the best game on a Nintendo console.
Well thank you everyone for joining me on this sort of mini
package size of a remember 64 episode.
I know it wasn't about a 64 game, but I really want to get
the word out about Minish Cap. I think that's part of it and
just sort of share my experience of.
Playing games that are not part of the 64 lineup.
That is something you'll definitely hear on the Patreon
page. patreon.com/remember 64 show.
No, it is not always going to be a Nintendo title, not always
going to be something that you can find on Switch.
But at this time I figured you know what?
I want to share my thoughts, something I've been playing in
the last over the course of the last month and didn't want to
leave anybody hanging in the feet a little quieter than it
normally is. But back to the regular stuff.
In just a little bit. If you want to support the show,
you can head over to Patreon as little as a dollar a month.
We'll get you episodes early, including video content on our
YouTube page, YouTube is Remember Dash 64, and then
everything on social media is at Remember 64 show.
If you are listening to this in June or July of 2023, you'll
know that there's a whole lot of stuff going on on social media
at the moment. I'm going to try and secure all
the Remember 64 show handles across the board.
That includes other things like Blue Sky.
I will keep you posted right now.
You can find everything on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok at
Remember 64 Show and other than that, I really appreciate
everyone for joining me on this journey so far and Remember 64.
I can't wait to share the slew of amazing games, guests and
topics that we're going to be talking about on our podcast
feed on Patreon and on social media.
All right, everyone, Have a great week.
We'll see you next time.