NBrid

Zelda: The Minish Cap (GBA)

Got a spankin' new Nintendo DS and nothing to play? Don't forget its best feature: it plays GBA games! How does this Capcom developed Legend of Zelda stack-up against previous Zelda games? I don't know. This is just a preview.

I do know in general I'm not a big fan of mobile/handheld games and their primitive graphics and gameplay, but there are exceptions (and with these new machines there will be more and more of them... in theory). One obvious exception is Zelda. I only played a few Game Boy games ever, and most were Zelda games. Of course there's the classic Link's Awakening, but you also have the Capcom developed GBC Zelda's: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Time. They were good enough that Capcom is back with another Zelda, this time for your Game Boy Advance: The Minsh Cap.

To this day my favorite Zelda game is A Link to the Past (SNES), so I can deal with the top-down 2D graphics of Minish Cap. I really can't comment on how good they are though since this is GBA we're talking about, but they seem, umm, "nice". Point is, the fact this is a GBA game doesn't bother me all that much. So I won't hold it against it.

The story, as usual for a Zelda game, is very basic. In short, on the day of the great ceremony celebrating a certain children's story, an unknown warrior wins the annual battle tournament. As is tradition for the winner, he gets to touch the legendary sword (wow, what a sweet prize... I bet he's sure glad he spent the last 10 months in training). Instead, he goes and blows it up. (See, they were begging for it to happen.) Doing this releases a bunch of baddies that the sword had previously locked away. Was that his plan all along? To make matters worse, he turns your date into stone! Now it's your job to seek help and repair the sword in order to return order to the world. And so Zelda might grant you a second date.

Let me get my biggest complaint out of the way now: the control. This isn't Capcom's fault, it's Nintendo's: a hardware limitation of having so few buttons. You're limited to just two buttons for all your actions. That includes your sword, shield, and any items you want to use. So expect to spend a lot of time in the menu switching items around, but that's nothing new for a GB Zelda and on the plus side this means fanboys will have less time to bitch on message boards about how Nintendo is doomed, DOOOMED!!! ... One nice addition is that R is used as your context sensitive button. It talks, opens doors, whatever Link needs to do; and when not doing something 'special', it causes Link to roll. Which is very nice since it's quite fast. Almost like a run button. L is also used, for fusing kinstones.

What are kinstones? Well I didn't get too much into this, but it seems you collect these throughout your adventure. Then as you meet various people, you may find someone who has a matching kinstone (a balloon pops-up). Hit L and you can "fuse" them, which can cause something special to happen (you might get something or it could open a new path for example). Just something more for you to collect (as if you don't have enough to worry about with items, heart pieces, rupies, keys, scrolls, shells...).

The gameplay continues the great tradition started by A Link to the Past. So if you've played any of the previous Game Boy Zelda's, you know what to expect. There are some nice twists on this though. The biggest so far is this game's namesake: the Minish Cap. You'll acquire this talkative hat early in the game and he'll be with you the rest of the game (so get used to it!). His "power" is to not only give you tips, but to shrink you! Well he doesn't do it himself, but he helps you find "things" that do it. These "things" can take on many forms, like tree stumps. I know what you're thinking, it's Oracle of Seasons all over! And in a way it is. You have to find these "things" to switch back-and-forth between big and small to get new places and solve puzzles. Much like finding stumps to change the season in order to solve puzzles and reach new places. This game was also developed by Capcom afterall, but so far it's worked for me.

Item-wise you can expect classics like the bomb, but I did get one really cool new item that I hope is included in future Zelda games... Too bad Half-Life 2 beat them to the punch. And that's all I'm going to say on that.

I didn't really have the chance to explore the overworld much; I spent most of my time going through the opening events and the first temple. I must say though that if the first temple is any indication, the temples in this game are going to be great. And the quality of any Zelda game is proportional to how good the temples are.

Okay, I can't believe what I'm about to say. Wait for it... Maybe this should have been a DS game. <<Gasp!>> Why? Well, it would of given the system its first must-have blockbuster. Plus they could of upgraded the graphics, and more importantly, fix the control issue. Not only does the DS have four face-buttons, but you could of used the touch screen to easily change items (and read the map which is now a pain). Just yet another reason why I should run the world.

So what's the bottom line? This seems like a really good Zelda game. If feels a little dated since it's using basically SNES technology, but that's handhelds for you. I had mixed feelings about the decent, but nothing great (at least for a Zelda game) Oracles, but this time around it looks like Capcom has come out with a game that might be able to stand right next to Link's Awakening in the history of Zelda games. Only time will tell for sure, but if you have a GBA, SP, or DS (so many acronyms, so few meanings); check this game out. Might as well get some use out of that outdated piece of hardware... Yeah I went there! Big whoop. Wanna fight?