confidentialmisanthropy

There was a time when nothing was bigger to me, as far as videogames go, than a Zelda game.

That time has come and gone.

I still consider it to be the best series out there. Technically. And simply the best subject for a case study on genius game design. But what was once a bastion of innovations and re-invention is inching towards irrelevance.

Minish Cap was released here in Japan last November. I was in Akihabara the day it came out. I remember seeing the display for it at AsoBit City 1. I just looked at it, took a picture of the poster with my camera-phone, and went on my way. I have an unhealthy love for Flagship’s Four Swords games but their GBC Oracle games just don’t do it for me. Besides, Minish Cap is a pretty uninspiring subtitle for starters. It lacks that Tolkien-esque epic quality.

Link to the Past.

Ocarina of Time.

That’s some epic shit.

Minish Cap? Thanks for the offer, but I’ll have to pass.

A fundamental difference between the Western and Japanese game industry is that most American franchises get intellectually tied to their publishers (There are a few exceptions to this, mind you, mostly for PC games.). No one gives two shits who the producer was on Madden 2004. When you think of Madden, you undoubtedly think of EA, or John Madden, or Michael Vick. When you think GTA, you think Rockstar. When you hit franchise status in Japan, you get your name on the box. When I think about Metal Gear, I naturally associate it with Hideo Kojima, rather than Konami. Likewise: Final Fantasy with Sakaguchi, Mother with Itoi, Metroid with Yokoi.

Even though Miyamoto’s passed down Zelda to his protégé Aonuma and Flagship, I still associate him with the series. However, there are very distinct differences between a Miyamoto Zelda and well… every other one that’s been done since Majora’s Mask.

I know a Miyamoto Zelda when I play one, just like I know a DJ Premier song when I hear one. A lot of producers try to be DJ Premier, but they simply can’t be. Aonuma, and most recently Flagship, think they’re emulating Miyamoto, but I think they’re missing the point.

Hang in there.

There’s a Minish Cap review in here somewhere. I promise.

It all starts out innocently enough. It’s festival time in Hyrule. Princess Zelda shows up to Link’s house to wake him up so he can accompany her to the festival in town. Unbeknownst to the pair, bad things always happen at festivals in RPGs. Wild ARMs and Chrono Trigger come to mind. In the case of The Minish Cap, the sorcerer Vaati, of Four Swords fame shows up and crashes the party, turning Zelda into stone and shattering the sacred Picori Blade. As is customary, her fate falls squarely on the shoulders of Link.

Minish Cap is a beautiful game. As aesthetically beautiful as videogames get. Visually and otherwise. The visuals and character designs are heavily reminiscent of Wind Waker’s cell shaded style. And the soundtracks’ almost completely comprised of Link to the Past remixes. Good ones. I couldn’t help but grin hearing the one for Hyrule Castle. With all the DS and PSP hoopla it’s a shame that this game hadn’t come out years ago, when we were playing SNES remakes.
En route to the first dungeon, Link runs into Ezlo, the Minish Cap. Ezlo perches atop his head and serves as a psuedo-guide and the vessel that allows him to shrink and grow through various portals throughout the world. Soon after, we meet the Picori, a race of Lilliputian-elves that happen to be responsible for forging the Picori blade in the first place. They’re somewhere between Tarutaru and Pikmin in terms of cuteness. Their voices sound just like the kids from the "Nappy Roots Day" chorus and if I didn’t know any better I’d swear that’s what they sampled.

It’s about this point in the game, after the first dungeon, where Minish Cap lost points with me because from here, save for a few pockets of brilliance, I got bombarded with Zelda cliché after Zelda cliché. Most people aren't gonna care, Zelda fans eat this stuff up. If it was Flagship’s aim to simply make a faithful single-player Zelda game, then they succeeded. This time around, they managed to make a pretty damn engaging one too, as opposed to the Oracle games that made me yawn. But in the process they failed to get off the beaten path, which is what Zelda is all about.

I used to hate Zelda. Back in my NES days, 1990 or so, my favorite games were the simple ones.

Ice Climber. Baloon Fight. Super Mario Bros.

It wasn’t ‘til about four years later while falling in love with Link’s Awakening that I realized how genius it was. The Legend of Zelda, the original one, is the first game I ever played that I couldn’t tell what the goal was just by looking at the first screen. I mean, you can go left, right or up. You could run around forever without ever going into that cave. But once you do, and you get that sword, and you hear the fanfare, it dawns on you, all at once, how much more of the world is accessible to you. It’s the Law of Miyamoto that Tim Rogers always talks about. It’s discovery. That’s what Zelda’s all about.

Not heart containers. Or hookshots. Or cool subtitles.

For me, the seasoned Zelda player, Minish Cap is a little hollow in comparison to the bulk of the rest of the series because there is no discovery. All the ground it covers is the beaten path. Perhaps this is why Miyamoto’s taken a back seat to the series in the first place. He’s never really done one unless he had more tools to take the series somewhere new. Link to the Past’s light and dark world mechanic has been used so many times since it debuted including Minish Cap’s small/large gimmick. Link’s Awakening’s dungeon design is still the series’ pinnacle. And Ocarina of Time’s lock-on innovation has been used in pretty much every three-dimensional game developed since. Every review I’ve read, in print and on the web, for Minish Cap has used a phrase like “the Zelda formula” or “the Zelda template”. But none of ‘em seem to notice the gaffe in this.

There’s a musical term that defines pretty accurately what Minish Cap ultimately is to the Zelda series: A refrain. Not the verb. The noun.

Look it up.

In the grand scheme of things, I’d rank Minish Cap higher than Wind Waker. Unlike WW, when Minish Cap’s over, despite its comparative brevity, it actually feels finished. It does have a major pacing problem like it’s GCN predecessor, but at least the items that you get are used again over the course of the game and not simply forgotten about after one dungeon. Speaking of the dungeons, they’re where Minish Cap shines. There are only really six of them in total to speak of but they live up to the Zelda heritage. And the bosses as well, specifically the Palace of Wind’s dual manta boss. It’s like Mode 7 magic, let me tell you.

I haven’t given up on Zelda yet. That one that Aonuma’s working on for the ‘cube looks like it’ll move me again. But I swear, if it insists on reminding me what a small key does everytime I get one, I just might hang my tunic up for good.