Expansion Pak - Honey, I Shrunk The Zelda!

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

January of 2005.
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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.