As a kid with a Game Boy Advance, all I thought about was how much it couldn’t do.It couldn’t match the polygonal graphics I had at home on my Nintendo 64 and GameCube, which meant that it couldn’t play the kinds of games I loved the most, big 3D adventures like Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The original model didn’t have a backlight which meant that, for all its advancements, I was still out of luck on long car rides once the sun began to set. Once Nintendo announced the DS — which addressed these problems — I couldn't leave the GBA behind soon enough.
But this week I ponied up and paid for the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack, the $50 yearly subscription that grants you access to a selection of GBA, N64, and Sega Genesis games, in addition to the NES, SNES, and Game Boy games that come with the basic sub.
The whole reason I paid for the Expansion Pack was to play The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap for the first time. I’m vaguely interested in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga and Fire Emblem as well, when they eventually get added down the line. But mostly I'm here to experience one of the few Zelda games I've never touched until now.
The game looks good from the jump, far more colorful than Oracle of Seasons/Ages on Game Boy and more detailed than A Link to the Past on SNES. It's an interesting evolutionary end point because, after this, the portable Zelda games all used polygonal art. Phantom Hourglass adopted The Wind Waker's cel-shaded look and Spirit Tracks did the same. The Zelda games on 3DS were either updated versions of N64 titles, Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, and so kept that art style, or, in the case of A Link Between Worlds and Tri Force Heroes, kept the top-down polygonal look of the DS games. The only 2D Zelda on Switch is Grezzo's remake of Link's Awakening which has a fantastic toy-inspired 3D look. Many of those games are great, but the downside is that we haven't had a new pixel art Zelda game in nearly 20 years.
Minish Cap was the last one and playing it immediately makes you conscious of the loss. If you go back and watch an accomplished silent film from 1927 and an awkward early sound film from 1928 it makes you aware that the widespread adoption of innovative new technology tends to mean leaving mastery of older forms behind. We got 3D games on handhelds — Which is great! I love playing Breath of the Wild on my Switch! — but that meant there was no longer a reason for a big publisher like Nintendo to continue to produce 2D games.
It's a shame because Minish Cap has some of the most impressive pixel art I've ever seen. The world looks great and colorful when Link is at full-size. But it's only after Link finds Ezlo, the titular talking hat, and gains the ability to shrink down to the size of an ant that the game's graphics really wow you. Some areas essentially look the same. When you reach the Picori Village shortly after downsizing for the first time, it basically looks like Hyrule Town but with humans swapped out for little weasel people.
But there are wonderful moments when Minish Cap focuses on the details of everyday objects. When you first shrink down at a rock shrink shrine, Link bounces on gorgeously rendered crystals. There are lots of times when you need to walk through a tight corridor and small objects like fallen twigs, acorns, and descending rain drops take up huge portions of the screen. So far, leaves have been the thing to really blow me away; Minish Cap has the best-looking leaves this side of a Land Before Time movie. And when Link climbs inside a barrel which moves as he walks along its interior, Minish Cap brilliantly sells the rotation effect.
I'm only a few hours into Minish Cap, but it has me regretting my childish foolishness. I still love a big 3D game, and you can't really beat the sense of immersion you feel in a game like The Last of Us or Half-Life 2. But whenever I'm playing Minish Cap, I'm convinced that this may be the best a game can look. If only we could shrink our expectations.