Fresh Takes: If You Haven’t Played The Minish Cap, You Haven’t Played Zelda

In 2005, I didn’t have any video games in my house.

Heck, we didn’t even have a TV, and the computer hooked up to dial-up internet was really only used for email or homework. The Walmart 30 minutes away was the primary center of wider civilization near the small southern town I lived in, which orbited around one major church-become-school that didn’t exactly encourage embracing contemporary media. Thus, whenever we’d go to get groceries and other essentials, the video game section of the store would pull me in whenever my mom would let us hang out there for a while. At 10 years old, I had little grasp of the significance of the most popular games debuting at the time, their trailers playing out on the little in-store monitors, although now I certainly know that it was a banner year in gaming, as it saw the release of Resident Evil 4, Mario Kart DS, God of War, Guitar Hero, Shadow of the Colossus, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, and obviously many more. But these titles felt alien and out of my reach, many of them not made for my demographic, and certainly almost none allowed at my house even if we’d had the means to try out the latest and greatest games as they came out. 

I do distinctly remember, however, on several occasions walking over to the Nintendo display cases, with their brighter, more accessible color palettes, and immediately grabbing the demo Game Boy Advance SP that would be attached to the outside of the glass, made grubby by dozens of little hands a day. Assaulted by the noise of all the TVs and other game demos blasting around me, I’d press Start on a game whose context I was ignorant of. While I knew little about the video game fantasy genre, I was drawn to fantasy iconography, with the sword slashing onto the game’s main menu over a lush background of pixellated greenery evoking feelings I recognized from reading book series like The Chronicles of Narnia or hearing of my older family members’ admiration for The Lord of the Rings.

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap carried no other feelings for me but that it felt bigger than my current comprehension encompassed, telling a story that went beyond this well-used Game Boy’s tiny screen. Yet in those ten-minute spells while the demo timer would run, I got to experience a little of my first taste of Zelda magic. I only ever remember playing the Minish Woods or Deepwood Shrine segments, particularly as the appearance of the green Chuchus in the mist stuck with me for years afterward (the only other area you can access in the demo is the Cave of Flames). I thought the main character sprite easy to identify with, I caught on easily enough with the ability to slash my sword by just mashing the buttons until I found the right one (what are menus, anyway?), and I generally enjoyed the bright colors and fairytale atmosphere. There was nowhere this was more apparent than in Minish Village, where the local inhabitants would approach you in their mysterious language as you were surrounded by huge leaves and flowers. It felt like an alternate version of Thumbelina or perhaps The Borrowers. When the timer was up, I’d take my hands off the Game Boy, the handheld system suspended in air from the games display case, and that would be that, until the next time I could return to play again.

For almost 20 years, that was my only interaction with The Minish Cap, a practically anonymous memory stored in the depths of my psyche.

I can’t even tell you when I came to the realization that it was part of the same series of games I came to better understand later on in my teenage years and early adulthood, primarily through Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, although they were all released in fairly close succession in the grand scheme of things. I certainly didn’t make the connection when, before moving away from that sheltered rural town in 2006, my family did dismantle the “no video games” rule and I got a shiny sapphire-blue Game Boy Advance SP, along with my pick of a game from the clearance bin – Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. I had no idea what I was getting into, but once again, I just liked the look of the sword on the front of the box, and figured it would be a fun adventure game to play. It’s no wonder I didn’t really connect the pieces that these two games, The Minish Cap and The Adventure of Link, were from the same series. For an 11-year-old with barely any prior gaming knowledge or intuition, I played Zelda II for an impressively long time, grinding for upgrades and holding on to my stack of printed-out guides for progressing through the game, but I did eventually stop playing somewhere before Ocean Palace. Between losing crucial sheets from my cobbled-together guide, my schoolwork getting harder, and big life changes, it just didn’t hold my attention the same way. 

Fast-forward to early 2023, and my adult understanding of the Zelda series had thankfully become much more complete. I had witnessed Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild as they’d come out, claiming Breath as my favorite game of all time (it still is). I had been to a Symphony of the Goddesses concert, done some Zelda cosplay, went back and played the majority of the mainline games (including a full replay of Zelda II), and by that point had started writing for Zelda Dungeon. As we looked ahead to the release of Tears of the Kingdom, the games from the series I had not yet played became more painfully apparent for me – including that little title I had unknowingly familiarized myself with from those days playing Game Boy demos at Walmart.

When The Minish Cap was announced for re-release on Nintendo Switch Online (NSO) + Expansion, I talked my coworker into splitting the cost for the family plan with me so we could both experience the game. That winter I had been working on a first-time playthrough of Oracle of Seasons on original non-backlit hardware, so I was definitely ready to take a break and play something on the Switch again. My reconnection with The Minish Cap ended up starting off pretty slow. As soon as I started it up, I did feel so much nostalgia for those childhood experiences the demo had given me. Those ten-minutes forays, perhaps taken for granted by others, had given me glimpses of the cheery world of video games from out of the dark tunnels where such things were forbidden, opening my eyes to the possibilities and putting me on the path toward a future love of Zelda. I immediately connected to the charm and vibrance of the full game, but I also initially had the sense that perhaps this was a more immature Zelda title, a simpler, cutesy game primarily for kids that wouldn’t hold up compared to the newer titles. This misconception was bolstered by the fact that, up until this point, the most honest connection I’d had with the game had been during those fleeting interactions with its beginning chapters as a child, and I couldn’t really imagine the connection going deeper than that.

It wasn’t until I was asked to participate in the 2024 Minish Cap race at the Zelda Dungeon Marathon that I ended up completing the game in preparation for the event. It was at that point, and especially after practicing playing the first two dungeons as fast as possible, that I fully came to understand and appreciate this game for the complex, solid, and captivating title it is, its meaning reaching far beyond its initial impact just as I explored the game further beyond those initial fenced-in areas from my demo-playing days.

So That’s the History… What About the Fresh Take?

After loving the 3D Zelda titles so much in my teenage and early adult years, I marvel to say that The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap is the most quintessential fairytale title in the series, and has to be one of the franchise’s most fun installments in that it is uncomplicated. It’s a Zelda that, if you know how Zelda works, you don’t need to have played the title before to know exactly what’s going on in terms of what you’re expected to do as the player and how to reach the game’s objectives. Even the game’s most iconic “new” feature, taking on the size of a Minish, is familiar to those who have played Four Swords and encountered the Gnat Hat. Yes, Ocarina of Time may rank as many people’s best title in the series, taking what came before it and laying down the terms for what it means to be a Zelda title. Yes, Twilight Princess has my favorite high fantasy Zelda aesthetic. And yes, Breath of the Wild is my favorite game and did revolutionary things not only for the series but for the gaming landscape at large. But there’s something about The Minish Cap that holds a central kernel of Zeldaness.

I believe if this title is missing from your repertoire, you are missing a crucial piece of the charming, escapist, essential character of the Zelda series.

Pixelated action-adventure role-playing games (RPGs) have become one of my favorite genres of game, including The Minish Cap and Zelda-likes such as Ocean’s Heart (which I reviewed here). These games don’t have the modern pressures of needing to feel hyper-realistic, but rather, they occupy an evocative place in video game storytelling, capturing feelings and sentiments rather than attempting to be true-to-life or causing a disconnect between the intended graphical effects and the limitations of the hardware. While I love a long game to nibble at over the course of weeks or months, games like these tend to be shorter and can be knocked out in a weekend or even just a day if you’re really chomping into it – I was able to replay the majority of The Minish Cap over the course of two three-hour sessions for last year’s Peace of Heart Marathon, very casually and with little preparation.

Despite the (at times literally) shrunken-down aesthetic of The Minish Cap — with many classic characters and enemy designs following the art direction of The Wind Waker, then being further chibi-fied — interacting with the world feels familiar and easy to read. I appreciate how scenarios are differentiated between adventuring as a full-size Link and facing off against more traditional Chuchus, Ropes, and Wizzrobes, and fighting within the world of the Minish against Sluggulas, Rollobites, and Puffstools. This segmentation of the world, and Link’s ability to interact with objects on both planes to solve puzzles, lends further weight to the fairytale that The Minish Cap weaves, making the lives of the Minish feel just as real as that of the Hylians who unwittingly occupy the same space, largely unaware of the enchantment that surrounds them. Elements of the overall narrative mimic Western fairytale tropes which helps cement the aesthetic further. The betrayal of the master inventor Ezlo by his apprentice Vaati evokes something of a classic medieval alchemist’s tale. Further, Ezlo’s transformation into a bird-cap hybrid as karmic punishment for hubristically creating the powerful magical hat that caused his own curse and the potential downfall of the kingdom, and for which he must now atone, feels like a story taken straight out of the Grimm Brothers’ playbook.

Earlier in this article, I almost used the term “shinier” to describe the more modern 3D Zelda titles compared to my initial misconceptions about The Minish Cap. This comparison, even in describing a prior error in judgment, just wouldn’t be honest. The Minish Cap has an understanding of color and dynamism so uniformly implemented and contrasted between areas of its world (think of the difference between the robust, bustling brightness of Hyrule Town vs. the murkiness of Castor Wilds or the sickly, dank energy of Royal Valley), it deserves the moniker of “shiny” just as much as those newer titles. During the past year, I’ve also played through Four Swords with a great group of people I’ve met through Zelda Dungeon, and while the game can be fun and pops with some of the same shades of color of The Minish Cap, it’s pretty lackluster on its own. Thus, I’m so glad that The Minish Cap was able to take some of Four Swords‘ gameplay mechanics and ideas for puzzle interactions, and elevate them into a whole single-player package that is truly special.

There are elements of The Minish Cap I don’t know that I’ll ever fully embrace; for one thing, in all my playthroughs, I’ve never felt particularly interested in Figurine collecting. Gathering up these collectables seems to have been a staple of many games released around the same time, as in The Wind Waker, where contributing color pictographs to Carlov lets you accumulate associated character models in the Nintendo Gallery. Assessing when to use Mysterious Shells, how much to gamble on probabilities, and toiling over completing the whole collection seems tedious, although I’m sure that it’s an appealing element for many players, allowing a break from the action for nerding out over numbers. While the Kinstone matching is also a cute element of the game, it’s similarly not something I go out of my way to do unless it’s required. This probably has led me to missing some pretty fun secrets, and I’d have to change my tune on this if I ever wanted to 100% the game, but again, tirelessly chasing down all the Kinstones and their mates, then pursuing areas of the game that they’ve unlocked, generally doesn’t feel fun to me. Even so, these are not bad elements of the game, and they lend themselves to hours of diversion that are likely welcome to players who want to extend their time with a relatively short game.

In short, my fresh take is this: The Minish Cap is absurdly good for how forgotten it frequently is in discussions of essential Zelda. It is so much better on my first full playthrough of it as an adult than I thought it would be, based on the impressions I’d had before made dim by time and circumstance. Every area of the game feels thoughtfully designed based on Link’s size in relation to the objects and enemies he’s interacting with, so many of the music tracks are incredible and addictive, and the collaboration between narrative, environment, and sound weaves together a game experience that feels like tucking oneself under the covers and diving into a gorgeous and provoking bedtime story set in a far-off land.

When, in recent years, I’d made the connection that I’d played the demo of The Minish Cap in those moments of escapism at the store as a kid, I figured that would probably be the game’s most lasting impact on me as a person. But, I am glad to be wrong. The Minish Cap means so much more to me than I could conjure up from that old connection — because now, I can continue to explore it from all sides, and recognize how special all of my interactions with the game have truly been.

Did you have a big change of opinion concerning The Minish Cap between first playing it on release and when it was re-released on NSO? What does The Minish Cap mean to you? Let us know in the comments down below!

Kora Burton

Kora started writing for Zelda Dungeon in 2022, leading up to Tears of the Kingdom‘s release, and now assists the writing team as an Executive Editor. She also works as a college administrator assisting students with their travel, research, and internship goals. She’s an avid lover of board games, fantasy fiction, and DragonCon, and is a mother to a kid in the stars.