00:00.00 Dave Hello everybody. My name is Dave Jackson and you're listening to tales from the backlog. This is a video games review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it and discuss my guest today as a friend of the show a returning guest. 1 host of play along podcast and you'll never guess from his voice but he's actually three inches tall. Welcome back Jared Moss Jared good to see you man. 00:29.20 Jared Yeah I'm canonically team tiny you know I'm canonically only 3 just tall Hashtag team tiny. Ah yeah Dave thanks for having me thanks for having me back on the show. Always a great time being here. It's funny actually both of us are actually pretty tall. 00:43.24 Dave Yeah I think relatively like I'm not I'm not like basketball player tall but like compared to the average. Yeah, it's like ah I'm not like if I see a basketball player. That's my height. I'm like oh he made it. 00:48.31 Jared You're you'rere you I think we're on like the short end of basketball toll like. 00:59.37 Dave But I'm still not like short short. You know. 01:00.24 Jared I always take it as like I'm but 6 2 right? If I see people who are taller than me I'm like oh yeah, okay they' like they're tall like they're like I'm might get the like the good and a tall like any taller you start getting some problems you start getting some like back issues and things like that I feel like right like the. 01:04.48 Dave Um, okay, yeah, yeah. 01:16.54 Dave Ah, yeah, I'm about six foot so um like I said like when you see a point guard who's only six foot you're like oh all, right good for him good for him. Yeah, yeah, so. 01:17.66 Jared Ah, good height. 01:31.95 Dave Ah, good to have you back. We've got a ah game where we're talking about height because the game ah deals with heights and tiny things today we're going to talk about the legend of zelda the minish cap which is an action adventure game developed by Capcom and flagship and published by Nintendo for the game boy advance in 2004 01:51.14 Dave Or 2005 depending on your region. Always interesting to look back. We had this little mini period in zelda's history where capcom was making the handheld games instead of Nintendo and this is one of those. 01:58.81 Jared Yeah, it's ah it's always interesting, especially in a modern era where like that doesn't happen right? Nintendo is definitely one of them. They're holding on to their IPVery very tightly. 02:13.41 Dave Yeah. 02:15.62 Jared It's ah it's an era where they're kind of just like yeah you know play around with our Zeldas and make main series games like I think the most we get now is like spinoff stuff if other people are making it but not the main series title. Yeah, exactly. 02:22.49 Dave Yeah, agent of high rule. Yeah, yeah, it's cool and it's not like Capcom is some you know tiny no name developer. They're a monster in game development too. But it's always interesting. We got this and the oracle games and stuff like that. 02:32.88 Jared Um, right. 02:40.35 Dave So I'm looking forward to talking about this today. Um, real quick Jared on um Zencastr your waveform is peaking like super bad as long as it's fine on your recording software. It's cool, but just so you know okay. 02:51.51 Jared Yeah I yeah it looks fine on mine I get turned down a little bit here. It's going super crazy. Okay, yeah, no, it's going to end. 02:58.24 Dave You don't have to if it's fine on yours, but on Zencastr it's like super loud. Yeah, okay, all right? So we'll cut that all right. If you have not played the legend of zelda the minish cap here's the spoiler policy for this episode. We are going to hold off on spoilers until the spoiler section as always. Although this being a zelda game. The story is I mean there's there. There is a story. There are things that could be spoiled I suppose it's not like. 03:11.20 Jared No. 03:29.47 Dave The type of game where it all hinges on whether you experience the story spoiler free or something like that. But we are going to have a spoiler section. We'll talk some shop maybe talk about some bosses, talk about the things that do happen in the story. So if you want to avoid spoilers for the minish cap you can look down in the show notes. 03:32.29 Jared Right. 03:47.50 Dave There is a timestamp for when those spoilers begin So we have some elevator pitches. If you're not sure what the minish caps deal is I say that the minish cap is Wind Waker kind of graphical style but shrunk down. 04:05.22 Dave Specifically shrunk down on the Gpa. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 04:06.30 Jared There There's going to be a lot of these puns throughout the episode lot of small things so just letting you guys know I had it times to be a lot of those because my elevator pitch is also Zelda but small and at at service level that seems like straightforward but like kind of how they implement and and. Work The gameplay into the environments and how small you are compared to other things in Size. It's honestly, really cool how they did it so Zelda but small it goes a long way. Actually. 04:30.29 Dave Yeah, exactly yeah and that's the point of the elevator pitch you want to give a clear and concise little thing so Zelda but small for sure I played this emulated on my steam deck this time to get ready for the podcast. 04:39.56 Jared Yeah. 04:48.17 Dave I think it took me about 10 to 15 hours but this game doesn't track how long you play it but does that sound right to you. 04:54.73 Jared Yeah I think I don't my switch with me either. Actually I don't if they track it on switch. Um, but I think I put around that time probably like thirteen or so hours into this and I played this on um nso so I played it on the switch online. Yeah yeah. 05:05.58 Dave On and so nice. Yeah, um, so as far as Zelda games go this is maybe like on the shorter side for Zelda but still ah, still felt like a very full experience to me. So. 05:13.20 Jared Um, yeah, oh for sure. 05:20.91 Dave Let's ah, let's get started as we always do by talking about our histories with the series and then with this game in particular so Jared I asked you to come on and talk about this game because I know you're a big zelda guy big Nintendo guy so tell me about your history with the zelda series and then the minish cap in particular. 05:25.38 Jared Yeah. 05:37.88 Jared Yeah, so my history with a series in general ah dates back to awkwarding of time right? like many people in the era and 64 that was kind of a pivotal and kind of a turning point for a lot of people's kind of like the quote unquote gaming journey and ocarina of time was kind of one that stood out a lot to me. 05:49.26 Dave Yeah. 05:54.76 Jared As you know I was used to playing games with friends and having it be a very a very novel experience and a social experience. Ah, creative time was kind of that first game where it's like oh it can be an adventure. There can be a story. There can be stakes and all this and my little 8 year old brain latched onto that and was like this is. 06:11.47 Jared Ah, credible this is going to be my personality forever and and after that I just was I was enamored with the legend of zelda and and and that franchise but because it maybe it was because I started with a 3d game I kind of missed a lot of the 2 d stuff that came prior and. 06:31.30 Jared The 2 d stuff afterward just didn't interest me necessarily I mean I was a kid so I wasn't like following gaming news necessarily but minish cap and the oracle games and a lot of those games completely didn't even cross my radar until obviously I was an an adult and I wanted to go back and and kind of experience a lot of those. 06:36.12 Dave Right. 06:50.85 Jared Trademark titles that started the franchise but this was the first time that I had ever played Minish Cap I actually knew little to nothing even about the game going into it too. 06:57.20 Dave It is kind of one of those games in the series. Especially when you focus on the top-down ones people talk about, maybe the original one. They talk about a link to the past and link's awakening and like Minish cap. 07:06.80 Jared Yeah. Right. 07:17.14 Dave People don't really talk about a whole lot anymore. So I can see how it would slip through the cracks if you didn't play it. You know at the time. 07:21.70 Jared Yeah, yeah, with things like you said like a link to the past and even like more modern 2 d games like link between worlds it kind of gets pushed away with some of those other big zelda games that end up being the conversation piece for a lot of people. 07:32.25 Dave Um, yeah. 07:35.86 Dave Yeah, for sure for me I'm like you Zelda is like a huge pillar of my foundation as someone who loves video games I played link's awakening on the game boy back back back back in the day. 07:40.69 Jared Yeah. 07:51.71 Dave That was probably the first one I played and then of course ocarina of time and majora's mask and I did play the oracle games back on game boy color followed the series through twilight princess and breath of the wild was another huge one for me that got me back into video games after not really. 08:03.68 Jared Oh yes. 08:09.52 Dave Following them for several years. Um, but I played a lot of the other ones along the way like ones on the Ds Um I played oh I Just forgot what the title of it was so anyway. Um yeah on the DS I played. 08:23.39 Jared Um, oh the ds ones ah spirit tracks or Phantom Hourglass 08:29.18 Dave Yeah I remember playing spirit tracks for sure and I also remember playing oh a link between worlds. Yeah I played that a few years ago for the first time. Yeah, so I've been through a lot of the series. At this point there's very few of them that I haven't played at all. So. 08:35.56 Jared Oh yeah, out 3DS oh yeah, link between worlds is great. 08:48.74 Dave Big part of my gaming history and I played the minish cap back on game boy advance back when it first came out I was I was all about it back then. But yeah, that was like twenty years ago now and I like it you know he comes up in conversation. The Discord server and I think ah Matt stormageddon brought it up when they were playing it. 08:55.13 Jared Um, interesting. Yeah oh cheese that's wild. 09:08.15 Dave And I was like shit I don't remember anything about this game. So ah, it kind of became one of those where it's like Hu that might be fun to revisit and then one of the reasons it's here on the show is it won a poll on Patreon where Matt Stormageddon submitted it for that poll. So thank you Matt congratulations for the big win. 09:08.74 Jared Yeah. 09:19.40 Jared Thank you Matt and of applause and applause. 09:27.82 Dave Um, yeah, absolutely so it won it. Beat mega man legends in 1 of our ah trademark super smash brothers bot fight tie breakers for those polls that was an easy one for us to find the champions it was just link versus mega man and link one. 09:42.94 Jared Yeah, oh that's that's quite even think about it's like using the characters for the fights too. That's fun, right? right. 09:45.58 Dave So here it is yeah well some games it's tough because it's like you know I had I had like a lord of the rings game won one of those pos in a super Smash Brothers fight and I was like Agorn's not in Smash Brothers who. 10:00.82 Jared You got one of those modded. Ah the Smash ultimate carts and then put him in it. Yeah there you go they can take the place. 10:04.41 Dave Yeah, luckily there's a million fire emblem characters that all have swords. So yeah, yeah, so that's ah, that's my history with this zelda's been a huge part of my life. 10:15.44 Jared Um, yeah. 10:17.25 Dave Ah, for a long time I would have told people that ocarina of time was my favorite game of all time, probably for like I don't know about 15 years or so like a big, big, big part of my gaming history. So revisiting minish cap here. This was ah interesting again I didn't remember anything about it. So like. 10:36.90 Dave I Don't have nostalgia for it because I forgot everything about the game. Um, but what I do have nostalgia for is the quote Zelda formula, the old style of Zelda games before breath of the wild really shook things up and I love breath of the wild. I did an episode on the podcast about that. 10:38.93 Jared Yeah, yeah. Yes, absolutely. 10:56.70 Dave Ah, love tears of the kingdom still not finished with that and I love how those games shook things up but I still have apparently now tons of love in my heart for the old style of zelda games because like I started playing this and it was like. Wow, I just found my favorite pair of sweatpants in the closet. They fit perfectly. They're comfortable. I feel at home when I'm playing it and so there was a feeling of comfort playing this but not just that I actually think this is a really really well designed game. It's very very good. 11:32.50 Dave But then coupled with that feeling of coming back home like this is just a wonderful experience playing this. 11:37.70 Jared Yeah, there's something about just that formula right? and it could be nostalgia for sure I think a lot of it probably is but this game just holds up on its own with some really good dungeons Some really interesting items and utilizing those items in the dungeons and everything like you were saying don't get me wrong breath the wild. 11:41.60 Dave Yeah, yeah. 11:57.10 Jared Fantastic. Tears of the Kingdom even better, like the things they're doing with those games on the switch is incredible and I think there's definitely room for both of those formulas right? Very open world open ended play how you want to solve puzzles how you want, but there's something about these very linear experiences. That just that just hit different. You know I again I think there's a place for both of them I experienced this as well with um skyward sword because I had not played skyward sword at lunch and I played it post breath of the wild and it really felt like it it like you said it kind of felt like I was like coming home right? It was like this warm, nice feeling even though. 12:33.22 Jared Skyward Sword is very condensed compared to something like breath of the wild. It was great just being in that old formula again and it was the same thing with Minish cap. 12:38.21 Dave Yeah, yeah, it feels good and again I think we'll talk about it when we talk about gameplay but this is just like the main gimmick of this game is really strong the puzzles they make out of it are really fun. It's just just a really really well-made game. So I'm excited to dig into it. 12:57.62 Dave We're going to listen to a bit of music and then when we come back, We'll set up the story for the minish cap in the Minish cap takes place in the Grand Zelda timeline for people who are into the timeline you know Capital T Capital T The Timeline. 13:16.28 Dave This is paired with the 4 swords game between skyward sword and ocarina of time. Now I have played skyward sword and like I said I've played ocarina of time probably 50 times that placement in the timeline means nothing to me personally. But for people who are into it. 13:35.23 Dave That is where it is placed so in the prologue cutscene when you're learning about the story of this game. You get a little cut scene. It's kind of like a nice stained glass type of intro cutscene talking about the legend of the hero who used a legendary sword from a race called the picori. 13:53.70 Dave To drive off the forces of darkness and the legendary sword The picori blade was used to seal a chest which contains the great evil So you play as link which is a shocking development for the series. Yeah I know right? Maybe you should have saved that for the spoiler section you play as a link. 14:06.90 Jared Um, what? yeah we should have put that the spoiler wall. Yeah. 14:13.67 Dave Um, today you wake up and it is the day of the picori festival commemorating this event. I suppose Link and his childhood friend Princess Zelda are going to go to the festival together. There's a tournament and the winner of the tournament gets to touch the legendary sword. And as soon as they said that I was like well nothing's going to go wrong with this plan. Obviously that's fine. Yeah, yeah, it's like yeah ah behind this door is the greatest evil in the land and there's one key they can lock the door. 14:34.22 Jared Yeah, that there's so many holes in this logic right? like this seems like a bit has bad idea written all over it. 14:51.70 Dave And the key is in the lock and if you win the tournament will let you touch the key you're on the honor system. Don't don't pull the key out honor system. Don't do it. 14:52.80 Jared Um, yeah, it's in the door you just need to turn it. You just need to turn the key. That's it. 15:01.16 Jared Oh yeah, what I was going through at the beginning of this I also was just like all right? Yeah, sure sure it seems like some plot holes to have this you know container housing all of the evil that's been in the world in the past and just being like hey if you want to touch the key if you win our competition. You can't. 15:14.32 Dave Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but again, don't turn the key. Don't don't do it. Yeah, that's it. That's your prize So The winner of the tournament whose name is Vati V a T I does what nobody could have ever predicted. 15:20.93 Jared Okay, yeah, just touch it. You get 1 touch and that's it. 15:37.50 Dave And he pulls the sword out, it breaks the sword, it releases all the evil. There's a bunch of monsters that get let out into the world and Princess Zelda is turned to stone again. No one could have predicted this Nope So um, link is tasked with finding the picori. 15:55.70 Dave And the picori are these tiny little mouse elf-like creatures. They're very very small, like inches tall. Um, they call themselves the minish hence the name the Minish cap and they only show themselves to children and link is a child so he's the one who has to take care of this. 16:09.94 Jared Yeah. 16:12.95 Dave All the soldiers they're too old so they find the most equipped kid to go help. 16:16.61 Jared At least there's canonical reasons like Pokemon right? It's like hey you're 10 go save the world. You're the chosen one at least they're like hey only children can see these things so it's like okay I guess it kind of makes sense. 16:28.27 Dave Yeah, exactly and ah link I don' all the other kids are in school link like got kicked out of school or something like that like the people in town are like the teacher is like oh it's you again? Okay, so yeah, he's not going to school. He has time to go find the ah the picori. 16:32.83 Jared Yeah, yeah. 16:45.25 Dave Ah, so he has to reforge the blade and he has to do this with the help of his hat bird companion named Ezlo. So link's you know, canonical Green hat in this game is this weird bird creature that he finds that has a connection to Vati and has a connection to the minish. 16:58.30 Jared Yeah. 17:05.19 Dave Ah, the picori and all of that so that'll be your companion throughout the game. 17:09.71 Jared It's so funny because I don't know and I don't know how you felt about this too right? describing something like a bird hat companion in normal circumstances would probably be strange but it just kind of works. 17:17.43 Dave Yeah. 17:21.70 Jared Just kind of like works with Ezlo does like oh yeah, as low as your bird hat and he's your companion and he's going to help you along the way. Yeah, that sounds like a zelda game. 17:26.69 Dave Yeah, yeah, and this is the era of Zelda where Link always had a little companion running around with him whether it's a ferry or the boat in the wind waker and in this game It's his hat actually talks to him and stuff so ah the companion ezlo. 17:33.10 Jared Yep. 17:44.90 Dave Really stays out of the way for the most part. It's not like a navi situation. Um, just kind of helps out when you need help you can ask and then pops up to talk to you during story stuff and that's about it. 17:53.89 Jared I will say that at least compared to companions like navi or we even with like the King of Red lions as low is very.. He's not as nice to link as some of the other Companions. He's very Crude. He's very demanding of Link's health which is kind of it's kind of. A nice contrast compared to the usual companions. 18:15.99 Dave And you'll learn a little bit of backstory about ezlo and so maybe you'll find out why maybe he's a little bit rude sometimes little little grumpy. Yeah for sure. Um, so that's the setup for the story and as this is a zelda game like the. 18:21.89 Jared He's just a grumpy old man. 18:32.83 Dave Bulk of your time playing this game is not going to be finding out things about the story. It's going to be gameplay stuff but that is the story and there are you know things that happen along the way. So that's not really why we're here, but it is something we'll talk about in the spoiler section and I thought the narrative was. 18:37.70 Jared Um, right. 18:51.95 Jared Yeah, yeah I mean it's like you were saying. It's a traditional kind of Zelda story and it's a fun one I think for sure. 18:52.22 Dave You know, pretty fun for what it is. 18:59.13 Dave Yeah, that being said, it does buck some like conventions from the Zelda series. There's no master sword. There's no triforce. There's no gannon in this game. It's all about the stuff that we've already talked about the Minish the Picori Blade I Guess it's a legendary sword with a different name. 19:16.22 Jared Yeah, legendary sword, different name and bad guy and you're like okay. 19:18.72 Dave Ah, yeah, different bad guy. Yeah, so it does kind of um, stray out of the formula in that way, but it is still very much following the same type of thing just just different players part of me wants to say like. 19:37.73 Dave This is proof that Zelda doesn't need to have Ganon, doesn't need to have the master sword, doesn't need to have the try force etc. Um I think the triforce is maybe mentioned but it's not like you need to go find the pieces or anything like that. 19:49.92 Jared You're not yeah, you're not finding the piece of triforces. That's not like the end goal is the bad guys trying to get to the sacred Realm or things like that. It's just yeah. 19:56.77 Dave Yeah, yeah, it's um, it's still just like basically like 95% gameplay for me and then like this story is just a little a little flavor for who I'm fighting and who I'm saving you know. 20:09.20 Jared Yeah I would say especially in zel the games like those are just like fun Buzzwords like when it comes up in breath the wild I'm like oh that that's I remember that troll triforce Oh ganon Those are words that I know and that's pretty much like what it is and then it's mostly gameplay. 20:20.46 Dave Ah, yeah, yeah, some of those like familiar elements like you know finding the master sword in a new Zelda game is always a moment and so. 20:31.81 Jared Um, yeah. 20:35.00 Dave This game doesn't have those familiar moments like that Some of the other items maybe feel that way but like I said the the picori blade is the stand in for the master sword and Accomplishes basically the same thing. So yeah, you know we're still in very familiar territory I think. 20:53.70 Jared Yeah. 20:54.37 Dave So um, let's listen to a bit more music. I want to take music breaks because the music in this game is great. We'll come back. Yeah, we'll come back after that and talk about some of the aesthetic things about playing the minish cap. So we'll start with visuals and as this is a game boy advance game. 21:00.48 Jared Ah, it's so good. Yes. 21:14.50 Dave Ah, this is brighter than most other Zelda games as game boy advance games had to be because that screen was pretty dark but I noticed it playing on yeah playing on a modern screen I noticed like oh yeah, bright green for Lynx Clothes bright green for the grass. Everything's bright. 21:14.19 Jared Yeah. 21:20.31 Jared No backlight yet. 21:27.74 Jared Yeah, especially because I was playing on the Olin I was playing the switch oled and those colors pop so nicely on that screen. It's really good I mean this game just immediately and similar to wind Waker right? They have a very similar visual style. Just. 21:33.20 Dave Ah, so. 21:45.82 Dave Um, yeah. 21:46.48 Jared Oozes personality just has a very fun and colorful aesthetic to it which is really cool. 21:50.62 Dave Yeah, and that's another thing like that comparison to Wind Waker I think fits with the visuals which is why I put that in my elevator pitch like that more cartoony style to link and to the enemies and to the people. 22:08.99 Dave All of that is kind of carried over from the wind waker into Minish cap. So if you look at Screenshots side by side like this and link’s awakening or you know a link to the past or something like that you'll notice like. 22:24.49 Dave Ah, yeah, it's it. It is more colorful like it doesn't have that same cell shaded look to it because it's the game boy advance. But um I do think there is some visual style that's carried over. 22:31.29 Jared Right? Um, yeah I mean I feel like this would have blown my mind in 2004 because we didn't have a ton of zelda games that look like this at this scale that were handheld right? I think the ones before this were. 22:46.69 Dave Um, I think so yeah. 22:47.71 Jared The oracle games right? and then we had like the other two D stuff was on on console but like we hadn't had anything handheld that looked like this and I feel like the gate the Gba graphics in general hold up really well like it just. 22:59.36 Dave Yeah, yeah. 23:01.78 Jared At least for me again might be nostalgia because I love the Gpa but I feel like that visual style just looks so cool. 23:06.89 Dave Yeah, it's a good looking game and it's a good looking you know style I guess like pixel art like this game boy advance pixel art. You know, I always think super Nintendo pixel art looks like a great game. Boy advances too. So like. 23:13.46 Jared A. 23:21.63 Jared Yep. 23:24.10 Dave This is really really well made from that perspective. So I still think it holds up and um, there is a lot of like familiar stuff from at least the n sixty four Zeldas that is like brought into this game. 23:39.78 Dave Ah, so you'll see gorons and you'll see Deku scrubs and things like that in this game and the way that they're portrayed in pixel art. You immediately are like yeah look at the low gorons punching holes in walls and stuff like the way that they're drawn and animated is cool. Yeah. 23:50.84 Jared Um, it's cool to see Gorons It's cool to see Gorons again. 24:00.35 Dave Um, yeah, 1 thing I did kind of note and it's not not like a huge deal but I did note this feels a little bit more zoomed in than a typical zelda game like link looks a little bit bigger and then like. 24:17.29 Dave The distance between link and the edges of the screen feels less. It's not really a big deal. But then when we talk about the size of the world map and stuff I feel like it's smaller than some of those older handheld ah Zelda games. 24:30.23 Jared Yeah I kind of had that impression as well and I think I don't think was a detriment to the the game at all. But I think they are trying to like with the small athletic right? and the small theme of the game. You know, only shrinking down I think having him shrunk down and this the camera. 24:45.16 Dave Um, yeah. 24:49.78 Jared Zoom closer to him, especially when you're in that smaller aspect and like the world around. You are a lot bigger. It kind of helps convey that the link is tiny and the world around him is huge. 25:02.94 Dave Yeah, when you shrink down. It's really cool too. Ah because when you're on like the regular world like the overworld link shrinks down to 3 pixels like there's like there's a yellow one a green one and a red one and he looks a little like jumping bean like moving around. Um. 25:09.72 Jared Um, yeah, like literally like a couple pixels. Yeah. 25:19.76 Dave And they actually managed to make that little bean look really expressive like when you move around and stuff like it's bouncing around. It's really cool then when you go into a place like the miniature world when you're shrunk down. They do this really cool. Um like parallax scrolling where like. 25:39.68 Dave Usually they do that where the background scrolls as you move in the foreground but in this one you're moving in the background and the foreground is a scrolling So like you're walking underneath like the grass or like leaves or something and that stuff is scrolling ahead. It is like above you as you're moving. 25:58.50 Dave It's a really cool effect and all of those times when you shrink down. It's if it's designed in a different way than the rest of the world. So it's cool every time you're like okay I'm shrunk down I'm going to walk through a log or something like. 26:06.48 Jared Yeah. 26:15.90 Dave You know some cool stuff like some honey I shrunk the kid stuff is going to be in there. 26:17.24 Jared Yeah, well, it's just like it's just the visual ah decisions that they made like you said when you're walking through a Forest or whatever or with link grass because he's he's tiny just like the little pieces of blades and grass that are like peeking out from the corners of the screen that hover over you that kind of move while you're walking. 26:32.14 Dave Um, yeah. 26:36.39 Jared And just like those little tiny motifs that helped convey the like Oh yeah, link is small now and these things like grass are massive to him. 26:45.32 Dave Yeah, it was ah, really cool to see like it's just a nice little visual touch when you shrink down because shrinking down does become like ah a pretty big part of the game. So that's cool. There's also a lot of cool stuff visually that I like. 26:47.63 Jared Yeah. 27:02.56 Dave Previous Handheld Zelda games I don't feel like could really do the game. Boy advance is more powerful than the game boy obviously um and you know a similar level of power to the Super Nintendo if I remember right? So like you have when you walk into the forest you have like these really. 27:14.47 Jared Yeah. 27:21.46 Dave Good looking sunbeams like shining through the trees and onto the ground and stuff like that. It's nice. Yeah yeah, yeah, playing this shit at like 240P Ray tracing sixty fps so good looking game. Um I didn't. 27:24.22 Jared A Ray tracing in our minish cap game that's happening. 27:37.40 Jared Ah, ah. 27:41.11 Dave You know I think that most game boy advance games hold up pretty well visually as especially pixel art ones and this one looks great. 27:44.50 Jared Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and again someone that like I think now I can determine between 2 d and 3 d and like oh I like them both and they both have a spot there before because I grew up with three d I was like oh yeah, 3 d games are great and 2 d games are also there too. But. 27:58.62 Dave Yeah. 28:05.13 Jared Thinking with this like visual style even though it is 2 d there's a lot of like dimensionality with a lot of the world that you're exploring. 28:13.90 Dave Yeah, hundred percent the music in the minish cap is. It's a superstar. I mean it's a zelda game so even my least favorite zelda games have just absolute banger soundtracks and this is ah the no exception. 28:18.69 Jared Right. 28:26.71 Jared Oh yeah, and that was the other thing and same thing with playing like through a skyward sword again. I Love breath the wild and tears of the kingdom and they have their own take on musical tracks and the main theme of tears of the kingdom will be stuck in my head for perpetuity. But man it is so good to have traditional dungeon things back and like there's a lot of like acarino time kind of styled music and stuff that's in here too. A lot of the music with that and it's oh it's so good. 28:56.18 Dave That's a good point. So the soundtrack was composed by Mitsuhiko Takano, good stuff um and that's a good point that you made. Obviously I would say conservatively the last two hundred hours of Zelda that I've played were breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom. 29:07.95 Jared Right? absolutely. 29:13.83 Dave So I am very used to those games approach to music which is like very sparse and it really those those games really pick their spots for when to throw music at you. Ah, you're back here in the old style where like everywhere you go has its own theme and the theme is very prominent and it's very catchy. And it's just really really pleasing. 1 thing about this game that I noticed and that longtime fans of the series will notice is this game reuses a lot of um, either small little motifs from previous games like the zelda's lullaby melody. 29:51.25 Dave Is brought into this game for a different use than just replaying Zelda's lullaby. Um all of those familiar Zelda things like you know opening a chest and all of those things they're here. Ah other melodies are repurposed or like you know little. 30:08.37 Dave Bits of things are taken from one song and repurposed in another song and then there's other words that are just like the whole song that you know from another game is in this game like the um, the shop music the fairies fountain men and stuff. 30:20.85 Jared Yes, when I first black walked into the shop I was like ah like tickled the little part of my brain that like the Ocarina of time music. Yeah, absolutely. 30:25.44 Dave Yeah, this is the Ocarina of time shop song like I'll never forget this song? Yeah um, being on the game boy advance soundtrack the sound quality I'll say is a little bit less than the game Boy advance is just notorious for having. Ah. 30:42.46 Dave It mean it doesn't sound bad but like side by side with other consoles and stuff the same song will usually sound worse on the game boy advance just sounds a little bit blown out. Um the bass especially is like super prominent in these ah these mixes. But it's like you know. 30:49.28 Jared Yeah. 31:02.00 Dave It's ah chip tune bass and it's very very loud if you when you hear the music examples that I'm putting in this episode. You'll hear that it's like super prominent so that song that you once knew if you're like you and me Jared where it's like oh the shop music from ocarina of time. 31:21.79 Dave This song will stay in my head until the day I Die you hear it in this game. You're like Wow That's a really really heavy, Really fuzzy base going on in this. 31:22.33 Jared Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not not terrible by any means but you're right, It does have this little bit of kind of blown out sound to it or it kind of seems like there's just a little bit too much base that's in there. That's that it's coming forward just a little more than everything else, but. 31:41.72 Dave Here. 31:47.58 Jared Like I think it's funny just it was the shop music specifically that I was like oh yeah, okay I'm here for this music that I yeah remember this. 31:52.00 Dave Yeah, ah yeah, and the original music too is really really good. There were several songs that were just over like the maybe three weeks that I played this several songs that were just competing for that space in my head were like. 32:11.86 Dave I usually have a song stuck in my head from a game I've been playing or like you know music I've been listening to. There's usually something That's just on repeat in my head all the time and this game had several songs vying for that spot. So like the high rule Castle Town Song is super catchy. Super upbeat. 32:30.82 Dave The minish woods song is really good. Um, the mount cronell song when you're climbing the mountain is really really like an epic heroic track and there's just so many like I was looking through the soundtrack earlier today and I was like okay I'll look through here. 32:34.19 Jared Oh yes. 32:49.10 Dave Listening to some songs kind of gets back in the flow of things and then sooner or later it was like I've listened to like 25 songs they're all awesome. I don't know I'm going to have to cut some of my children you know to put them in the episode. 32:55.85 Jared Um, yeah I was Goingnna say choosing songs for the breaks here is gonna be an interesting choice of which funds to pick because they're all so good. Yeah, and it's like you were saying. It's. 33:06.15 Dave Yeah, absolutely. So. 33:12.30 Jared I Think it's because it's kind of a good repetition. All of these areas that you know in front of the Castle town area. The castle itself. All of them have their own unique specific soundtrack to them that loop and cut and play when you walk into these areas when you're in castletown when you're leaving castletown. And I think it's just the right amount of repetition and they could be because they're familiar to me and it's nostalgic to me too. But for at least me it hit the right amount of repetition where it's like oh it's always good. You know where you are, you can close your eyes and be like okay I know what area of this game that I'm in based on the music that is playing. 33:47.26 Dave Yeah, hundred percent and there's not that many areas, but you're right? They all have their own distinct songs. But even now I'm thinking of the Mount Cornell song for example that has part of the main zelda theme in that song. 34:04.96 Jared Woven into it. Yep. 34:05.94 Dave Yeah, so it's really well-made and just ah, a testament to the people who worked on this game. We'll talk about gameplay in a second which I also think is just really well-made like Nintendo obviously gave Capcom their trust in this game together. And they delivered like everything that you would expect from a zelda game like they got it. 34:29.69 Jared I wonder how involved Nintendo was with this development right? I mean I imagine to an extent just like hey how are things going, are they looking good but I'm curious about how involved they were in the actual development of both this and the oracle games. 34:38.33 Dave Yeah. 34:46.40 Dave Yeah, so I was looking at it and um, one of them, like the guy who basically runs the zelda series now. Ah aonuma he was part of this game and he. I think he used to work for Capcom. So like yeah, let me see here I might cut this if it's wrong. 35:02.44 Jared Oh interesting I didn't know that. 35:19.19 Dave No no I don't think that's right. Okay, so we'll cut that. Yeah and now I forgot what you said before that. 35:21.73 Jared Just kidding. 35:29.65 Jared Oh I was just saying with the Capcom team I was wondering how involved Nintendo was with this development. 35:37.53 Dave Yeah, I'm sure that Nintendo was like you know, keeping an eye on them needing them. You know, discussing the progress of the game and stuff I know that there were people that like worked at Capcom and then went to Nintendo. 35:55.59 Dave Basically like they worked on these Zelda games and then they're just like hey you you know we're going to start making these games again. Why don't you come work for us and just keep making these games? I'm not sure like where along the timeline that happened but there was like this multi-game collaboration here in like the early two thousand S so um. 36:14.78 Dave Yeah, I'm sure that they were involved. I don't expect Nintendo to just give you know? yeah here's ah, here's our property and we'll check back with you in about 3 years how's that sound. 36:17.21 Jared Oh yeah, just give away the ah. 36:25.41 Jared Yeah I remember when we were ah doing our episode on the super mario brothers movie I remember watching looking up kind of like the history of that and Nintendo was very much like just do what you want and we all know how that turned out so after that they're like. 36:38.58 Dave Yeah. 36:39.70 Jared Maybe not, maybe we should be a little more involved in some of these projects because ah. 36:45.45 Dave Right? So um, all told music Visuals Aesthetics Great I Mean not that I expected anything different but Zelda games usually deliver on both of those fronts and this one is no different. So. 36:49.20 Jared Um, good. Oh yeah. 37:00.88 Dave Let's listen to a bit more of that music when we come back, We'll talk about what it's like to play the Minish cap music all right? So We already said that the minish cap follows the Zelda formula that you know and maybe love So you. It's from a top-down Perspective. You get your sword at the beginning, you get a shield and it follows that same kind of Formula. You get a key item that helps you get into a dungeon inside the Dungeon. You probably get another key item that helps you do like the second half of that dungeon and fight the boss. And then after that something will let you repeat that process 3 or 4 times. Yeah, and then you go fight not gannon but you know the stand in Vati in this game. Um, so this game has those kinds of standard items that you might expect from. 37:53.78 Dave Especially the Handheld Zelda games or the the top down ones the pegasus boots the bow and arrow the power bracelet the flippers that let you swim those typical things that get you off from going off of the path that you're not supposed to be on um, almost Metroidvania in a way. 37:58.50 Jared Um, yeah. 38:13.30 Dave Ah, that's not a conversation for today but I did have the thought of what I was playing. It was like you know what? Ah very very similar in structure for sure. But that's the formula. 38:20.12 Jared Yeah, you can make that argument for sure. I could see someone making the argument that this could be a Metroidvania. 38:27.11 Dave Yeah, like we both said at the beginning like this formula. The zelda formula is something that we're both very familiar with and both of us have nostalgia and love for it just like you know. I think again that breath of the wild was a good decision for Nintendo to to completely break from it and try something else because I played Skyward Sword and I thought that game was just like you know if it was one too many. You know it was like something had to change. But. 38:49.11 Jared Um, ah. 39:05.24 Dave During this period of time they had just figured out something that works like this is a type of game that you plug in new ideas into this same formula and you come out with just quality games over and over again and so this fits right in there like in this game. 39:09.96 Jared Right. 39:24.16 Dave That loop of find an item that lets you in the dungeon so you can find another item that lets you finish the dungeon and fight the boss never got old like the 10 to 15 hour runtime I think helps but I never got sick of this and it might be because again that 10 to 15 hour runtime means that this is. 39:44.30 Dave A much leaner experience than skyward sword for example, which I felt like the tutorial in that game was 10 hours long 39:45.54 Jared Right? right? And then that's what I was going to say to I think that the runtime on this also helps because with even a game like here's the kingdom with the length of that could be. 39:56.60 Dave This is. 40:04.63 Jared Can see the formula maybe wearing thin a little bit if it's not like paste correctly which is what we see with Skyward sword because that game is very awkwardly paced where you feel like you're doing a ton in just the intro. And then afterward you're like oh cool I did my things I need to do and they're like oh wait. There's 3 more things you have to get and you're like okay, fine Sure why not. 40:21.99 Dave Ah, ah so it's um I guess we'll say it's streamlined as far as like as far as this formula goes this game is shorter than wind waker. It's shorter than Ocarina of time stuff like that. So. 40:28.29 Jared Yeah. 40:37.36 Dave Ah, other things in the formula when you fight bosses they are more like puzzles to figure out rather than, you know, typical boss fights. They will have a weak point that you can either see or you need to do something special to expose once you figure out how to expose the weak point. The bosses are ah. 40:42.72 Jared Um, yeah. 40:56.92 Dave Mostly pretty easy. Although I did find some good challenge in some later boss fights in this game. 40:58.73 Jared Yeah, yeah, no, there's definitely ones that are challenging. Most of them are the find the thing that reveals their weak spot. Do that 3 times and then defeat that very very traditional boss. He'll sell the boss kind of formula. 41:09.53 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, there were a couple especially later in the game when you have more items where it was like so. The first boss that you fight. Maybe you have one key item. So obviously that's the one that's going to help you beat the boss later in the game. It's like I have 10 key items but only 1 of them is the key and it's a challenge figuring out which one is which and I died a bunch of times trying to figure out which one is which. 41:43.20 Dave And there were a couple times where like I don't know my patience worth in and it was like I have 10 key items I tried 9 of them I didn't try the one that I needed and I got frustrated and checked a guide and I was like well of course it was the one I didn't try you know. 41:53.37 Jared Um, right. 41:57.65 Jared Yes, and I there's 1 specific one that I had that exact experience with where it's like I tried everything and it was the one that I didn't try the end of being the one I also do the thing and you guys at home can decide is this cheating is this not you know this is this is a system that's implemented into the game. 42:06.77 Dave Um, yeah. 42:16.47 Jared And so obviously has the save states and the rewind feature a lot. So there's many times where I did utilize the rewind feature if I like for those specific circumstances where I tried an item that didn't work and lost a heart and I was like me re rewind real quick again. Some people can see that as cheating. 42:18.19 Dave Yeah. 42:33.29 Jared It's an actual mechanic in Edo so it is all the give. Yeah. 42:35.97 Dave Yeah I mean it's a zelda game like let's not let's not take this too seriously here like um, it's you know if you die against the boss you restart you know near the boss room anyway. So it's not like ah um, yeah. 42:44.58 Jared Yeah, exactly I'm just saving myself a walk So it's just like see exactly? yeah. 42:53.84 Dave Yeah, but most of the bosses were pretty fun to figure out and that kind of like institutional knowledge with how Zelda games work or worked will help when you play this game um knowledge of like what to expect from the dungeons. What to expect with a boss fight like that helps most of the time. 43:11.49 Jared Yeah. 43:13.39 Dave And even if you don't have it I don't think that it would be too hard to figure out So the formulaic stuff the stuff that you can expect I think delivers in a good way in this. 43:24.30 Jared Yeah I mean there's some of these bosses that are just like ones that are repeated many a time in other Zell the games and not only many times but with the very same mechanic to beat them too. So. 43:32.58 Dave Um, yeah. 43:40.00 Dave Oh yeah, yeah, there is at least one enemy that I remember that is just from a link to the past just in this game. No changes to how they work at all. They're just here so again that that knowledge of past games is always helpful in these in here too. Some of those new items that you get are quite fun too. You get an item that will flip things upside down called the cane of Pache which is good for puzzle solving but also good against fighting armored enemies. Yeah. 43:58.60 Jared Um, yeah. 44:09.78 Jared Certain enemies. 44:13.75 Dave Um, and some bosses where you might not expect that. That's the thing that you need that was often like a key part of my arsenal that I assumed was useless in this fight and it was actually the thing that I needed. 44:24.53 Jared Oh yeah, I use this similar to like in other games like a link to the past right? The boomerang was like the thing that I always had just because it was the thing that stunned people all the time. 44:33.78 Dave Yeah. 44:35.95 Jared The cane I used constantly because I just always had that on me because it either would stun enemies or would be the thing that you needed to defeat some enemy. So I just always had that on me. 44:41.41 Dave Yeah, this game's version of roc’s feather. It's roc’s Cape in this game I thought was a lot of fun because instead of just jumping like you do in link's awakening. You can jump and glide in it's cool. Yeah yeah. 44:53.85 Jared Link is officially Batman is what is happening, he has a cape, he is the cape crusader and he's here to bring justice to high rule. 44:59.60 Dave Absolutely yeah, exactly. So I think it's safe to say the breath of the wild with the glider Owes a lot to the minish cap with roc’s cape. Yeah, um, the ah big mechanical thing that kind of sets this game apart is the shrinking mechanic that we talked about. 45:06.89 Jared Yeah, yeah, exactly. 45:19.25 Dave Earlier so at designated spots in the world. You can't do this anywhere. It has to be a tree stump or a special type of pot or something link can shrink down to this microscopic size again like 3 pixels tall on the screen and you go into. 45:21.93 Jared Right. 45:38.49 Dave Microscopic world and I thought this was interesting because you do this in like designated puzzles in dungeons of course, but you do this all across the overworld and in the town and stuff too like the game is full of these puzzles. 45:53.70 Jared Yeah, well and that was weird too. Is this one of the things I knew about going into this game right? The whole idea was shrinking and getting small. I didn't know to the extent of how that worked. I just knew that was the concept. 45:55.54 Dave That are based on you shrinking down. 46:08.92 Jared And you would think that it would kind of like you said it would be very specific to puzzles and dungeons or areas on the map. But when you get to one of those tree stumps or one of those pots or one of those stone pillars. And you shrink down, you're still in the large overworld that you were in before you're just very small. You just are small pixels like Dave was saying but you can go into specific areas where it's like tall grass or you know sections in houses and homes during castle town where you are that small link but it looks like the normal size world right. 46:24.79 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 46:41.44 Jared Everything they do a lot of things like the grass and kind of perspective to make you look like you are really small but it's cool I didn't expect it to be like Oh yeah, you can be this little pixel that wanders around the world and there's a section where you're in like the the minish forest and you have to write. 46:45.98 Dave Um, yeah. 46:57.20 Jared Ride Lily pads across the water because if you go in the water you'll drown because you're too small like things like that that are super cool that I didn't expect from this game. Yeah. 46:59.52 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, the way you interact with the environment changes when you're that size, like obviously you can get into small holes or walk across really small bridges. But. The shallow water that Link could just walk through in normal size is yeah, it's like the ocean now. So you can't until you get the flippers. Um, so you can't go through that. I thought it was funny that any cat would try to catch you when you're like that tiny tiny size. Yeah. 47:31.79 Jared Yep, you get it cats are your biggest enemy here they're they're cute and adorable when you're big size link. But if you're tiny, You're the perfect little toy for them to play with. 47:38.74 Dave Yeah I thought that was a nice little touch where they were like well we put the cats in the town because it'll make it feel more alive to have a couple of cats. What would a cat do if it saw this little jelly bean bouncing around. I'm going to try and catch it. So I thought that was cool. 47:49.60 Jared Yeah, yeah, yeah, ah and it's like you were saying too they still because. 48:01.00 Jared Because link has like a role and you know similar to most sell the games you kind of can roll forward as like your momentum is like you're run so to speak and you can still do that when you're your tiny 3 pixel link. Ah, but when you're that link. There's kind of like a little bubble that shows Link's face that kind of shows his love. 48:04.57 Dave Yeah. 48:18.14 Jared Emotions of when he's getting hit and when he's rolling and things like that and I think that little touch was really cool because it still shows that like this little thing that you can barely make out as a person is still a human right? and it's still emoting and it still gives person out even though me and you and the player knows that that's link. That little kind of nod showing Link's face just helps the player visualize like oh yeah, this is still a person. 48:38.81 Dave Yeah, for sure and it's probably there to help everyone keep track of this little. Ah, this little thing moving around the screen but you're right? The little emotes that link does in that little bubble are nice. Um, when you're in this shrunken down state. You can't fight. 48:43.66 Jared That's fair. 48:56.15 Dave Regular size enemies because they would be like giants to you so you have to avoid any enemies that you might see on the overworld and then when you shrink down and go into like this special like it zooms in and shows link as normal, but your tiny size so you're you know you're walking around in like. 49:10.28 Jared Right? But you're tiny. Yeah. 49:15.15 Dave Unlike the boards and in someone's attic or yeah. 49:16.15 Jared Oh that was the coolest touch is like the shop you're walking around the shop and you can kind of see it's blur it's like has like a Gauzian Blur kind of effect. You can see down in the shop but you're walking along like the rafters above where there's a bunch of like Minish and everything super cool touch. 49:28.67 Dave Yeah, yeah, and like little ah little bugs and stuff so those are your enemies when you're this size is fighting things that are the same size as you which I thought was a nice, a nice touch too. 49:35.76 Jared Yep. 49:42.96 Jared Yeah, and it's cool because that um interaction with the world evolves right? like when you're a tiny pixel link walking around the world. You can't really do much but later in the game you get the ability to move and interact with some of the larger things like you move a big bookshelf says Minish link and you can move. And interact with more things like that. So as the game goes on you get more equipment to help utilize interacting with the world as a tiny link which I think was cool. 50:05.85 Dave Yeah, and so Zelda games have always had this sort of aspect where it's like the farther you get in the game. The more of the game opens up to you the more you can explore the more pieces of heart. You can get. 50:15.77 Jared Um, almost like a Metroidvania huh. 50:22.14 Dave Exactly yeah, the more pieces of heart. You can get the more money you can find the more items slide quests. You can do it if the game has it and this aspect is slowly unfolding to this tiny size mini size aspect. So you have like 2 of those happening at the same time. 50:24.87 Jared Right. 50:39.91 Jared Yeah. 50:41.89 Dave So while we said earlier this game's World Map is smaller than Link's Awakening or a link to the past or something like that. It's much more dense with stuff like I feel like every screen has some sort of puzzle, some sort of little hole. You can only get in. 51:01.28 Dave As Minish link or maybe there's a puzzle that you can only do as regular size link like you get to a certain state in this game where it's like you get a new item I'm going to go back I Remember like oh there was this boulder over there I couldn't move it before and now I can I'm going to go see what's over there. But this game is also just. 51:10.11 Jared Right. 51:19.97 Dave Full of like there's a minute. There's okay so we have like these three map squares and there's like four Minish holes in those three squares. So I gotta go figure those out, part of the puzzle is also figuring out how to get to them because like you know. 51:26.83 Jared Yeah. Right. 51:37.26 Dave Those shallow puddles are now like oceans that are kind of low grass or that grass that link could cut down at regular size. You can't do anything with it anymore. Yeah, so there is a bit of puzzling out like how do I get to the place and um. 51:44.87 Jared Yeah, it's like it's a forest to him now. Yeah. Yeah. 51:56.36 Dave The place where this really shines is in Castle Town. castle town is just brilliantly designed. It's almost like a dungeon for Minish link. Yeah. 51:59.45 Jared Yeah, yeah. 52:07.41 Jared I wasn't saying it's 1 big puzzle because even figuring out how to be min size in the town in the first place is a puzzle and then figuring out how to get inside buildings and I liked what you said dense because yes, the game's not very big. But you know there's all the games here now and then we'll have side quests and side characters. You can interact with so many kinds of personable characters in this and it feels like there's so many kinds of side tangents. 52:24.88 Dave Yeah. 52:33.11 Jared You can have nothing to do with the main story but utilize being aminish advantage by having a certain item as you get more items. It feels like more and more of those little sidequests and adventures open up to you which is cool. 52:44.74 Dave Yeah I think that if I played this game for 15 hours I spent at least 3 of those hours exploring the town as a minish link and just trying to figure out like I can see something in that house. But I got a. 52:53.48 Jared Yeah. 53:02.73 Dave Like I need to find a way up onto their roof and down their chimney as a Minish link but I can't get on the roof because there's something blocking me and I have to get past that in order to get past that I've got to do something else in a different part of the town. It's like this big interconnected puzzle. 53:17.83 Jared Is it? Yeah, it took me so long to figure out the whole pot situation and flipping like the plot and everything to do that. It took me so long and then when I finally figured it out it was like I had the item and I've used the item before I just never kind of put 2 and 2 together. 53:19.74 Dave And it's just so cool to play around with. 53:25.82 Dave Yeah, hey. 53:37.29 Jared But I could do that on those things. 53:38.27 Dave Yeah, there were a couple things that I kind of bashed my head against and then the answer was pretty obvious once I figured it out. There was 1 thing where the picori in the town tell you like this legendary. 53:45.86 Jared Yeah. 53:57.80 Dave Journey that you have to go on where they're like crossing the raging River and then climb the you know climb the eternal ladder and then go through the beast's lair and all of these things and it's like literally like you walk across this tiny sewer ditch and then you climb a thing and you. 54:17.70 Jared Yeah. 54:17.72 Dave Have to avoid a cat and then you get an item but like the way they describe it. It's this grand adventure and like the way there's those 2 worlds happening in this game the regular size and the minish size is just really really good so even if you are somebody who is like. 54:35.63 Dave I don't want to do the standard like the 4 temples get the items to go fight the boss or the 8 temples or whatever the fact that this game mixes in like this world within a world really really keeps it fresh and I just loved it. 54:49.69 Jared Um, ah, well even just seeing the you know because the whole lore of the minish. The Pcori is like you know only children can see them but everyone can't see them but they can still kind of interact with the rest of the world. 55:03.12 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 55:04.28 Jared And to the extent of like with the shoemaker and how you go about getting like the Pegasus Boots and I didn't even realize that's an actual like story called the elves and the shoemaker about you know a shoemaker you know, not finishing his shoes at the at the end of his his shift and waking up in his shoes being finished and completed and they were done by these like little elves and everything that's kind of where the story of this came from and it's like. 55:24.30 Jared It's still cool to see the Picori also interact with the larger world too. They're not mischievous. 55:27.58 Dave Yeah, for sure and luckily they're nice. They're not. They're not like you know they're not like gremlins like fucking people's fucking. People's lives up or anything. But yeah, just helping that guy make shoes. They're kind of just chilling in the walls reading books or whatever they're doing in there. 55:43.42 Jared Oh man, this would be a completely different game if like the minish were actually like our bad guy and they were just like these mischievous little creatures that no one could see but like bad things kept happening and you had to go take down the minish Now they're cool. They're they're there little this one help. 55:47.74 Dave Oh yeah. 55:53.70 Dave Yeah, but now they're chill. They're cool. Yeah, there's another puzzle mechanic that is introduced slowly as you play the game where Link can make copies of himself as you get. 56:07.68 Jared Oh cheesia. 56:12.18 Dave As you beat the dungeons you kind of infuse the sword with these different elements. You know, restoring the sword to its former power and as you do this link can make copies of himself on these special tiles usually in dungeons. But there's some on the overworld. Also these are mostly used. 56:31.43 Dave To push big rocks out of the way or big blocks. But there are later things where this is used in combat where you need to maybe hit the same hit these four things at the same time. Um I thought this was ah like a kind of cool concept for puzzles. 56:41.58 Jared Yeah. 56:49.79 Dave Anytime combat got involved this really sucked because you can't get hit at all. Yeah. 56:50.76 Jared No, that was it the second you get hit you lose your copies and I don't know if this happened to you. It could just be me but like when you first get this power you could not figure out how to do it. It was like hold the be button and make a copy of yourself and I'm just standing there holding b with my sword out I was like nothing's happening. 57:09.41 Jared I Don't see a copy. It's not until you move to the following kind of panel that activates that where your copy like reappears but it took me so long to figure out to do that. 57:12.75 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, it takes a while to charge up the sword before you can do that and so like when you're doing this in combat, you just got hit. 57:21.32 Jared Right. A. 57:29.36 Dave You lost your copies. You have to go back to the tiles and try again and you just have to sit there for like 5 seconds while the sword charges up and just hope that the boss doesn't run over and hit you again because if it does you have to restart that process again. Um. 57:33.20 Jared Yep. 57:37.40 Jared Yeah, yeah, there's some bosses and there's some kind of combat gauntlets that utilize this and it is a pain like you said you get hit once you gotta do it all over again. 57:46.95 Dave Yeah, yeah, so as much as the shrinking down mechanic was a big win I Thought that like this one was hit and miss. You know when it's used for pure puzzles I thought it was pretty fun. 58:01.50 Jared Yeah. 58:03.35 Dave And then when combat got involved I could do without it. 58:05.78 Jared I will say one of my favorite items that I got are one of the things that felt like the most useful, a simple one but literally the flippers I can't tell you how many damn times I fell in the water just walking around castletown. 58:14.70 Dave Yeah. 58:22.46 Jared Like just the water that's over there that you fall and then you can lose a heart or like a quarter of a harder or whatever and then you get the flippers and you can swim and I was like oh I don't want to. We're both falling in this water anymore. 58:25.99 Dave Yeah, yeah. 58:32.37 Dave Yeah, exactly. Ah, there's 1 other thing about gameplay that is unique to this game which is collecting kinstones and these are like if everybody in the world had one half of a heart locked to it. 58:37.47 Jared Yeah. 58:50.24 Dave And there was a random person in the world that had the other half and if you met the person that had the other half of your heart locked, something magical would happen somewhere else in the world and so you find these kinstone half pieces as treasure around the world. 58:52.38 Jared Yes. 59:07.48 Dave A lot. It's like the main treasure this and pieces of heart are the main things you'll get and so most people that you meet you can press the left ah left button to try to fuse kinstones with them and it's literally just like pick the one that. 59:25.23 Jared That match is matched by this other circle that they have yeah no. 59:26.76 Dave That completes the circle. it's yeah it's not a difficult puzzle by any means but there are a lot of different types of kinstones, some more rare than the others. Oddly enough i. Ran out of like the super common green ones and I had a million of the red ones that are supposed to be the rare ones. 59:41.75 Jared Oh weird because I had I would say the green I did have a lot of red surprisingly but the most I had was like blue I had a ton of blue. That's so interesting I mean this was the other thing that I knew about this game right? I heard I've. 01:00:00.35 Jared Only heard people complaining of how terrible kinstone trading was and how awful this is and I didn't mind it like I thought it it brought a lot of re I relevancy to Npcs and kind of gave almost everybody a purpose and everything and I get I see it as like um I Korok right.. 01:00:19.94 Jared Like finding Koroks is fun and is a fun little spark of instant gratification. But if I was going to collect all of them I'd probably rip my hair out the same thing with it. Kinstones are fine. But if I was going to try to do all of it I probably would not have a good time doing it but just having it be the mechanic in the game I thought it was great. 01:00:26.41 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:00:35.12 Dave Yeah, it's fun. I thought it was okay as a treasure item because again it makes you actually don't have to talk to the people but it makes you at least like to seek out Npcs and maybe you'll talk to them. Maybe you'll learn a little bit about what their deal is, but. 01:00:39.78 Jared Yeah. 01:00:47.22 Jared Right. 01:00:55.26 Dave Every time you fuse a kinstone with somebody something will happen around the world. A treasure chest will appear or like a new doorway will form or maybe there was a doorway that you couldn't reach before but now a new platform will show up or something like that will happen. Um, it. 01:01:00.15 Jared Um, right. 01:01:13.63 Dave The only thing I wish is that when it did this it would market on your map. 01:01:15.95 Jared Yes, that I can tell you that there's so many kinstones after I fuse I was just like I'm okay like I'm fine like if I was close by and I knew where they were sure. But if I was like I don't know where that is and it's gone now. 01:01:21.88 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:01:27.88 Dave Um, yeah. 01:01:30.10 Jared There's no way to track it, at least to my knowledge and it doesn't put a mark on the map. So I was like okay, cool. That's fine. 01:01:33.21 Dave Yeah, it quickly became one of those things where it was like I'm going to fuse kinstones with everybody in town. It's been a couple hours since I was back here. I'm going to go do that. It's going to unlock like 6 things in all different corners of the world and I'm just going to deal with them when I deal with them. 01:01:51.87 Dave I'm not going to make a special trip to go get that treasure chest. It'll be like sometime later something will probably take me back to that area and that's when I'll look for these things. Um the saving grace for them not being marked on your map is the map is small so it's like. 01:02:06.80 Jared Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:02:10.34 Dave You see a treasure chest appear on one of the map screens. This map is small enough that you probably remember where that is because it's like I was climbing the mountain and I spent like an hour doing the mountain section. But the mountains are. 01:02:28.20 Jared Oh yeah. 01:02:28.70 Dave 8 map screens total. It's not that big. So you, you'll probably be able to find it. But if not, it's like at the end of the game when I was about to go do the final boss I was like let me take 1 more pass through the map to gather up all this stuff I've unlocked. And then I'll have a few more heart containers for the final boss and that's how I handled it. 01:02:47.21 Jared That's what I did right before I kind of like ended because I was like oh it's kind of seen as a walkthrough of how it's broken up and everything I was like before I finished the game. Let me just do some of these kinstone stuff and go through here. The only time that was a problem is. There's a section where narratively. Have to go around ah like the the Cloud section you have the go around and find them I think that was less kinstone and more of me just getting absolutely lost to try to figure out how to traverse that area but because the kinstones were was the thing that you had to do to kind of like activate the further progression of that. 01:03:10.46 Dave Yeah. 01:03:19.40 Jared And was like okay this kind of sucks like this This was in a good time. 01:03:20.80 Dave Yeah, so the kenstones when you deal with the Npcs Those are bonus treasures you don't have to do it like all it's going to do is get you some more money or I think that's the way you get some upgrades to your stuff like maybe like a bigger bomb bag or something like that. 01:03:26.68 Jared Right. 01:03:39.70 Dave Ah, some heart pieces as well will open up that way. But that's optional when it becomes like in order to make progress in the main story you have to get these 7 kinstones then it's just keys. It's not interesting or like a reward anymore. It's just literally find these 7 keys. So. 01:03:41.31 Jared Yeah, yeah. 01:03:50.56 Jared Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and oh God Yeah I hated that section and to be fair, there's some really cool things like that's how you get like they have remote bombs in this which is wild for a 2D Zelda game and kind of a before breath of the wild kind of mechanic. But. 01:03:58.24 Dave That kind of sucked I agree especially that one in the clouds I hated that section. 01:04:05.67 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:04:13.87 Jared You get those by fusing kinstones with somebody in the Minish village. So it's like you do get some really cool items that upgrade from fusing kinstones. 01:04:21.63 Dave Yeah, so it's a weird way for people to live their lives basically like they're just like everybody's born with one half of a kinstone they're like I hope my other half comes and hangs out sometime. But it's ah it's weird, but it ended up being pretty fun. Um. 01:04:27.85 Jared Yeah, you have your half you each try to find your soul mate. Yeah. 01:04:38.40 Dave I Guess the only drawback of it is like that lack of immediate reward for fusing. It's like you know I fused a kinstone and these vines disappeared from a tree and now I can go inside the tree and there's going to be something in there. But. 01:04:56.36 Dave That tree's kind of far away and I don't want to go all the fuck out there just for that one tree. So I'll deal with it later. 01:04:59.56 Jared Yeah, absolutely I can see some people and it kind of adds the theme of just this game and this entire overall just be a puzzle like everything everywhere you go. It has some kind of puzzle for you to solve whether tied to the narrative or just you know with these kinstones. 01:05:10.42 Dave Yeah. 01:05:19.47 Jared So it kind of brings relevancy to all those places. But yeah I did most of them. I did not care about ones that were immediately adjacent to my current location or my destination. I was like sure I'm already heading over to the mountains. Let me go over there and do that thing. If it wasn't I didn't I couldn't care less about it. 01:05:34.76 Dave Yep yep, and again that made the final like sweep through the map before doing the final boss. A pretty fun and rewarding experience because I had you know like a dozen treasure chests that were just hanging out that I hadn't collected yet. So. 01:05:50.79 Jared Did you have I and say did you have kind of a favorite item that you that you were using. 01:05:51.00 Dave That was nice, anything else. 01:05:58.54 Dave You know in a lot of Zelda games like this you would use the pegasus boots to move really quickly across the map but I didn't in this one because rolling is really fast and I I don't know I think it's a steam deck thing. 01:06:16.67 Dave And don't know if it was like this on the switch. So the role button is r one or RB and I don't the game boy advance didn't have ah didn't have triggers. It just had 2 shoulder buttons. Yeah, so on the steam deck pressing the right trigger. 01:06:21.73 Jared Okay. 01:06:28.53 Jared Had the one yeah had the 2 shoulder buttons. Yeah. 01:06:36.70 Dave It was like a turbo button for write button so it would ah I would just like speed across the map by rolling like 4 times per second doing that so I didn't use the pegasus boots because I did that um in combat. 01:06:39.16 Jared Um, okay oh my gosh. That's great. 01:06:49.50 Jared Well, that sounds much better because the Pegasus Boots you at least have like you like charge them up too. It is kind of like a little bit a hassle. 01:06:54.00 Dave Yeah, yeah, so I guess items that I used would be the bow and arrow classic Zelda item the boomerang a lot. The boomerang is optional. You don't have to get it. You have to buy it from the shop but I did use that quite a bit and the cane. 01:07:03.86 Jared Um, yeah. 01:07:11.95 Jared Yeah, that was mine. 01:07:12.92 Dave Like you said, it is more useful than I am. It is like more useful than I thought and I kept underestimating it basically throughout the whole game but it's a very good item. 01:07:25.80 Jared I use the cane a lot. That was one of my favorites. The remote bombs were just a cool item to have. It was cool to even have the concept of those um I like the moments I like seeing the moments show up here. 01:07:36.87 Dave Um, oh yeah, yeah, forget about them that one's fun. 01:07:39.34 Jared Yeah I think this? yeah this is definitely because they come up again I don't think the next time they come up Istel Skyward sword I Think that's the next time we see Mulmets Ah, but it was cool saying those there I was like oh nice. 01:07:48.67 Dave Yeah, it was cool and really satisfying. So for those who don't know the mole mitts will let you dig through like these kind of soft walls of you know, dirt or whatever and the animation and I guess just like the rhythm of digging through like block after block after block. 01:07:55.38 Jared Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:08:07.75 Jared Um, yes I love that? yeah. 01:08:08.65 Dave Is really satisfying like it's a real lizard Brain Lizard Brain pleasing activity. Yeah. 01:08:16.26 Jared Also the rocks cape and then being able to kind of glide on like the little hurt like little tornadoes and everything when you're flying around that was really cool too. 01:08:25.45 Dave Oh yeah, damn you just there was 1 puzzle with tornadoes that I didn't figure out during my ah playthrough and you saying that just unlocked how to do it. So there's a lot. There's a lot of stuff that you can do um. 01:08:38.27 Jared Oh yeah. 01:08:40.51 Dave Really satisfying game to explore after you find new stuff because this game is dense and it's full of treats and it's just a really rewarding one to um, explore around good time. 01:08:49.97 Jared Yeah, yeah, and there's a ton of items. There's a lot that I don't like. There's a mirror shield that you can get you get by your kins own trading like there's so many items that you can the remote bombs or kenstones. There's like 4 or 5 quiver upgrades. 01:08:55.12 Dave Oh shit I didn't even know that. 01:09:04.89 Jared There's a light bow like there's a lot of things that you can also get that you just are that are off the beaten path. 01:09:08.41 Dave Yeah, yeah, very cool anything else about gameplay before we move into our wrap up thing. Okay, so we'll cut that and music. 01:09:16.44 Jared No I think I think that's it. 01:09:25.85 Dave So before we get into spoilers. We will give our final thoughts and recommendations do a little bit of housekeeping so Jared before we do our housekeeping section. Please give us any final thoughts you have. 01:09:40.72 Dave And answer the question who would you recommend the legend of Zelda the minish cap to. 01:09:42.39 Jared Who who? okay I'll start there with the recommendation because that'll help with how I'm feeling as well. I think of you. For sure if you're like a hardcore zelda fan if you're someone that's played like the 3 d games and maybe hasn't dabbled a lot in a lot of the the 2 d ones or they they missed you or you're like those aren't as good as as the 3 d definitely recommend trying this game out because it has even though it's not in three d this and the world isn't very big. It is packed with content There's so much to do in this world. There's so much dimensionality in the environment and the visual style of the game is personality that was the word that kept coming to me throughout my entire playthrough of this was this game was just. Oozing personality between its visual style and its npcs and just link. It's ah he's a very another very expressive link or at least as expressive as link has been before like when waker link and everything so all of those things came together to a world that felt ah, really fun and. 01:10:40.50 Dave Yeah. 01:10:51.33 Jared It's a classic too. Do you? It's the classic dungeon formula right? We're back to dungeons. We're back to all of that. It has music that just hits differently, especially if you played awkwarding at times you'll hear that shot music I'll tell you and you would be like oh set I got to play this whole game now like I'm hooked I'm hooked for life. 01:11:03.85 Dave Um, yeah, um. 01:11:09.79 Jared And if you're hesitant and you're not someone that loves zelda games too much I think that there's still a fun game here. It's not very long. It's pretty short and I think it has a lot of similarities to Metroidvania styled games where I think people can find some enjoyment from that where. You're getting items that are unlocking areas later on and there's secrets that you can find and things like that too. So definitely recommend playing a minish cap. It is a good time and it's not too bad and it's on NSO you can play it on speech. 01:11:41.57 Dave Yeah, yeah for sure this is an interesting one in a post breath of the wild and tears of the Kingdom um world where the Zelda series feels like it's moved on and. 01:11:47.45 Jared Right. 01:11:53.71 Jared Yeah. 01:11:56.52 Dave Other than maybe doing some remakes like they did with links awakening we I haven't really heard any indication that they're interested in making these types of games again. Yeah so this is interesting like there's going to be a lot of people who. 01:12:12.80 Dave Have never played 1 of these because Breath of the Wild was their first one like a lot of kids have grown up now. It's been seven years since Breath of the Wild came out so yeah, a lot of people who probably haven't played the minish cap. Maybe. 01:12:14.96 Jared Um, yeah. 01:12:22.65 Jared That's crazy. 01:12:29.51 Dave You know they would have checked out ocarina of time or a link to the past or links awakening or something like that. Ah, but I think the minish cap is really really well-made and for people who either are not familiar with the way the old formula used to work or people who maybe got to like. 01:12:37.55 Jared Yeah. 01:12:49.80 Dave Tired of it like I was at 1 point in time. The Minish cap is like a trimmed down version of that formula plus the addition of like the miniature world adds more puzzling to this game than something like link's awakening had or um. 01:12:52.11 Jared Um, I'm not. 01:13:07.86 Dave Ah, link to the past. Got there like later in the game same with the oracle games. Those games were also kind of like big puzzles with the way you can manipulate time or the seasons. So if you're interested in that like this, that is also a big puzzle. This is really good. 01:13:26.18 Dave Type of game like that. But as a representative of the old style of zelda games I guess you can't really go wrong with a 10 to 15 hour version of this because this game doesn't last long enough for you to get tired of what it's doing I don't think. 01:13:34.90 Jared Yeah. Yeah, nothing, nothing sticks around too long and that you know that's present in everything even with music like I said it has the perfect amount of repetition where you're You're any out of place all the time and that music is constantly changing. And it's good Music. So It's like it never outstays, it's welcome. 01:13:57.34 Dave Yeah, yeah, so again I'm really happy to have revisited this. I was a little bit like okay how's this going to go because I remember playing the link's awakening remake on switch and not really loving it and um. 01:14:15.70 Dave I'm like an old link's awakening head So like the game boy version of Link's awakening is just like that's the one and I just like yeah so I. 01:14:18.48 Jared Um, um I mean that's a great That's a great game. So it's like. 01:14:27.80 Dave Like I said I was a little bit nervous coming back to this and being like okay well I was once sick of this kind of game. How am I going to feel about this and it turns out that you know Capcom hit a home run with this. I think this game's awesome. So it's basically like everybody who's not. Super opposed to this kind of game I think you'll like it like it's a really really well-made game. Um on obviously on par with any of the ones that Nintendo did too like if I was going to you know make ah a top 3 or a top 5 of these. 01:14:47.57 Jared Um, yeah. 01:15:00.20 Dave These old style top down Zelda games like this would be there. This is really good. Oh. 01:15:02.10 Jared Well I was actually going to ask that I don't know if you have a running list or you have a list in your brain right? At least for me, it's been a while since I played all of these. 01:15:10.70 Dave Um, yeah. 01:15:13.38 Jared But has playing this kind of moved it up with some of the other two Ds or even three Ds or does it change it all on your list. 01:15:22.61 Dave That's tough mixing the two D's and three Ds because I haven't played ocarina of time in a long time and I'm like kind of purposely avoiding it because I don't want to? ah. 01:15:25.91 Jared Um, yeah. 01:15:28.66 Jared I think I haven't played awkwarding of time. I was like Dave, we have to play that now you just said you k. 01:15:36.30 Dave I don't I yeah, that's that's one where it's like do I really want to you know, enter into childhood memory town and like find out that I don't like the game anymore I'd rather just leave it. Um, so I think the top 3 would be link's awakening the 1 on game boy color I love that. 01:15:53.59 Dave This one and then a link between Worlds is ah is just ah, a ridiculously good game. 01:15:57.90 Jared Yeah I think that for me, it's hard I would say a link between world I'm just thinking of like 2 d right. 01:16:07.23 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:16:08.48 Jared I Think link between Worlds is my favorite I didn't play link's awakening until later I Still think that game's fantastic. But I think I like mission managed cap just a little bit more. Yeah. 01:16:15.19 Dave Yeah I can see it like the Minish cap has a lot. It seems like it has more creativity going with gameplay than Link's awakening does. Link's awakening is like a link to the past. But 01:16:22.20 Jared Yeah, yeah. 01:16:32.76 Dave The story is a little bit weirder and like the world you're in is a little bit weirder but it's still very similar. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so. 01:16:35.33 Jared I And say I I think I like the concept of links awakening A little better. It's more um, philosophical, more art students kind of narrative to it. 01:16:51.40 Dave Yeah, this ah all that to say this game fits in right in with like the favorites in the series. It's very good. So let's ah, do a little bit of housekeeping before we do our spoiler section for this game and as always Jared I'm going to kick it to you to talk about play along podcast. 01:16:55.49 Jared Um, yeah for sure. 01:17:08.60 Dave And everything that you and Ben and ky are doing over there. 01:17:11.70 Jared Yeah, so yeah, I'm Jared play along podcast what we do over on our show is we play through games in kind of a book club format and but I know there's probably a lot of book club ah games out there but we break the game down into sections and then we come together each week to talk about each one of those sections specifically. And there's 3 of us on there and we have a very wide range of games that all 3 of us like so we play a lot of different things between pokemon and indie games and a metal gear solid and there's just so much variety of things so you're bound to find something that you like to to play along with or listen to. And then we have a side series that we do called gettret where we kind of take ourselves and another guest and we kind of swap game recommendations and that is that is probably 1 of my favorite things that we do cause it's just a lot of fun to you know slowly chip games off the backlog and it gives people and us a chance to just talk about the games. That we love and that are important to us. 01:18:05.47 Dave Yeah, yeah, I've been a guest on 2 get wrecked episodes where yeah, it's ah it's a big honor. You made me play until dawn and more recently sunset overdrive and. 01:18:07.35 Jared Yeah, you are our first returning guest of get rec’d. 01:18:16.38 Jared Yep. 01:18:20.70 Dave I Made you play dark souls and stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy origin? Yeah yeah, so I like that series a lot because um I like having guests on your show. You guys don't normally have guests on your main series. So having you guys with guests is always fun. 01:18:22.43 Jared Yeah Wow What? what? an interesting combination there. 01:18:37.34 Jared Yeah, um. 01:18:39.90 Dave And then it's a good way to get people out of their comfort zone sometimes like me with playing until dawn. I was very much not up for that until I started it. I ended up really liking that game. So I credit you for that? Yeah, so. 01:18:44.10 Jared Um, yeah, um. 01:18:49.53 Jared Yeah I would have never touched a dark souls game if it wasn't for you. 01:18:56.50 Dave It's a good series for getting people out of their comfort zones and then more recently. Um, we kind of both chose like backlog games for the more recent episodes. It's kind of like calling your bluff like oh you really want to play that huh all right fucking play it then? yeah yeah. 01:19:03.78 Jared Yeah, yeah. Well, let's let's go. Let's do it and all that's on your backlog. Let's go, come on. Yeah. 01:19:14.23 Dave And then ah your main series where you take time to like slowly work through a game is always good to kind of put sections of the game under the microscope like it might just be. You know a couple hours of game that turns into a couple hours of podcast. So. 01:19:31.68 Dave The Disco elysium series is one of my favorites. I Love that game and that game is so dense with things to talk about that like a show like yours really gives those sections time to breathe. You know. 01:19:32.80 Jared Oh yes. 01:19:40.81 Jared It really helps us and it's been fun. Kind of every now and then listening back to some of those episodes because it really gives us time to like a really fine tune. How we feel about an experience right? We're really too. We're really chipping down to the little bits and pieces especially with Disco elysium. 01:19:51.50 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:19:58.48 Jared Played through 1 of our first games we played through was Kentucky route zero like those games really we sat down and theorized on concepts and ideas and those games got very philosophical with a lot of deep topics. So that format helps us just meticulously go through those feelings. 01:20:12.80 Dave Yeah, and you guys did a Zelda game. You've done a couple Zelda games before. So if Zelda fans want to check it out. 01:20:19.62 Jared Yeah, we did wind Waker and we have an episode on breath of the wild but we didn't go through it in its in its entirety and then we did tears the kingdom in its entirety which was a lot. 01:20:31.95 Dave Yeah, a lot. Yeah so um, good show. I listen to your show all the time. I appreciate you guys Ben and Ky um, who are not here with us today. But you know love ah love those guys contributions to the show as well. So. 01:20:43.29 Jared But I hear with us. Yeah, ah these men. 01:20:47.83 Dave Put links down in the show notes everyone can easily find play along podcast and everything that they're doing a lot of content over their um and always quality. So highly recommended and when I talk about myself for the next minute or so you can go over and check out what Playalong's been doing in the time. Since we recorded this There's going to be some new stuff that Jared doesn't even know about yet that's going to be on the podcast. So for this show same things to help the show as always always appreciate ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts Spotify Podcast addict 01:21:08.81 Jared Yeah, I'm excited. 01:21:23.39 Dave And anywhere else that allows it the show's on Youtube now. So if you like to listen to podcasts on Youtube that's there for you and you can do the old like and subscribe thing over there to help more people find the show that's appreciated. You can listen to my other podcast. It's called a top 3 podcast where we do top 3 lists, we do drafts, etc, etc. That's a good time. There is an invite link to the Discord server down in the show notes as well. We would love to have anyone who likes this show join the discord server that sounds like I only want. People who like the show but like but be realistic if you hate the show. Are you going to join the discord server? Are you even listening an hour and a half into the episode if you hate the show? I mean if you are thankful I appreciate you I love you even if you don't love me and finally. If you want to support monetarily you can do that at patreon.com/realdavejackson like I said at the top of the show this game won a poll to come on the show and I do monthly polls and patrons at the $10 tier get to submit games for the polls. You can have some say in what I do on the show. Otherwise any patron gets to vote in the polls and there's also bonus episodes and all kinds of cool stuff and any support that way is always appreciated and that was a lot so I'm going to rest my voice while we listen to music for the next minute or so. 01:22:52.45 Dave And when we come back, it's going to be full spoiler time for the legend of zelda the minish cap 01:24:01.19 Dave We're back in its full spoiler time for the legend of Zelda the minish cap and like we said at the beginning of the episode. This is probably going to be a relatively short spoiler section because the story is very sparse throughout the game and can. 01:24:12.69 Jared Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:24:20.50 Dave Really be summarized in like 1 paragraph in my opinion but there is some stuff that you learn so you learn a little bit about where vaati came from 01:25:19.68 Dave Ah, so yeah, so Vati was originally from the Minish world with ezlo and ezlo was a wizard in the Minish world. He was not always a talking hat. He was a a wizard. He was a a powerful wizard and. 01:25:36.48 Dave Ah, just so happens he in his hubris created a magical hat that would grant the wearer Any wish that they want again like what would they're very yeah, so many bad ideas. So many. 01:25:42.63 Jared Many so many bad ideas guys. You yeah, you make a competition with a sword that can release the darkness and as those like let me make a hat that'll give anybody any power they want. You didn't think someone's gonna take advantage of that. 01:25:53.29 Dave Yeah, not only not only I'm going to make a hat that turns you into a God I'm not going to wear the hat I'm just going to leave it sitting around. Yeah yeah, mad scientist shit. Just. 01:26:02.19 Jared Yeah, he didn't want it. He just wanted to see if he could, he was trying to challenge himself. That's what it was. 01:26:12.43 Dave Doing it to see if he could never think about if he should so Surprise Vatti Angry Young Ah young guy steals the hat he gets God Powers He turns as low into a talking hat creature and yeah, that is ah. 01:26:24.32 Jared Yep. 01:26:30.88 Dave Then he goes on to win the tournament because he's a god now. And yeah, that's how the game is set up. it's ah an interesting backstory and like ah check another tally Mark for like game stories that. Only has 3 characters and I didn't expect all the characters to be connected like this for some reason. 01:26:48.38 Jared Yeah, yeah, yeah, not not not a big ah cast of characters and unsurprising but never disappointing Zelda takes a major backseat as in most of the games that she plays. 01:27:05.39 Dave Oh yeah yeah, yeah you do? yeah she gets petrified at like the 10 minute mark of the game and you do ah you do un petrify her at the end and you have a little like escape section with her. 01:27:06.13 Jared Not a lot of agency. Yeah you forget Zelda's in this hu because she is not in the game. Yeah yep. 01:27:22.88 Dave Ah, that didn't turn out to be as cool as I thought it would be but because I thought like you'd fight by yeah yeah, or like in shovel knight you fight side by side with the person you rescue and not really in this game. But. 01:27:24.42 Jared Yeah, it's not like escaping the awkward time escape section. It's not that intense. 01:27:35.77 Jared Um, you know. 01:27:41.47 Dave Ah, yeah, so vaati wants this magical light source power um that he's already super powerful. It's going to make him more powerful somehow or like that will be the thing that turns him into a God or something like that will give him the ultimate power. 01:28:00.14 Jared He's greedy. That's that's the thing is he wants more power. 01:28:00.51 Dave So yeah, so this light source is I think it's if I remember right? It's hidden in the sanctuary of the picori which um in a very convenient turn of fate is located inside of high Royal Castle in the beautiful. 01:28:17.55 Jared Um, yeah. 01:28:20.18 Dave Ah, the beautiful. What's the word for courtyard you know the court, the randomly very beautiful courtyard that nobody ever goes in but it's there. It's a perfect surprise. That's where the magical picori sanctuary is and it opens up every one hundred years and that's today. 01:28:22.12 Jared Yeah, just right in the open. 01:28:35.35 Jared Yep. 01:28:39.95 Dave If luck would have it. Yeah yeah, everything is really just coming up link in this game. Yeah, they do throw a kind of interesting plot twist at you as you are kind of working with the King throughout the game. 01:28:40.30 Jared Um, Wow isn't that great. 01:28:45.83 Jared Yeah, it's really, it's really the year of link Really, That's what it's been happening. 01:28:56.98 Jared You know. 01:28:59.97 Dave Ah, the king wants you to go do these things that will help unpetrify zelda but it's actually Vaati who has possessed the king like like in ah the lord of the rings with with saraman possessing the the King Theedin that's his name. 01:29:07.27 Jared Yes. 01:29:14.55 Jared Yep. 01:29:17.86 Dave Ah, so I actually wonder like I don't know how long this game took to ah to make but it came out during the run of the lord of the rings movies. So that's a good idea. Let's do it? Yeah, but it is kind of cool where it's like ah the King's been helping you get more powerful. 01:29:23.47 Jared They saw that and they're like hold on wait a second. Well let's do let's do that too. 01:29:36.94 Dave But also possibly going to help himself get more powerful than you when you get powerful enough to find the light source again like the the planning in this game like nobody has a good plan. 01:29:40.12 Jared Yeah. 01:29:47.70 Jared Yeah, not no, no one has a good plan. Also it's just it's one of those things too when vaati possesses the king where it's say be immediately like a personality switch. He's and like Vaati's not even like trying to blend in. He's just like angry vaati like ordering his guards to go do things and even they're like are you? Okay, okay, you're the king I won't question. You. 01:30:08.17 Dave Yeah, what this means for you for a lot of the game is that high roll Castle is um, not inaccessible, but you can't just walk in the front door so you have to do stealth with the guards outside. 01:30:16.59 Jared Oh My gosh I hated this.. It's not any time. It's very similar because you know it's Hyrule Castle you're going through like shrubbery and everything like that. That's fine I struggled so hard with this. Because even if you get caught a little bit even if they just kind of see you even if they're off screen if they happen to have turned even when you're up like higher up you get caught. 01:30:41.63 Dave I Thought they were really stupid and the only times I got caught was because I was like let's see how stupid they are . Can I walk beside them? Okay, turns out I can't do that. Yeah. 01:30:47.80 Jared Um, oh. 01:30:51.40 Jared Maybe it is because I was just like I was just like I was trying to rush this. I was like I can, oh I can do let me go through this and I would like to get caught which only fuels my frustration and my want and desire to do this quicker so I kept getting stuck at that loop. 01:31:06.50 Dave Yeah, yeah, so um, yeah, that is ah the the story for the most part you um you find all of the pieces to create the four sword. 01:31:15.85 Jared Um, yeah. 01:31:19.84 Dave So you get like the picori sword and it gradually gets stronger as you infuse these elements that you get from the dungeons in it and eventually it becomes the 4 sword which then becomes the sword in the 4 swords the next game which I never played because it's a multiplayer game on game boy and this this was like. 01:31:30.38 Jared 4 swords yeah. 01:31:36.38 Jared That you oh. 01:31:39.44 Dave I was in high school at this point and like we just weren't going to be able to play a 4 player zelda game on game boy when I was you know a junior in high school. Oh I'm not sure like it may have had a connection because you could plug your game boy advance into your game cube. 01:31:44.78 Jared And did you have to utilize like the game cube with this too I don't remember maybe is the connection with it. Yeah, exactly. 01:31:58.89 Dave Which I thought was going to change the world and then I never did it? yeah. 01:32:03.60 Jared Ah, use like the little like bottom part um attachment that you can put your game boy games in yeah I did that but I never did like the link cable stuff. 01:32:09.11 Dave Um, yeah, so yeah I never played 4 swords. People say it's really good but I have no idea but the origin of that sword is in this game once you get all the elements and you can make 4 copies of yourself and then. 01:32:16.90 Jared Um, yeah, I mean neither. 01:32:25.97 Dave Ah, you find the light source with Zelda but then vaati pops out and he knocks you unconscious or something like that. He steals the light source and becomes a God and he turns hiru castle into a dungeon. It's the final dungeon in the game. So. 01:32:43.54 Dave Um, were there other dungeons before we talk about hyrule castle that stood out to you as being memorable or fun. We talked about the sky place that fucking sucked but the dungeon that came after it I thought was pretty cool. Okay. 01:32:51.16 Jared Um, yeah. 01:32:56.17 Jared And that's what I wanted to talk about, right? All all of them are are relatively straightforward ones that kind of stood out that had mechanics a cave of flames which is the second one has you kind of riding these mine carts throughout the lava area to open up different sections which was cool but the palace of the winds which is exactly what you're saying that that. 01:33:08.50 Dave Right. 01:33:15.27 Jared Dungeon after the insufferable Cloud kinstone Ah, mechanic was really cool because there's not a lot that happens that you get between the Palace of the winds and the dark Hiro castle. So both of those dungeons really really utilize a lot of your like arsenal of weapons and items. 01:33:33.99 Jared And I think when dungeons do that where it's like a lot of the puzzles that are in there utilize everything that you have to offer and this is also where you have the cape that you can like fly from different sections and you can like take the gusts of wind to fly around Super cool. Loved Palace of the winds. 01:33:45.83 Dave Um, yeah, and that introduces like those sections where it's like there's a great and you can like jump through it to like jump on top of the grade or. 01:33:56.81 Jared Yeah, yep, yeah. 01:34:00.36 Dave Go below it and then there's like Cloud platforms that you jump up and um, if you notice there's often like places off to the side where you can like if you keep jumping up the platforms. It'll take you to the next part of the dungeon. But if you jump off and glide. You can get to an optional section. Maybe get a piece of heart. 01:34:18.41 Jared Yep, yeah, it was compared to all the rest of them. It was really long but it also had the boss fight which is the the georg pair was a good kind of setup for the final boss because you had to use the you know duplicating link 4 times to. 01:34:18.63 Dave Um, that dungeon was really long too. Longest one I think yeah. 01:34:36.23 Jared You're flying on top of like this giant Demon Stingray and you have to set up his 4 ah copies in the position where the eyeballs are and then you hit the eyeballs in that exact position which is very similar to how the ending boss fight starts. 01:34:37.53 Dave Yeah. 01:34:47.90 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was ah that was a tough fight to figure out and you're on like you said you're on like this flying stingray thing and like stuff is like flying past you have to like dodge enemies that are coming at you or like. 01:35:00.85 Jared Um, man. 01:35:04.97 Dave Other one of those stingray things will start flying in and this is where it starts to get annoying when it's like I need to hold the 4 copies to go hit the boss. But then there's like a row of things coming down from the top of the screen and ah yeah, it just doesn't quite work very well. But. 01:35:23.19 Dave Dungeon is cool and then like I guess like as much spectacle as the game Boy advance can give you you know you're on this flying thing this flying boss fight. So that's pretty fun. 01:35:28.99 Jared Um, yeah, yeah, this definitely was the biggest like you said spectacle out of all 5 or so bosses that you have before the final boss. It was cool. I thought it was fun. 01:35:42.49 Dave Yeah, yeah, so high rule Castle gets turned into this. Um this evil version of it and it becomes the final dungeon and maybe I should have expected it because. 01:35:58.78 Dave High rule castle most of it's inaccessible to you throughout the game. You can't like to run around but you can't go through any of the doors or anything. So maybe I should have expected it but also high rule castles like the first dungeon in a link to the past. So yeah, kind of bringing that back. Um. 01:36:14.46 Jared That parallel there. Yeah, there's maybe like a couple rooms. You can go to in the castle but most of it, like the dark Hyrule Castle, is also pretty extensive dungeon and there's a lot of the castle that you don't get to explore in the beginning of this. 01:36:24.15 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, it does feel like going through a big castle dungeon. It's pretty big. There's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of puzzles. Um, yeah, a lot of floors and there's a lot of there's a part later on. 01:36:31.99 Jared Yeah a lot of floors. 01:36:43.27 Dave Where you have to get like these four keys to open up this thing to push out of the way to get the boss key and you have to remember where these rooms are because you unlock them in different places and they are unlike little mini boss fights in those arenas. So. 01:36:49.80 Jared Um, yep. 01:37:03.15 Dave Yeah, it's a big big thing. I had a lot of fun with that dungeon until right at the very end. 01:37:07.60 Jared Yeah, it now I think the part where you're getting the um Bos key was also one that was a little bit of a challenge and fun because at this point you had pretty much explored. A majority of the castle and then when you get to this section. It shows like you said those 4 keys or at least the 4 areas you have to go to are all guarded by dark nuts. That is what they are. I'm pretty sure there are dark nuts that get dark. 01:37:39.83 Jared Yeah, yeah, they're the dark nuts. Um, and there'll be you know 1 room will'll have one of them 2 in the next room will have 2 high level ones and so you have to kind of remember where those sections are and then kind of backtrack your way through the castle to go to these sections get the keys that you need to open. The ah the the boss key which keys in this game are interesting because I mean some of them open doors but a lot of them just open like these little blocks that are in the way because pretty much what you have to do is you have to use heat yourself and your other 4 copies to push a big block out of the way to get to the boss key and there's 4 little. 01:38:05.72 Dave Um, yeah. 01:38:16.47 Jared Kind of cinder blocks with keyholes that are blocking that path. 01:38:20.88 Dave Yeah, so I guess that section's good because it teaches you how to fight those big fuckers because after that um, you go through the boss door and Vati is like he's ringing these bells I don't know why this this is going on. But. 01:38:26.50 Jared Um, yeah. 01:38:39.80 Dave This big bell is ringing. You have to reach vaati before it rings 3 times and you have to go through like a gauntlet of enemies to do it. The first one's easy. You can just pegasus boots through everything and or pegasus boots passed. It's one of the iron knuckles from a link to the past that's in there with the big. Ah. 01:38:53.86 Jared Um, right? yeah. 01:38:57.91 Dave Flail um, the next one just has a bunch of enemies that you have to fight with 4 copies of yourself and just not get hit but it's not that hard. But the third one and the bell will ring once you go through those doors. No matter how fast you do it. The third part. 01:39:15.82 Dave Is you have to fight 3 of those big armored things and you have to do it within a certain time or the third bell will ring and you get a game over. 01:39:26.27 Jared Um, yeah I was I You know time trial final boss dungeon was not in my minish Cap Bingo Card I was not expecting to have to be timed to do this last thing and we already mentioned that you know. 01:39:31.10 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:39:38.44 Jared Doing combat with copies is hard. It's even harder when you're timed and you're that's necessary to progress. 01:39:43.30 Dave Yeah, this part was really tough like if you just fight them straight up then it just takes too long to fight and then the third bell will ring. You'll get a game over if you go super aggressive. You'll get hit a bunch because they hit hard. 01:39:53.13 Jared Yeah, yeah. 01:40:02.85 Dave And if I remember right? There are no health refills or like very little after that before you actually fight Vati so I had to figure out a strategy where if you use the pegasus boots you can dash through them and then turn around and hit them in the back. 01:40:08.18 Jared Yeah. 01:40:21.30 Jared Um, ah yep. 01:40:22.61 Dave And that was how I did it, otherwise before I did that I probably tried this section 5 times and got to vaati 1 time and I just either died or ran out of time or something the other times because it's just like. 01:40:38.14 Dave It's these 3 big enemies that try to surround you and they just hold their shields up and you have to find a way around their shield and all that. Yeah. 01:40:44.97 Jared Yep, and though they'll move to kind of block your attacks you kind of have to and again, that's probably why they had them leading up to the boss key just to show you and teach you like hey you're gonna be fighting these things and you're gonna have to. 01:40:50.93 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:40:57.30 Jared Really learn how to beat them if you want to be successful going forward. So. 01:41:00.42 Dave Yeah I mean I thought that fighting 7 of them to get the boss key was enough you know proving that I know how to fight them. But apparently not so anyway. Yeah. 01:41:06.98 Jared Yeah, that's that's where but no, no, no I had to give you more. 01:41:14.45 Dave So you get to ah to Vati and this is a tough final boss I died a bunch. 01:41:16.35 Jared Yeah, it. It is difficult not only that but he has 3 different forms all with different mechanics that you have to do and even with the first one I struggled with so the first one is kind of like a. Floating sorcerer with this long flowing robe and he has a glowing eye in the middle of his chest and we have to do is shoot that with an arrow and then go up and smack him a couple times with your sword but he is very quick and teleports a lot around and it's hard to kind of pull up the bow. And shoot because most of the time he'll just move out of the way by the time it hits. Yeah. 01:41:50.80 Dave Oh is that how you did it? Okay, um, the way I did it in the first phase he has those little eyeballs that surround him and kind of float in a circle and if you hit all the eyeballs with your sword then he'll fall down kind of stunned and you can go up and. 01:42:08.23 Dave And hit him and then after that he covers the eyeballs in like this shadow but you can use the vacuum jar to yeah yeah, so that's phase one that took me a bit. 01:42:13.83 Jared Um, right to suck the shadow darkness away from it. Yeah I did that as well. 01:42:23.74 Dave This is one of those bosses where like I had to get through phase one without getting hit very often otherwise I was going to have a hard time. Phase 2 is probably the most annoying phase I think he 's like. 01:42:26.84 Jared Yes. 01:42:39.20 Dave Ah, big eyeball thing and he's surrounded by these orbs and you have to hit them with arrows to reveal the 4 that are the weak points. There's 4 that are weak points and there's 4 that are not so you have to shoot arrows to uncover the weak points. 01:42:48.26 Jared Right? right. 01:42:53.88 Dave And then you have to do the copy thing and run over and hit all the weak points at the same time and while this is happening. He's floating around the arena so he can't touch you. There's stuff flying around the Arena like Debris flying around. Yeah. 01:43:06.26 Jared Or there's shit everywhere. There's just like there's like boulders falling down and he's floating back and forth first just hitting him with your bow and arrow is also ah feet in itself. So revealing the eyes that you need and then trying to like. 01:43:11.95 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:43:22.77 Jared Look at him as he's flying about to try to see what the pattern is. You can go down to the because the difference with this one is a lot of the other times where there's the pattern that we have to do. It's kind of already set up in that format. We try to hit each other. This one's different.. There's kind of just like a big area of those little squares and we have to match and go around to whatever the eyeball patterns are with him so it's not exact. 01:43:42.33 Dave Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we didn't mention. But for anyone listening to the tiles that allow you to make copies of yourself. Sometimes there's only 4 in a straight line. So your copies will all be in a straight line but a lot of times later they'll mix them Up. Or they'll give you more tiles than you need, but you have to make a formation of your copies. Yeah exactly yeah, it's tough and it's just it's not hard to figure out what to do? It's just hard to do it because if you touch anything with the copies. 01:44:01.29 Jared Right? Which is the case here. 01:44:18.87 Dave It all disappears and you have to go start over. 01:44:19.58 Jared I will say because there's a lot of debris and rocks that are falling down hitting those does give you more arrows and hearts. So it is nice that you kind of like can use this because there is 1 more phase after this you can kind of use this to kind of refresh before the final phase but it's still a pain in the ass. 01:44:25.45 Dave Yeah, yep. 01:44:35.22 Dave Yeah, there's ah, there's 2 more phases after this. It's ah it's a lot so the one after this, you're on like this floating platform in the void or something and he has these big shadow hands that he. 01:44:38.89 Jared Was there 2 more? Oh that's right. 01:44:53.57 Dave Punches down into the ground and they pop up and they shoot projectiles at you This took me forever to figure out because I've played Zelda games before and it's like oh he's shooting big glowing platform ah balls of energy at me I hit them with my sword back at him. You know that's how this works, not how it works. 01:45:05.46 Jared Yeah, hit them back? yeah. 01:45:12.11 Dave Ah, what you have to do is use the cane to flip the shadow hands over? yeah and then you use the minish platform in the arena to shrink down to Minish size run inside of the like it's flipped over and there's a hole you can get inside. 01:45:14.76 Jared Um, this is wild. I Love this. 01:45:30.57 Dave And then there's these little monsters inside and 1 of them is the weak point so you have to find the weak point. Um, the second time you do this. It's dark inside so you have to use the lantern to light up the place the way they keep, like just increasing the complexity of it is cool. 01:45:44.85 Jared Well, that's one of them. That's the moment I get to dig through the moments to try to find the weak spot. 01:45:49.39 Dave Yeah, right? That's the third one? Yeah, so that's the third phase and that's the one where I tried everything in my arsenal except for the cane because I just thought like well there's no way it's the cane that hurts these shadow arms. 01:46:04.40 Jared Yep. 01:46:08.60 Dave But it is. It's the cane. So. 01:46:09.44 Jared Yup, yep it flips them over which I did I also was the same boat I had to look it up because I would not have thought it was the same thing with the pots in like castle town I would have not have thought to like oh yeah I use this cane to flip it over and the underside is what I need to get into. 01:46:21.11 Dave I Guess the hint or like the clue would have been that the cane is used in a lot of other Minish puzzles throughout the game like flipping the pots over. Yeah. 01:46:30.98 Jared Right? right? and there is ah there is a minish thing to get small here. So I guess that the hint is like you need to get small for the most part you're using the cane to access Minish things. So yeah like I didn't get that. So. 01:46:39.21 Dave Yeah, maybe maybe that's it. I didn't figure it out. So whatever. Yeah, and then the last phase is the classic he shoots energy balls at you, you hit them with the sword but you have to be in the copies of 4 all lined up. 01:46:53.96 Jared Yep, yeah. 01:46:58.75 Dave You have to perfectly line up the copies because if you're not lined up. You won't hit the balls straight. You'll hit them off to the side and all 4 of them have to hit the 4 weak points on Vati or it doesn't count. So this was kind of not hard to hit them. But it is tough to line it up. 01:47:04.32 Jared Yep. 01:47:17.43 Jared What's the same thing you were where you had issues with before if you get hit by anything by any means you lose your copies. You have to go back down. You have to hold the button for like 5 seconds to get the ah charge going and then you can make the copies. 01:47:23.90 Dave Yeah. 01:47:29.87 Dave Yeah, and you're holding down the B button charging up the sword and there's just stuff flying at you all the time so you're dodging out of the way. Yeah, yeah, but um, once I got the hang of. 01:47:35.73 Jared Yeah, how the entire time you're like trying to strafe and dodge the projectiles that are coming at you as well. 01:47:47.61 Jared You know. 01:47:47.82 Dave Like what I was supposed to do. It wasn't really hard to pull it off like a couple times where I didn't line it up perfectly. But the third phase was the hardest one to figure out what to do, but this is now a 4 phase final boss fight. 01:47:54.73 Jared Yeah. 01:48:07.10 Dave And then the part with the 3 armored enemies right? before it with very little healing items. So it is a real test of like uncharacteristically for how difficult the rest of the game was like. This was a big increase in difficulty. We'll say. 01:48:09.88 Jared Yeah. 01:48:18.44 Jared I Mean we talked about dark souls, the dark souls games right here and diminished cap. 01:48:27.26 Dave Ah, yeah, so um I appreciate a little bit of challenge in these games. You know I think most of the top down ones toward the end of the game do have some legit challenge to them this one does for sure. 01:48:30.68 Jared Yeah. 01:48:38.79 Jared Yeah, yeah, and I I would say that it's it's it's a curve but it it isn't a in isn't an aggressive curve right? like a lot of the other bosses and stuff aren't too difficult these far like this these last four phases definitely being the hardest part of the game. I Wouldn't say it's like an extreme curve like oh man this is impossible. 01:48:59.88 Dave No, not impossible. It's just like you have to figure out what the specific solution for this phase is for the other bosses like I would you say there's like 5 or 6 of them like I am okay. 01:49:06.59 Jared Right. 01:49:13.65 Jared There is. there's there's 5 01:49:18.60 Dave So I probably beat 3 of them without um without dying or and I probably beat at least 1 of them without getting hit like they're just they're very easy for the most part and then this one's just like yeah this is a ah real test so that is ah the minish cap. 01:49:22.78 Jared Yep. Oh yeah. 01:49:31.14 Jared Yeah, absolutely. 01:49:37.75 Dave Unless we have other spoiler things to talk about obviously. Ah Vati is um, he's defeated everybody turns back from ah from stone people who were turned into monsters turned back to people and the world is saved. Um, oh and the ah. 01:49:47.27 Jared Um, yay. 01:49:50.25 Jared The world is saved for now until the next game and whether the world is not saved. 01:49:56.25 Dave The minish. Um, they go back into the sanctuary or the sanctuary closes up because it opens up once every hundred years and the time is over ah very again. Um, conveniently right after you're finished. That's the end of the time and be like. 01:50:07.60 Jared Very convenient. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:50:14.93 Dave Oh you're inside fighting Vati and it closed up so Link's trapped in there for 100 years and that's but no, no, um, very ah, neat ending. You know what to expect: end credits of the minish cap do the cool zelda thing where like. 01:50:30.76 Dave They play like a medley of the songs and they show you people around the world and everything, all the places you've been and all of that. So it's a nice ending. 01:50:37.00 Jared Yeah, you get a kind of little heart felt like goodbye from as low as he also goes into this the spirit realm with all the other Minish is good isn't nice. The landing. 01:50:45.31 Dave Yeah, yeah, so that is the minish cap and Jared thank you so much for joining me for this? Yeah, really fun game and a fun conversation. 01:50:56.31 Jared Yeah man. Thanks thanks for having me on and this was I had already had this on my list of my backlog. I had wanted to play through a lot of these older games. So this was a perfect excuse to do so so I finally chipped away another one of the Zelda games off the backlog. 01:51:10.86 Dave Nice. What do you think would be like the next one that you're going to go to right? 01:51:16.95 Jared I haven't done the oracle games so I haven't done the seasons or ages. Um I haven't I mean it's the remakes I haven't played the remake of link's awakening I've played through link's awakening before but I haven't played through that one So I kind of want to at least try that one out. Um. 01:51:27.52 Dave Easier. 01:51:33.57 Jared I think that's the only one I'm missing at this point. I've played through most of this if I've played all the 2ds there's no 3ds that I've missed. Yeah, just the oracle games I haven't played well I haven't played like the c I games or anything like that. But I don't know if anybody should play those. 01:51:35.27 Dave Nice. 01:51:44.78 Dave Nice right? Maybe as a curiosity. Yeah, um, yeah, the oracle games I played when I was a kid I remember liking them and I haven't you know it's been twenty years since I played them. So. 01:51:50.68 Jared Yeah. You. 01:52:00.66 Dave Ah, that's on my backlog resolutions list for 2024 so we'll see if I do it? Um, I think I want to. 01:52:04.58 Jared Yeah, there's whispers about those games getting like the link's awakening treatment and getting some kind of remake so that would be cool to kind of just like having a modern version of those games. 01:52:15.45 Dave Yeah, those are ones that people have been kind of clamoring for for a while I think they're on nso. 01:52:22.29 Jared I was going to say that I think that that might kind of hit that theory because they are on Nso but who knows. 01:52:28.58 Dave Yeah, yeah, who knows Nintendo's into remaking stuff now. So anything's possible I suppose so anyway this has been a great time man. Thank you again for taking the time to have a good conversation as always I appreciate you. 01:52:36.29 Jared Um, yeah, yeah. 01:52:42.79 Jared Yeah, thanks for having me man. It was a great time. 01:52:46.47 Dave Yeah, and everybody listening. Thank you one more plug for you to go down in the show notes check out play along podcast. Lots of good stuff over there including some zelda content but lots of other stuff too and yeah tune in next week for the next game. To come out of the backlog.