Commercial Critique - The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

[Crow]

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

Platform: GBA
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Nintendo

That's right! Capcom made Minish Cap, not Nintendo. They've also made the two Oracle games before jumping into the beautiful world of Minish Cap. I'd say they've done an incredible job with this fresh installment of the TLoZ games. Compared to the GB and GBC, the GBA allowed a hell of a lot more artistic freedom. As you can see, the world of Minish Cap is very colorful:



Even with those new looks, the basic concepts of the gameplay were the same as in previous 2D TLoZ games, with a bunch of cool new ideas and twists, most notably the whole shrinking mechanic. But enough about how the game works. This is more about how it looks! Let's get talkin' on what works and what doesn't in Minish Cap, and keep in mind that the overall bright design was likely also chosen to tackle the fact the first GBA model did not have any backlight to its screen.

If you'd like to add any more screenshots, go ahead~

Once you've analyzed the game's looks, why not jump into the challenge thread and take a stab at reimagining the world of Minish Cap?

[API-Beast]

Nothing to improve here, every single pixel is already perfect.

[NowvaB]

Well... one tile could have always used a little love.

If I remember correctly its used after something has been removed from the ground like a rock or plant.
I'm not sure if it has multiple variations to match the ground color or if it uses transparency because I couldn't find a reliable sprite rip.

[skittlefuck]

I think that there will be a whole lot of nitpicking since the bigger picture of minish cap's art direction is really well done which is why I don't think many people are contributing to the thread.

That being said, fuck the bushes in this pic.



edit for fun, may not be as good but I still don't like the dithering on the bushes.

[Arne]

It looks a bit colorized, doesn't it? By that I mean, some objects/parts appear to have been painted in grayscale, then just given a simple colorizing pass. It makes things look disjointed and dead. I'm especially concerned by the ramps of some of the greens and dog-pee yellows. I quite prefer the look of a more limited palette as it really forces a sort of homogeneity in (colors looking like family), as well as some dither which can bring in some variation in texture. Minish Cap hardly seems to use dithering as a tool at all, insisting more on banding, giving it a color-reduced look here and there... texturally one-dimensional. Dithering can be really subtle, and I liked how they used it on the road-lumps, less so on the bushes, yeah. I also think that, in some cases the grass looks a bit ... gritty with the diagonal near-orphans.

[Crow]

It looks a bit colorized, doesn't it? By that I mean, some objects/parts appear to have been painted in grayscale, then just given a simple colorizing pass. It makes things look disjointed and dead.

That's a pretty interesting find, if it happens to be true. I can see how it could be, though, especially looking at some of the houses.

I'm especially concerned by the ramps of some of the greens and dog-pee yellows.

Remember the choice to use brighter colors to counter the lack of a backlight on the initial GBA models. Never had one without, so who knows what kind of look was intended here.

[MysteryMeat]

I'm especially concerned by the ramps of some of the greens and dog-pee yellows.

Remember the choice to use brighter colors to counter the lack of a backlight on the initial GBA models. Never had one without, so who knows what kind of look was intended here.

I did have one and the game (not anymore, though) and I later got ahold of the laptop looking one, and I recall it giving a bit of a darker, somewhat washed-out look without the back-light.
After fiddling with aseprite I made this as a reasonable approximation, it's probably not 100% accurate since I'm working off memory but I remember everything having a slight green tint because of the screen.

[PypeBros]

I especially love the way Minish Cap brings diversity and theme-fitting in the dungeons.
- vs -
They avoided noisy textures on the playable floors and used instead slight details that suggests defects in the pattern (place where floor is damaged, where wood has cracks, etc).
They also very smartly exploited walls to come with visually very insteresting doors and wall corners.

[jams0988]

This poor thread's been on the front page for like eight months now, and only has a few replies. I guess that means Minish Cap is pretty good looking, hahah! =)
That said, I didn't like a lot of the color choices for the game. A lot of them felt a little harsh and unnatural to me, even playing on the GBA. A lot of the tilesets are super saturated and gaudy, at least to my eyes.

[Melodee]

well i played it ages ago and it was definitely my favourite zelda game