Is Minish Cap the best 2D Zelda game? For me, it’s vying with A Link to the Past for the title, although I’ve got a soft spot for Link’s Awakening, too. It never fails to amaze me that another company could take one of Nintendo’s iconic mascots and build a game that feels so Zelda around him.
Capcom’s 2004 foray into Hyrule is, in my opinion, its best, but the developer has been at Link’s side for banger after banger. The Oracle games were ahead of their time with their seasonal design changes and how they interacted with each other differently depending on what order you played them in. I’ll level with you, I never played Four Swords, but based on Capcom’s other Zelda entries, maybe I need to change that.
So why hasn’t Capcom made another Zelda game since 2004? It’s been 20 years to the day since The Minish Cap released in the EU, and those two decades have been Capcomless when it comes to adventures in Hyrule. There’s no discernible reason why. The Capcom games weren’t declining in quality, if anything they were improving.
Is there space for more Capcom Zelda games in a post-Grezzo world? Grezzo is the developer behind the stellar Link’s Awakening remake and the innovative Zelda-led Echoes of Wisdom. They’re both great games and refreshing tonics compared to the enormous open worlds of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
This cadence of smaller Grezzo games filling the space between Nintendo’s mammoth releases feels good. We get a smaller, more compact Zelda game while the main studio keeps working on the next gargantuan genre-definer.
That’s not to say that Grezzo doesn’t innovate. Echoes of Wisdom not only puts Zelda centre stage for the first time, but allows you to approach puzzles with the same freedom and creativity as the main series games through its echo mechanic. That’s no easy task in a 2D environment.
But is there room for new Capcom games alongside the Grezzo games and the main series? Like Pokemon, Zelda has fallen into a comfortable cadence. Pokemon punctuates its mainline series with alternating remakes and Legends games, and Zelda now alternates between the main series and Grezzo games. The gaps between them are still long, though, which is why we were all surprised when Echoes of Wisdom was announced. There’s plenty of room in the timeline for a pinch of Capcom spice every few years.
Zelda needs Capcom, but does Capcom need Zelda? Capcom is going from strength to strength in recent years. 2024 alone has seen it release Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, and Ace Attorney Investigations Collection. There are probably more that I’ve forgotten, and the Monster Hunter Wilds demo beat Call of Duty in terms of player numbers, which is frankly astonishing.
I want to see what modern Capcom can do with Zelda. Minish Cap was brilliant, the Oracle games were ahead of their time, and Capcom can do the same with modern Zelda. Capcom may not need to make a new Zelda game, but the two titans of the industry could make something great together.
This spirit of collaboration is already a trend in the indie scene, with games like Balatro and Dave the Diver pushing the boundaries of crossovers to their limits. As Nintendo has kept silent for Minish Cap’s big birthday, presumably we won’t hear any rumblings of a remake or sequel (although it would be very Nintendo to announce it on a random Wednesday in June). In that case, my big wish for 2025 is for Capcom to have another throw of the dice.
I want more Vaati. I want the third, scrapped Oracle game. I want a Minish Cap sequel. I want more Capcom Zelda, and the anniversary of Minish Cap is the perfect time to announce it.
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I Wish The Legend Of Zelda Games Weren’t So Easy
Echoes of Wisdom reverts to being as easy as pre-Breath of the Wild Zelda games, and that’s a mistake.