Tag: The Wind Waker

The Minish Cap

~ Kathryn

Nintendo recently released The Minish Cap on the Game Boy Advance virtual console included with its Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription service. This service costs $50 a year, and you have to pay the annual fee all at once. As a reminder: It is always morally correct to pirate Nintendo games.

The Minish Cap came out around the same time as The Wind Waker, and it translates a lot of The Wind Waker’s characters and enemy designs into a 16-bit pixel aesthetic modeled on A Link to the Past. As a Zelda game, the structure of The Minish Cap is very conventional: There are five themed dungeons in five themed zones. You must beat these dungeons in order, as the item you find in each dungeon allows you to access more of the world. All of the dungeons are well-designed, and it’s fun to navigate each of the five zones.

To me, there are three things that make The Minish Cap special. The first is a core game mechanic that’s brilliant and magical; the second is a minor game mechanic I hate; and the third is the game’s lighthearted tone.

The main conceit of The Minish Cap is that Link is able to shrink down to the size of the Minish, tiny little mouse-elves who live in adorable mushroom houses, hollowed-out books, and so on. The Minish spaces in the game are a Studio Ghibli fantasy on par with The Secret World of Arrietty, and there are a number of fun navigation puzzles that require Link to alternate between human size and Minish size. This is especially enjoyable during an item quest that requires you to return three books to the library, which necessitates navigating the central hub of Hyrule Castle Town at Minish size.

Unfortunately, the Minish are obsessed with fusing kinstones. A kinstone is a broken medallion, and several dozen NPCs are willing to connect their half of a kinstone with a matching half in your possession. A successful fusion will result in a small change somewhere in the world – a merchant will come to Castle Town, a treasure chest will appear in a cave, or a special golden monster will appear in the field. These fusions are mostly random, as are the kinstones you find. All of the game’s sidequests (if you can even call them that) are connected to kinstone fusions, and the randomness of the fusions can make these sidequests infuriating. Thankfully, none of the sidequests is necessary, as The Minish Cap is easy enough to play with just the bare minimum of resources.

I imagine that most players will probably think of successful kinstone fusions as fun bonuses, but a Zelda game without sidequests can feel a little empty. In addition, because many of these fusions are made with random NPCs at seemingly random points in the game, none of the sidequests is connected to a narrative.

This lack of substance and specificity is tied to the lighthearted tone of The Minish Cap, which doesn’t have much of a story. The King of Hyrule has been possessed by an evil Minish wizard named Vaati, who turns Princess Zelda to stone during the first ten minutes of the game. Because only children are pure-hearted enough to see the Minish, only Link can save Zelda. Meanwhile, none of the adults care about any of this.

Aside from Zelda and your trusty talking hat Ezlo (who has also been transformed by Vaati), nothing bad happens to anyone in the game. In fact, everyone is quite happy.

In The Wind Waker, the disconnect between the carefree world of the Great Sea and the importance of Link’s quest is a major thematic element of the story. The only person living on the Great Sea who cares about Hyrule is Ganondorf, and the only reason he cares is because he’s been woefully displaced in time. The fact that no one except the King of Red Lions understands Link’s quest emphasizes The Wind Waker’s tone of loneliness, and this is why it’s so emotionally impactful when Link finds someone who appreciates the stakes of what he’s trying to accomplish and volunteers to help.

Meanwhile, in The Minish Cap, Hyrule is densely populated by Hylians and Minish who seem to be doing just fine, even without a government. Aside from poor Zelda, everyone is living their best life, and no one needs your help. I can’t overemphasize that there is not a single element of darkness in this game, which has no narrative tension and very little forward momentum.

A fandom friend who recently played The Minish Cap for the first time said that this is the game they’d recommend to first-time Legend of Zelda players, and I can understand where they’re coming from. The Minish Cap is about as conventional as you can get. Overall, it’s really fun, and neither its combat nor its puzzles are difficult.

Unfortunately, the kinstone fusion sidequests can be hideously annoying, and the game’s “safe for children” cutesy tone makes the world and its story seem unimportant and forgettable. The Minish Cap feels like it was created for casual players, and your mileage may vary on how much you appreciate this.

In the end, The Minish Cap is still a great 8/10 game that’s very much worth playing, but it’s on an entirely different level than A Link Between Worlds, which perfected the top-down 2D Zelda formula while also featuring excellent writing and interesting design work. Given its limitations, I think The Minish Cap will probably appeal most strongly to 16-bit retro game fans, as well as its actual target demographic of ten-year-old kids.

The Legend We Create

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

The courageous hero loves the wise princess, but they are bound by their fate and must put their feelings aside for the sake of a world floating above the ruins of an ancient kingdom.

…or so the legend goes, but some storytellers have a slightly different interpretation.

The Legend We Create is a tale of mutual pining and second-chance romance on the Great Sea, as well as a meditation on how each new generation heals the wounds of history by telling their own narratives about the past. You can read this short story on AO3 (here).

This story was published in Fated: A Zelink Zine. You check out the work of the other contributors on the zine’s Twitter account (here).

My Favorite Things in Ocarina of Time

~ Kathryn

This is a small zine I made to express my appreciation for some of the more interesting things in Ocarina of Time using graphics and screenshots from the game itself. It’s eight pages long and 4.75″ x 4.75″ (roughly the size of a Nintendo 3DS box).

It took me about four hours spread out over two days to make this zine. On the first day, I spent two hours collecting screenshots and other graphic elements like text boxes and fonts. On the next day, I spent another two hours creating the front and back covers, laying out the pages, and writing the text. My previous zines took weeks to put together, so I wanted to challenge myself to make something short in a limited amount of time.

I also made this zine to have something small to sell for $1.00 at the DC Zinefest this summer. I sold almost all of my copies at the event, and I put the remaining copies in my shop on Etsy. I think it’s probably fair to say that there are a lot of people who love the Legend of Zelda games, and it’s been fun to use this zine as an excuse to meet and talk with other Zelda fans in person and online.

What the experience of making this zine taught me is that it wouldn’t be that difficult to make something like a fake game manual that looks fairly official. What this means is that, at my current Photoshop skill level, I could make something that looks almost exactly like the official game manual for Ocarina of Time but provides “instructions” for an entirely different version of the game. For example, I could make a manual for a game in which Princess Zelda is the protagonist or a game in which it’s the player’s goal to capture and tame various monsters. I could also (very easily) reframe Ocarina of Time as a dating sim. The possibilities are endless, really.

In the future, I think it would be fun to do a similar zine about my favorite things in The Wind Waker. It might be also cool to create a fake Wind Waker game manual written from the perspective of Ganondorf, who wants the hero to stop mucking around and bring him the Triforce already. I’m planning to start work on an actual book about The Wind Waker soon, and making these two zines might be a good way to keep the project exciting and interesting.

Left Behind

~ Kathryn

This comic was drawn by Moonjelly Creations (@moonjellybeans on Twitter) and written by me, Kathryn Hemmann (@kathrynthehuman on Twitter).

I’m really interested in the relationship between Ganondorf and Tetra in The Wind Waker. While Link’s journey is full of light and laughter and discovery and growth, both Tetra and Ganondorf are associated with some fairly dark themes. They’re also literally in the dark in Hyrule Castle, which has lain dormant for centuries under the Great Sea. The Gothic creepiness of this scenario is fascinating, and I love how both Tetra and Ganondorf are painfully human even as they represent mythical forces that are much larger than themselves.

Video Games and Japan

~ Kathryn

This semester I’m teaching a class about The Wind Waker! I commissioned the artist Visi Herman (@visicolors on Instagram) to create the image above to use on promotional posters and flyers, which I hope to use to try to nudge the GMU Game Design program into crosslisting my “Video Games and Japan” course in the future. If you’re interested, I’ve posted a syllabus for this semester’s class here:

https://kathrynhemmann.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/japa-370-syllabus-spring-2019.pdf

Legend of Zelda Theories

~ Kathryn

During the past two years I’ve begun to present and publish academic papers on the Legend of Zelda series. During my research I’ve encountered a lot of fan speculation about the many mysteries of the expansive universe of the games. I ended up taking notes on some of the more common theories I’ve encountered, as well as some of the stranger headcanons formulated and shared by fans, and I’ve noticed that these theories tend to fall into six main categories:

Expository Theories
These theories aim to fill in a sizeable gap in the story of a specific game.
Example: The Gerudo became the Twili in Twilight Princess.

Continuity Theories
These theories attempt to impose a sense of order on the shared universe of the games.
Example: Breath of the Wild is set in the distant future of the Twilight Princess timeline.

Meta Theories
These theories offer a deep reading of the stories, characters, and themes of the games.
Example: Majora’s Mask is based on the five stages of grief.

Dark Theories
These theories go out of their way to hurt you by providing the darkest possible interpretation of a specific story element.
Example: Navi dies at the end of Ocarina of Time.

Fridge Horror Theories
These theories go beyond “dark theories” in that their only purpose is to keep you awake at night. Example: Link recovers his energy by eating the bloody raw hearts of the enemies he slays.

Crack
What are these theories, what are they even.
Example: Ganondorf and Princess Zelda are secretly dating.

I’m not going to try to organize the theories I’ve collected by this typology, however, because they’re all over the place. Some are silly, some are creepy, some are actually plausible, and some are genuinely bizarre. Like urban legends, these theories have been circulated by word of mouth on online message boards. Some of the oldest appeared on the forums of Something Awful and Albino Blacksheep, and the more recent spread by means of Reddit and Imgur. Essentially, wherever people get together to have conversations about video games, someone always has a Zelda theory to share. In no particular order, here are some of the theories that have caught my attention.

– Paya, Impa’s granddaughter in Breath of the Wild, is shy around Link because she doesn’t often get the chance to interact with people her own age. Almost every Sheikah teenager leaves to join the Yiga Clan, which is why there are so few young people in Kakariko Village and so many Yiga Footsoldiers.

– Groose from Skyward Sword is the ancestor of the Gerudo. He settled in the Lanayru Desert, which is filled with ancient and contemporary technology, because of his love of machines. It’s possible that Ganondorf is a reincarnation of Groose, which is why he was affected so strongly by Demise’s curse.

– Tetra’s pirate crew in The Wind Waker are all reincarnations of the royal aides whose group portrait hangs in Hyrule Castle. This means that Princess Zelda isn’t the only person whose soul is reborn in different eras of Hyrule’s history.

– Agitha in Twilight Princess is Zelda’s sister, which is why she calls herself a princess. Like other princesses of the Hyrulean royal line, she experienced visions of a coming calamity, and these visions were so overwhelming that she lost touch with reality. She had to leave the castle for her own protection, but she is still wealthy enough to reward the hero who appeared in her visions for catching golden bugs that resemble the insects plaguing the Spirits of Light.

– Because only one male is born every hundred years, the Gerudo in Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask reproduce through gynogenesis, which is similar to cloning. This explains the relative lack of phenotypic diversity among the Gerudo, as well as their comparatively large population. The pregnancies following unions with Hylian men result in more noticeable genetic permutations, including those resulting in the rare Gerudo males.

– Link died while protecting Zelda during the Great Calamity that occurred one hundred years before Breath of the Wild. The Shrine of Resurrection created an entirely new body to house his spirit, much like how Ganon attempted to fashion a body for itself using the ancient technology hidden within Hyrule Castle. This is why Link is so weak when he wakes up, and it’s also why he has so much trouble remembering the past.

– According to Hyrule Historia, the “Downfall Timeline” leading to the original 1986 The Legend of Zelda results from Link dying at some point during Ocarina of Time. The world of Termina in Majora’s Mask is a purgatory that Link’s soul moves through on its way to the afterlife. The four main dungeons and final set of dungeons on the moon are therefore meant to represent the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance). Everyone Link meets in Termina symbolizes an aspect of the trauma he experienced in Hyrule, and Link must help them in order to heal himself and pass on peacefully.

– Super Mario Bros. 3, which Shigeru Miyamoto has said is a stage performance, is popular in Hyrule, which is why the Happy Mask Salesman in Majora’s Mask has a Mario mask on his backpack. The King of Hyrule in Ocarina of Time is a fan of the play, which is why there are paintings of Super Mario characters in his throne room.

– The Oocca in Twilight Princess, who live in the City in the Sky, are the descendants of the Loftwings in Skyward Sword. The differences in their appearance and level of sapience are due to a divinely facilitated evolution similar to the event that transformed the Zora into the Rito prior to The Wind Waker. There is a related theory that holds that the Rito are the descendants of the Oocca, who used their technology to alter their appearance in order to better acclimate to Hylian society after the existence of their city became widely known in Hyrule.

– Ghirahim, an anthropomorphic weapon who serves as the main antagonist of Skyward Sword, was created by Hylia, not Demise. Hylia knew that Demise would have to be unsealed in order to be defeated, so she created a copy of the Master Sword that would serve its own “master” by working to break the seal she placed on him. Unlike Fi, who remained in stasis while waiting for the chosen hero, Ghirahim gradually developed a personality, but his character became twisted by social isolation and his centuries-long failure to make progress on the task Hylia created him for, which could only be completed once her soul had been reborn.

– The people who were exiled from Hyrule and became the Twili in Twilight Princess were originally Sheikah, as demonstrated by the Sheikah-style eye motif on Midna’s crown and Zant’s throne. Another theory holds that the Twili are what became of Ganondorf’s followers who were imprisoned in the Arbiter’s Grounds.

– The Arbiter’s Grounds in Twilight Princess were built on the site of the Spirit Temple, the sacred site where the Gerudo in Ocarina of Time worshiped the Sand Goddess. The Hyrulean army destroyed the Spirit Temple during the war against Ganondorf and then made use of its ruins to build a concentration camp to house the Gerudo during a mass exile (or execution).

– There is a fourth piece of the Triforce, which is actually the Tetraforce. The fourth piece of the Tetraforce is the empty center of the Triforce, and it is depicted at the bottom of the original Hylian Shield (which the developers supposedly redesigned in response to this theory). The Triforce can be split into multiple parts (as demonstrated by its eightfold split in The Legend of Zelda), and it split into four parts in Ocarina of Time. There are two common theories about what happened to the “missing” piece. One is that it is shared by the Great Fairies, four of whom appear in Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. The other is that it seals away the darkness in Link’s heart and gives it physical form, which manifests as the Dark Link who appears in the Water Temple.

– The Fierce Deity in Majora’s Mask is, as the eponymous villain says at the end of the game, “the real villain.” Majora gives the Fierce Deity’s Mask to Link in order to corrupt him, knowing that the mask will steal Link’s soul. The Link from Ocarina of Time appears to the Link in Twilight Princess in the form of a rotting corpse because he has been cursed by the Fierce Deity’s Mask and cannot die unless he is struck down by the Master Sword.

– Every episode in the Legend of Zelda series is a dream experienced by the Link who wakes up at the beginning of each successive game. The entire series is therefore a dream inside a dream inside a dream inside a dream (including Link’s Awakening and Majora’s Mask, which are canonically dreams).

– The Zelda series takes place in the same universe as the Silent Hill games. The Order, the evil doomsday cult that performs torture and human sacrifice in the town of Silent Hill, Maine, was originally a renegade faction of the Sheikah that was banished to another world like the Twili in Twilight Princess. The main basis for this theory is the similarity in the Satanic design motifs associated with the Order and with the Sheikah, which include staring eyes, magic circles, and bird-headed imps.

– Linkle, the “female Link” who is a minor playable character in Hyrule Warriors Legends, is the daughter of Tingle, the green bodysuit-clad creeper best known for causing unnecessary delays during the Triforce Quest at the end of The Wind Waker. This implies that Tingle somehow managed to breed. Congratulations! Now you can never unsee it. You’re welcome!