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E3 2004


Original Zelda Game for the GBA

At long last, Nintendo has decided to finally create an original Zelda game for the Game Boy Advance. Sure, it was nice to see A Link to the Past/Four Swords for the GBA, but it was more like having the fun of Zelda III in an easy-to-use handheld format. But now they're coming out with a nice original game for the handheld system, made by Flagship. I won't get into a rant about how Zelda should be made by Nintendo and no one else, but that's another story.

The name of the game is The Minish Cap and the basic storyline is this: Link (who looks a lot like the Wind Waker Link) is on some new adventure and somehow finds a new hat. I know your probably thinking "Wow! A new hat! It's about time he got rid of that ratty old thing!", but think again. This is no ordinary hat, it's magic. It looks like his normal hat, but with a funky bird head on top of it. And yes, you guessed it, the bird head talks. This seems like an evolution of the hated Navi. I still think that whoever invented Navi should be horse-whipped. But I digress. Not only does this hat talk and give you Navi-like advice, it can also shrink him down to itty-bitty size. Supposedly his miniscule state is from the perspective of the regular-sized world (he's like a mosquito crawling on your GBA screen) and from the perspective of Link (he looks normal size but everything else is huge). And yes, there are Minish people, a race of itty-bitty people that Link can talk to when he shrinks. Just watch where you step people, or you might find yourself wiping Link off the bottom of your shoe.

Our lovely news reporters (people from IGN, Gamespot, etc.) say that the game has some new items and features to play with. Link apparently has the ability to use a bottle to suck in air, then blow it back out at enemies and whatnot. They also say he can use it to "clear out cobwebs or dusty areas by vacuuming them up" (IGN quote). It also seems he can use this sucking to stretch out magical mushrooms and grab on them to use them as catapults. I only wonder what kind of mushrooms these guys were consuming when they came up with that idea. There are also new quest items called Kinstones. Link finds halves of kinstones wherever and he has to find the someone or something that has the other half. When he has both halves, you get something, like a special item, some person telling you valuable information, or other Zelda-type things. In the E3 demo, IGN reported that your mission was to go on a kinstone-matching quest to get money to buy Lon Lon Milk for Zelda. That's so sweet of him. Nintendo also says that players can use the GBA wireless adaptor to exchange kinstones and stuff with other players. And IGN also said that there might be Four Swords type stuff in this game, which kind of makes sense because it takes advantage of the multi-player functions of the GBA.

I didn't see any reference to a release date, but my guess would be late this year or early next year. Anyways, there are some nice pictures for everyone to gawk at. And by the way, the screenshots are from IGN.


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