The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap is the fourth handheld Zelda game and the only one set in Hyrule. Like the twin Game Boy Color games, Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages , Nintendo outsourced this game's design to Capcom. As with those Oracle games, Capcom nailed it. The central gimmick of Minish Cap is that a magical hat can temporarily shrink Link to a miniscule size. Dotted throughout Hyrule are strange portals at which Link can change size by pressing R. While tiny, Link converses with little people called Minish or Picori, whom only children can see. He can't cross any kind of obstacle, such as roads, raised floors, grass, or shallow water. As a result, shrinking is always limited to a small area; once Link has accomplished whatever he needed to do, he must enlarge himself. Little doors and passages enable puzzles, such as going through a little door to bypass a shut, full-size door, then pressing a button to unlock that door. The Minish Cap is heavy on puzzles (simi...

Demon's Crest, a kind of sequel to Gargoyle's Quest II on the NES, was not a commercial success. According to Nintendo Power, it even recorded negative sales one week due to people returning it! I understand why, despite the fact the game is good: it's too short, especially if you don't search for all the crests. Demon's Crest is cryptic in a way that reminds me of games from the 80's. To beat the game properly, you need to gather the other four pieces of the fire crest, plus five other crests hidden across seven stages. However—and this is where the designers crucially erred—the most common outcome is to prematurely encounter the final boss, Phalanx, after the fourth stage (he mentions how he didn't expect to see Firebrand so soon), beat him, and get the "bad" ending. The credits roll, and you think, wow, my hour of playing wasn't worth $60. Now, a video-game nerd, such as yours truly, might object and say, "Wait! Can't you see that...