Zelda: Minish Cap on Deck? Heck yes.

I love it - but some flaws could have been addressed…

Update: no more crashing with the latest Ryujinx update!

Well, the day has already come upon us. That is, the 20th anniversary of my favorite game of all time. No, I’m not talking about Smash Brothers, despite my passion for that game. Smash gets a lot of respect in its own ways. But I’m actually referring to Metroid Prime. A game that, as many people can attest to, has helped them to deal with dark or otherwise tough times. The game that helped them to cope with life’s challenges.

As someone who is quite fond of Metroid Prime, I had an opportunity to chat with a few of the developers/artists behind Metroid Prime Remastered (MPR). MPR is an unofficial mod that, as the team brings out in this interview, greatly enhances the lighting, shading, and overall graphics quality of the gem that was released 20 years ago. And because it’s using PrimeHack, it also incorporates all the benefits of that, including keyboard and mouse controls, dual-stick controller support, and an adjustable field of view slider.

EDIT (2/12/2023): this is for the UNOFFICIAL remaster. Not the official. If you’re like me, you were probably left with a bad taste in your mouth after this year’s Nintendo Direct. No Metroid announcements whatsoever. There were rumors of an official remaster of Metroid Prime coming this year. It would have made sense considering this year marks the 20th anniversary of the beloved title. But, of course, our expectations got crushed.

I wanted to briefly talk about the trilogy of Metroid Prime games running on the Deck. In a nutshell: it works pretty great. Not flawless by any means but you’d be surprised at how well the controls work. All you have to do to get up and running is to run the EmuDeck script on your Steam Deck. Then copy your Trilogy ISO to /home/deck/Emulation/roms/primehacks/. Exit Steam in Desktop Mode, and add artwork with Steam ROM Manager.

I now have renewed interest in playing the original Metroid Prime for the GameCube. Why’s that? Because there’s this GORGEOUS HD mod that has finally been released after four years in the making. Just look at the screenshots yourself. The game still looks great nearly 20 years later, but now it got a fan-made upgrade in the visual department that makes it look like the game came out not even five years ago.