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2) The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
Collaborator: Capcom
System: Game Boy Advance
Anyone who fell in love with A Link Between Worlds owes it to themselves to check out The Minish Cap, Capcom’s grand finale to its proposed Zelda trilogy. Capcom’s first two Zelda games (Oracle of Ages and Seasons, which you should totally go and buy on the 3DS Virtual Console) were excellent, but Minish Cap is in a league of its own. Somehow, Capcom managed to equal Nintendo’s own efforts with this game. The story revolved around a mysterious new enemy and didn’t rely on Ganon as the central baddie, and a whole slew of new items were introduced, too. Indeed, most of the items that everyone had so much fun using in Skyward Sword made their first appearance in Minish Cap! Toss in the addictive Kinstone fusing and figurine collecting, and this was a title that kept many a Game Boy Advance on for hours and hours.
Interesting choices, and mostly great games. But Other M will never stop filling me with rage.
I eagerly wait to spend my eShop money on a Wii U version of Mario RPG. I was tempted with that Club Nintendo reward last month, but ultimately didn’t want to buy a classic controller.
Great list. I enjoyed Minish Cap immensely and thought it was quite charming. However I felt the Oracle games were more challenging, which makes them the superior collaboration in my opinion. I was glad you mentioned them in your write-up.
Also, While it doesn’t fit your criteria for making this list since Silicon Knights was a second party developer at the time, I would give an honorable mention to “Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes” for Gamecube. While the bulk of the collaboration was between Silicon Knights and Konami, Nintendo was sure to emphasize Miyamoto’s overseeing of its development. The game turned out great and was an unexpected surprise-addition to Gamecube’s awesome (and underrated) library.
I was within millimeters of plugging in MGS, but it was in too much of a gray area to me as I was writing. In retrospect, I probably should have thrown it on the list. It’s one of my all time favorite games! So good.
Eternal Darkness as well, for that matter. That game led me to buy Twin Snakes, which in turn got me into what is now one of my favorite game series.
Silicon Knights was truly in their golden age when they were close with Nintendo, same as Rare. Damn it Nintendo, you better not ever loosen your ties with Retro! :^)
Glad to see the Silicon Knights games being mentioned in the comments. I understand why they weren’t on the list, but think they are fantastic games – clearly the best games that studio ever made by a large margin. Also some of my personal favorite games on GameCube.