Freeze in GBA Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

[jtrevor99]

In The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, there's a room in the final dungeon ("Dark Hyrule Castle") that is notorious for causing softlocks. Google searches indicate multiple GBA emulators have trouble with this room. It does not appear to be due to corrupt ROM or any other such issue.

Savestate attached. To replicate the issue, move down one room then wait a second or so. Confirmed in the latest higan as well as byuu 115.
Slot 1.zip

[Screwtapello]

higan doesn't get a lot of love these days; I believe there's been a lot of GBA fixes in the descendant project ares; the ares website lists Minish Cap as completable so it would be worth checking if the problem is fixed there. A higan save-state won't work with ares, but in-game saves should be reliably transferrable.

[jtrevor99]

I'll be honest that I didn't think of Ares - I hadn't upgraded yet :) However, I confirmed that this room is not passable in the latest copy of Ares - it still softlocks. That means that the project page is incorrect; Minish Cap is NOT completable with Ares currently. (I'm using the NTSC version but expect the PAL version's not completable either, based on what I've found online.)

(This freeze is 98% into the game, so I suspect whomever marked the game "completable" simply didn't progress that far.)

It's possible, of course, that this is intentional...I could see both Big N and Capcom adding copy protection to an essential room only a few away from the final boss...but other emulator boards seem to consider it a bug.

Ares savestate:
The Legend of Zelda - The Minish Cap.zip