There's always been ranting and raving about how good Ocarina of Time was, and how Majora's just wasn't the return to Hyrule everyone wanted after OoT the first time.
I was there, like rioting in the streets Zelda fans wanted more Ocarina that game was so great. Hyrule was what we wanted, even though we'd been there done that.
Ocarina of Time has a special place in my heart. It was the first Zelda I played. I was at school at the time, my brother and I were best mates and my dad was on leave form work.
We were all up at 7am every morning hunting Skulltulas and completing temples.
I'm close with my brother still and we share a lot of game-isms but my dad has long since moved on. He's not a kid anymore, though I know he also remembers OoT fondly, as well as the hundreds of hours piffin' shells and dropping bananas we spent on Mario Kart 64.
Majora's Mask came along and it was just so... different. I remember tracking it in N64 mags at the time... "3 days to beat the game!?" What the hell was that all about? OoT had taken us 3 straight weeks, sunrise to sunset to 100%, how DARE they put a timer on my game.
But more details slowly surfaced. They were using the same character models, the races were all in there, it was almost all the same gear.
Except for the masks. For anyone who missed it the game's about the masks. You wear them and people treat you differently. Some are just for fun, some get a new response out of someone who you need to talk to.
You could transform into a graceful Zora, a careening Goron or a (slightly emo looking) Deku Scrub. A GIANT! A DEITY! You had it all.
The world is dark; the skull kid has called down the moon to smite the innocent. Only Link can save them, and through the manipulation of time you in fact have an infinite amount of tries to stop the calamity.
Think back though; this game truly sidestepped the formula that so weighs down the Zelda universe now. Dungeon crawling, gear gathering, instrument fingering gameplay aside, no game has done since what MM did then. Not Zelda, not anything.
It's truly unique and I miss it, the game gets better every day I think about it. I miss what Zelda was to a boy of 13, a warm place where you could defeat the moon if you had to!
Majora's Mask never changes though, every 3 days you set the clock back and the world is the same. I've changed though, everyone has and Majora's feels like it got left behind, a frozen 3 day loop in my mind.
wow, great post! it really makes me fascinated by the concept of the game! it really is unique! i was watching a youtube video a few months back when skyward sword had just come out, and the youtuber ranked his top 10 zelda games, and he put majora's mask at number 1. i never really knew what it was about until i read this post, the concept of the masks sounds really interesting! :)
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