For reasons I cannot entirely explain (depression is a fickle beast), I’ve been finding myself drawn to YouTube videos exploring all kinds of Zelda theories: from timeline stuff to deep lore and everything in between. So many, in fact, that YouTube knows that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is my second-favorite video game, outmatched ONLY by Final Fantasy VII. I’ve played through Ocarina of Time more than any other Zelda title. In fact, I’ve only finished a few Zelda games. You know why? Because I usually get super fucking frustrated and give up.
So this morning, I found myself watching the Angry Video Game Nerd review Majora’s Mask. Twenty years later, a lot about the game definitely doesn’t hold up, and his criticisms are absolutely valid. As I watched, I remembered a lot of frustrations, hiccups, and other issues I’d had when playing it back in middle school. I definitely had to re-start dungeons, for instance, because the 3-day in game time limit is punishing and cruel. Watching the review, I realized I’ve gotten stuck on side-quests, messed up, rage quit, and flailed at that game more than any other game I’ve ever played.
The sad thing is, I think that had Majora’s Mask come into my life when I had access to more games, I probably wouldn’t have played it through. For me, and probably for a lot of us growing up, a video game was an investment. I’d get one or two a year, and that was what I had to play when I felt like gaming. So, no matter how angry Majora’s Mask made me, I would still come back to it because… I mean, what the hell else was I going to play?
There’s a big chunk of the Zelda fanbase who say that Majora’s Mask is the greatest title in the series. I imagine a lot of the people who feel that way had a similar experience playing the game for the first time. You’d spend long hours huddled up in front of the TV, finding yourself filled with a strange sense of dread as you explored places like Clock Town, the Great Bay, and Ikana Canyon, and learned the stories of the fallen warriors whose masks you took up. Because it came out in the days before voiceover acting became a common part of games, it is an oppressively quiet game. Even the music does little to quell the hushed terror that permeates the experience.
I would sit in my room and play for hours on my itty bitty TV, uncovering secrets and musing on just how creepy so much of Majora’s Mask is. And I’m telling you, it’s not just that almost comically angry moon face; despair is written in to just about everything you encounter, and a lot of it is eerily subtle. Everyone is preparing for the end of the world, yes, but there’s something about the ways people react, they ways they choose to spend the last three days of their lives, and what their true motives and values are as they face their mortality and the end of the world.
I also really loved figuring out where a character would be in different parts of their little 72 hour story loop, and finding ways to interrupt and change that loop, only to see them revert back when I reset time. It was strange, because in Ocarina of Time, I loved slowly healing the land of Hyrule and setting things right. But, in Majora’s Mask, almost everything you do in Termina is impermanent. You could spend your entire 3 day loop reuniting a couple, only to see them apart and pining for one another once you reset the clock. I can’t exactly explain the feeling it gave me; it wasn’t grief, or fear, but something deeper (and perhaps a bit too existentially intense for a depression prone fourteen-year-old, but here we are).
So, maybe it’s just nostalgia, but I kind of miss the days when I only had a handful of video games at my fingertips. These days, if I get frustrated with something, it’s really easy to pull up the Nintendo Switch Online library or just buy a game on sale in the PlayStation store. Or, if I’m feeling really wild, I can plug in one of our classic consoles and play one of the hundreds of cartridges that’s currently gathering dust in my closet. Kid me would have KILLED to have this many games, but kid me never did know what was good for her. Being able to download thousands of games digitally has been an amazing revolution in gaming and also possibly the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.
Truthfully, I bet I’d really enjoy Link to the Past if I could force myself to sit down through the frustrating parts and finish it. Same perhaps for the first Zelda game on NES. There are plenty of Final Fantasy titles I’ve never played, and I never finished Chrono Trigger (I know, please don’t throw things at me.) So, who knows? Maybe in 2021 I’ll challenge myself to actually get through some of the classics, because I know I’m missing out on a lot, just like James Rolfe knew he was missing out on Majora’s Mask.
By the way, he did eventually concede that the game is touching, haunting even, despite its outdated graphics and many, many flaws.
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