The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask is an action-adventure game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64, released in 2000 as the sixth main installment of The Legend of Zelda series.¹⁰¹³ It was the second 3D entry in the series, a direct follow-up to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) that ran on that game’s engine and was enhanced by use of the console’s 4MB Expansion Pak.⁶ Set apart from other entries by a repeating three-day time limit and a system of transformation masks, it is widely regarded as the strangest and most narratively somber game in the series.⁴⁹

Development began after Nintendo announced in May 1999 that a sequel running on the acclaimed Ocarina of Time engine would arrive on the Nintendo 64 with a whole new world and set of temples.⁶ The project was known temporarily as Zelda: Gaiden, then briefly as Zelda: Mask of Majora, before the title Zelda: Majora’s Mask was finalized.⁶

Setting and story

The game begins where Ocarina of Time left off, with the young hero Link? riding his horse Epona? through a forest in search of a beloved friend — the fairy Navi — who had left him at the end of the previous game.³⁹ According to Nintendo’s own account, the mystery begins some three months after Link’s triumph over Ganondorf in Ocarina of Time.¹⁵ Two fairies, the siblings Tatl and Tael, frighten Epona and throw Link to the ground, whereupon a masked Skull Kid? — possessed by the power of the cursed Majora’s Mask — steals Link’s ocarina and horse and flees.⁸¹⁵ Tatl is subsequently abandoned by the Skull Kid and left to travel with Link, coming to see the error of the Skull Kid’s ways.⁸ Following the Skull Kid through a portal, Link arrives in Termina?, a parallel world resembling Hyrule but with its own distinct history and characters.³⁶ The name is understood to derive from the word “terminus,” denoting a limit or ending point.⁶

Termina faces destruction: its moon is descending toward the earth and will crash into the central hub of Clock Town? within 72 hours.³¹⁵ The Skull Kid quickly curses Link, transforming him into a Deku Scrub, and the traveling salesman of the Happy Mask Shop offers to lift the curse if Link recovers his stolen mask.³⁶ The mask peddler claims to be the owner of Majora’s Mask and is himself responsible for imposing the three-day limit on Link’s efforts.¹⁵ Unlike other Zelda games, Princess Zelda does not feature in the story except in flashbacks, and there is no destiny compelling Link to act; he saves Termina because he has the power to and because it is right.³ Critics have described the game as extraordinarily lonely and bleak, built around the theme of identity, with memorable individual tragedies such as the doomed romance of Kafei and Anju and a desert-dwelling father disfigured by his supernatural research.⁹ Many of Termina’s inhabitants are strange alternate versions of characters Link met in Ocarina’s Hyrule, and their mood darkens over the three days from initial unconcern to fearful resignation as the moon nears.¹²

Gameplay

The two central pillars of Majora’s Mask are masks and time.⁶ Link has three in-game days to save Termina from the falling moon; each day lasts roughly 18 minutes, for about 54 minutes of total game time.⁶ By playing the Song of Time on his ocarina, Link can return to the dawn of the first day, resetting the world at the cost of his disposable inventory such as rupees, arrows, and bombs.³⁶ Rupees banked before a return trip are preserved, while unbanked wealth is wiped out.¹⁰ This finite time limit was a mechanic never before seen in a Zelda game, adding urgency and heightening the consequences of getting lost in dungeons or drawn into prolonged fights, such as those with Wizzrobes.³ The three-day repeating structure has been called unique in video games, and though a player may spend perhaps 30 hours reliving the cycle, for Link it would feel like years.⁹ Additional songs learned on the ocarina can be used to manipulate time and warp, heal, awaken, or change the weather, much as in the preceding game.⁶

The mask system is the other major innovation.³ Three transformation masks change Link’s form: the Deku Mask lets him shoot from flowers and glide; the Goron Mask, which embodies the deceased Goron warrior Darmani, grants great strength and a spiked rolling attack useful against lava; and the Zora Mask, embodying the Zora guitarist Mikau, allows rapid swimming and boomerang-like weapons.³¹⁵ These transformations reshape boss battles — the fight against the mechanical Goht, for instance, requires the Goron mask’s rolling ability to keep pace.³ In all there are 24 masks to find, most of them secondary items tied to side quests, granting abilities such as running faster with the Bunny Hood, speaking to the dead with the Captain’s Hat, or detecting scents with the Mask of Scents.⁶¹ Others include the Blast Mask, which detonates like a bomb at the cost of a heart, and the Fierce Deity Mask, obtained only after collecting every other mask and completing the game’s final mini-dungeons, which turns Link into the powerful Oni Link.¹ Characters react differently depending on which guise Link wears, and figures like Darmani and Mikau are treated with reverence by townspeople unaware their heroes have died.³

At the heart of Termina lies Clock Town, surrounded by four lands — swamps, snow-covered mountains, beaches, and deserts — each holding a temple cursed by the Skull Kid.⁶ Lifting a temple’s curse also restores the surrounding land, cleansing poisoned water or thawing a frozen mountain, and frees the cursed boss guarding it.⁶ The game contains only four main dungeons, fewer than Ocarina of Time, but is padded to roughly 30 to 50 hours by many integral mask-based side quests.⁶ Chief among these is the lengthy Anju and Kafei quest, a multi-day chain of timed meetings — from receiving the Inn Key on the first day to recovering a stolen mask from a thief’s hideout in Ikana Canyon — that rewards Link with the Couple’s Mask.²⁵ The quest requires Link to possess Epona, the Hookshot, and the Garo’s Mask before he can even reach Ikana Canyon.²

Development and influences

The game was made under severe time pressure, its team given roughly one year to produce a sequel after then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi cited the strong sales of Ocarina of Time.²⁰ According to character designer Takaya Imamura?, the earliest prototypes closely resembled Ocarina of Time, prompting him to argue that the game’s overall atmosphere needed to change so that it would not feel too similar to its predecessor.²⁰ Director Yoshiaki Koizumi? then conceived the premise of a moon set to crash within three days, a starting point that Imamura said naturally pushed various elements of the game in a darker direction.²⁰

Imamura designed several of the game’s most distinctive elements, including the moon, the merchant Tingle?, and Majora’s Mask itself.²⁰ The Japanese name of the mask, Mujura, is described as a pun combining Imamura’s own name with that of the film Jumanji.²⁰ His artwork for the game is marked by high-contrast black shadows, a personal stylistic choice he attributed to a desire to move away from the luminous, colorful atmosphere of his work on Star Fox and F-Zero, and which he related to his interest in foreign comics, citing Todd McFarlane’s Spawn.²⁰ Other artists on the team, such as Yusuke Nakano, produced finished takes on Imamura’s designs, including the Skull Kid?.²⁰

The mask motif that gives the game both its title and its central mechanic has been the subject of considerable fan analysis of its possible real-world antecedents.²¹ Enthusiast writers have traced the appearance of Majora’s Mask, the stray fairies, and boss designs such as those worn by Odolwa and the Giant’s Mask to Maori and broader Polynesian art, noting resemblances to carved tiki masks, tattoo traditions, and decorative sculpture from New Zealand and Hawaii.²¹ Under this reading, Odolwa’s dance and war chants echo masks used in tribal performances, while the Fierce Deity Mask’s facial tattoos are linked to Maori fighting traditions.²¹

Nintendo’s own artists have offered a more direct account of the concept’s origin, tying it to the game’s compressed development rather than to any single cultural source.²⁰ Character designer Takaya Imamura?, who designed the Majora’s Mask object itself, has said the darker, mask-centered direction followed from the decision to distinguish the sequel from Ocarina of Time once director Yoshiaki Koizumi? proposed the falling-moon premise.²⁰ The Japanese name of the mask, Mujura, is a pun combining Imamura’s own name with that of the film Jumanji.²⁰

Tingle originated from Koizumi’s request for a map-selling character who would be easily visible to the player.²⁰ Imamura made the character fly by means of balloons so that he could be seen from a distance, and gave him a red nose and a full-body tight suit, an outfit influenced by the costumes worn by Japanese comedians for comic effect.²⁰ The character’s greedy disposition was contributed by scenario writer Mitsuhiro Takano.²⁰

Reception, re-releases, and legacy

Majora’s Mask has retained a cult following among core fans, who greeted the announcement of its 3DS remaster with notable enthusiasm, arguably exceeding their reaction to the HD upgrade of The Wind Waker or the re-release of Ocarina of Time.³⁷ The game has seen several re-releases: it was included on the GameCube’s The Legend of Zelda: Collector’s Edition?, saw Virtual Console releases on the Wii and Wii U, was remastered for the Nintendo 3DS in 2015 as a glasses-free 3D version that smoothed some of its rough edges, and later became available through the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack N64 library.¹⁰ The GameCube disc supported the 60Hz mode but suffered sound glitches and occasional freezing, while the Wii U Virtual Console release ran at a slower 50Hz in PAL regions.¹⁰ Nintendo Life rated the N64 original 8.9 as of its 2016 review.¹⁰

Nintendo Switch Online Nintendo 64 - Official The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask TrailerGameTrailers

Critics have positioned the game as a deliberate departure from the series template — described as the entry that strays furthest from Zelda conventions while retaining familiar tools such as the boomerang, bow, and hookshot.⁹ Its surreal art style — geometric patterns, distorting cutscenes, and unusual colors — combined with the N64’s primitive polygonal rendering, gave it an unsettling look that inspired one of gaming’s best-known creepypasta ghost stories.⁹ Reviewers have judged it one of the later and better-looking N64 titles, with a varied set of locations and effects such as rain, flickering flames, and a day-night cycle.¹⁰ Commentators have also noted its influence on the later prevalence of time-loop games, a subgenre now common where Majora’s Mask was once singular.¹⁰ The story has been adapted into manga by Akira Himekawa?.¹⁹