#n64 oot is SO SLOW. 3ds oot is absolutely the same ass game as the n64 but its exponentially better

[ra-vio]

thought of drawing this when I was fishing a couple of weeks ago

[fibrielsolaer]

Majora’s Mask (N64)

Hello people of Tumblr! Let’s talk about the most divisive Zelda game.

James Rolfe semi-reviewed Majora’s Mask as part of Angry Video Game Nerd, tying the game’s themes into both a Twilight Zone reference (as per masks) and the New Year ball drop (as per moonfall):

I DIDN’T LIKE WUT HE SAID HARUMPH. >:o[

The Nerd is, of course, a fictional character that James has to put on an act for, and I’ve found that this act is much more obvious and stiff than usual. The Nerd normally tries to balance criticism with praise, but the transition in this one comes across as especially jarring and abrupt.

(OOTA = Ocarina of Time Also = James / The Nerd complains about something that applies to OoT also, or doesn’t notice / appreciate something that he ought to as an OoT veteran)

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Graphics

For some strange reason, The Nerd begins by complaining about the graphics - possibly a reference to the Game Grumps playthrough of Majora’s Mask. Arin Hanson did not wait 5 seconds before blurting out “THIS GAME LOOKS LIKE SHIT“ in a tone that made it obvious he was simply trying to stir drama.

OOTA: Despite pointing out that Majora’s Mask reuses the engine and some other assets, James / the Nerd doesn’t include or compare to OoT while criticizing the derived graphics of Majora’s Mask.

Of course, Majora’s Mask is designed to take advantage of the N64′s surreal, creepy graphics and create a disturbing, uncanny world. I would say that “bad graphics” tend to work in the favor of such games, if handled properly. Just look at Puppet Combo.

One must keep in mind, and James would absolutely be familiar with this, that older games up to around the GameCube era were still played on CRT televisions. The color choices and jagged edges of the N64 were less obvious due to the color balancing and blurriness of these old TVs. As such, today’s better monitors actually make these particular games look worse.

While the console overall has definitely not aged well visually, Majora’s Mask is one of the most graphically intensive games on the N64. If I recall correctly, the scene where the Woodfall Temple rises from the swamp is the most graphically demanding scene in any N64 game.

The Nerd asserts that, in contrast to early 3D, certain 2D styles such as Link to the Past still look good by today’s standards. This is never going to be an objective statement - not only because of the strong bias most people have in favor of or against particular graphical media, but also due to the high emotional investment longtime Zelda players have in both LttP and OoT, which tend to jockey for the title of Best Zelda. (Link’s Awakening is usually a close third place.)

I personally find LttP’s color palette appealing, but many sprites are incoherent or anatomically malformed, and its Escher-esque viewing angle with every wall slanting away from you is absurd. This is underscored in A Link Between Worlds, which is in full 3D but copies the viewing angle by hilariously tilting everything.

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Cosmic Checkpoints

The central criticism of Majora’s Mask, which the Nerd for some strange reason prioritizes after the graphics, has always been an example of Time Limit Syndrome.

Time Limit Syndrome is the phenomenon where perceiving a time limit will make many players freak out and possibly make them quit playing the game permanently. This is true even if the time limit turns out to do absolutely nothing when it expires. After all, they don’t know that ahead of time.

I usually hear complaints about Majora’s Mask’s time system from people who quit within 5 minutes due to Time Limit Syndrome... but James / The Nerd has beaten the final boss and really ought to know better.

As James / The Nerd implies, Majora’s Mask does not expect you to beat the game within a single three-day cycle. Indeed, you are forced to “fail” the first cycle in order to teach you the underlying mechanic of resetting the clock and instill in you the idea that you do not have to “beat the time limit”.

Majora’s Mask runs on a cosmic checkpoint system.

At any millisecond you can simply play the Song of Time to return to the Dawn of the First Day and keep every “checkpoint” you’ve met up to that point; “checkpoints” are things like acquired items and learned Songs.

For instance, as soon as you have the Sonata of Awakening, you can enter the Woodfall Temple. You can and should smack the Owl Statue closest to that temple, then immediately reset to a new cycle and enter the temple fresh on the First Day, skipping the long-ass Metal Gear Solid segment you did to get that song.

The Nerd’s implication that you’re “losing progress” when you use the Song of Time thus makes no sense. It’s not any different than leaving a room in a dungeon and seeing that the puzzle in it has reset when you come back in. You don’t need to do that puzzle again if you already got the key item you get for completing it, thus you have not lost any progress. The proper term is replay value, since you have the option at any point of doing any part of the game over again, with any power-ups or self-prescribed inhibitions you like, without starting a new game. Why criticize Majora’s Mask for the #1 reason people love Super Mario World?

When you use the Song of Time to return to the Dawn of the First Day, you save the game. This is the only way to make a “permanent” save in the N64 version of the game (as compared to the 3DS remake); the other methods let you make a temporary save if you’re interrupted or have something else to do, which is deleted when you load it back up.

If you do let the timer run out by itself, then you get an amazingly horrific game over scene (as featured in the above video), and your current 3-day cycle is lost as you must reload the previous First Day save. The reason the N64 game will not let you override your permanent save mid-cycle is, undoubtedly, so that you do not somehow save a scenario where you will repeatedly game over without any chance to use the Song of Time (however unlikely that may be.) In addition, you can always count on your hard saves being at the start of everybody’s schedule, and you will not need to remember where in the middle of some convoluted three-day quest you were.

Personally, I would have made it so that the timer running out just forced the Song of Time effect. The only “good reason” I can think of to do otherwise is because Majora’s Mask is a very unsettling game and the anxiety of Time Limit Syndrome may actually be intentional as part of the mood... but I would prioritize consistent and intuitive gameplay over an inconsistent and unpredictable audience response.

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Time & Dungeons

Majora’s Mask does have a few frustrating consequences of its time system.

Minor annoyances include quests and rewards that only trigger at a very specific time (ghosts at night, The Other Link, etc.)

Moderate annoyances include quests that are not only that specific, but you have to trigger them first by doing something else specific at an earlier time, or intentionally fail another quest. (the Kafei & Anju quests that are not the Couple’s Mask quest)

Major annoyances include questlines that take place over all three days and which you have to completely restart if you mess up at any step and which sometimes have more than one ending (Couple’s Mask quest)

... but the dungeons semi-resetting is not a problem.

You should be smart and warp back as soon as you can access the dungeon, so that you can enter it at the very start of a new cycle. All you need is the Song that opens it and the Owl Statue closest to it (usually right in front of the dungeon entrance.)

Half of the dungeon is only there to block off the dungeon item. Once you get that, if you need to reset, you can skip half the dungeon next time because you’ve already got the dungeon item. You only need to get the Big Key and go fight the boss.

If you’ve ever challenged the boss, even if you had to quit the fight and reset, you can skip the entire dungeon and teleport right to the boss again on all subsequent cycles. (The boss will also call you out for holding its remains, if applicable.)

You only need to gather the fairies once per dungeon, since you keep all of the unlocked items across cycles.

It’s really quite forgiving except that it does not make it overt exactly where your checkpoints are. In fact, before James made this video and I looked it up, I didn’t know for the last 15+ years that merely challenging the boss let you skip the dungeon on subsequent cycles.

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But Why Tho

The entire 3-day nonsense is a necessity because of the illusion of life.

Similarly to Harvest Moon, major NPCs are scheduled to be in particular places at particular times of the three days. However, unlike Harvest Moon, this schedule is extremely specific for applicable characters. If you slow down time with the Inverted Song of Time, you will actually see these affected NPCs moving proportionately more slowly, because even their path from one place to another, and their exact departure and arrival times, are aligned to the time schedule. Doing certain things will also alter NPC schedules accordingly.

This, of course, helps deepen the characters and make them look more life-like in a game that is all about exploring them emotionally and learning about their fears, hardships, and heartbreaks. Link earns every single Mask in the game by healing somebody, even if he does not use the Song of Healing per se. If he gets every single last one, then he has the ultimate power of love and kindness that off-handedly obliterates the malice and hatred of Majora.

This level of detail would not be feasible, or at least not very intuitive, with a very long schedule, so the game takes place over the same three days repeated indefinitely.

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Comparisons

The Nerd compares Majora’s Mask to Breath of the Wild in other places in the video, but does not do so when it would not be favorable to the latter; specifically, his criticism of the Majora’s Mask banker and his/her talkiness applies ten times over to the Great Fairies in Breath of the Wild, who not only give their entire explanation of how they work every time you leave and return to them again, but also forcibly close the upgrade window when you run out of items you have materials for, without letting you look them over to see what you need to farm for.

You need to use the BotW Great Fairies all the time, but you only need to use the MM bank rarely. You can just deposit money into it once per cycle and ignore it otherwise, since you refill your ammo just by cutting bushes and never need to purchase any... unlike Breath of the Wild.

To deposit or withdraw all your Rupees at once, just enter 999 as the number. It will change it to however many you actually have. The reason you’ve given 5 Rupees in hand is (probably) because otherwise you might lose them when you had 995 or more Rupees in the bank, if indeed you can stand to grind Rupees for that long.

OOTA: The banker is the Termina counterpart of OoT’s beggar, and reuses the animation.

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Around this point, the “sequence breaking” in the editing becomes apparent. Like a videogamedunkey skit, random bits of the game are strewn into the video out of order.

This comes back to bite the review because the Nerd acts like he’s just gotten to a part of the game that has to be completed before what was shown earlier in the video (hence why I call it “sequence breaking”). This breaks the illusion of sincerity; the suspension of disbelief as to the video being scripted is lost and it starts to look a bit more doctored to color the perception of the game.

OOTA: The Nerd does not recognize obvious counterparts to or parodies of characters like the Organ Grinder / Guru Guru, and acts like he’s never encountered an N64 ReDead before.

OOTA: The swim sound is the same sound as in Ocarina of Time. Talk about fishing for complaints.

I disagree harshly with the statement that “all everybody talks about [in regards to Majora’s Mask] are the good things”. I’ve almost only ever heard people complain about the time system and how it’s “Not Really Zelda”.

The particular glitch shown - Zora Link rapidly colliding with the wall - must be intentionally invoked. That glitch occurs if you use the speed-swim against very specific spots of very specific walls... fittingly, any of the corners in the infamous whirlpool room work. All you have to do is let go of the buttons and it will stop. It’s kind of like sailing Mario under the log with a Green Shell in Lethal Lava Land, except Mario always dies (in the most hilarious way) when you do that and Link is only briefly inconvenienced (in the most hilarious way).

OOTA: Most of Majora’s Mask’s more common glitches are the same as in Ocarina of Time due to reusing the engine. Infinite Sword Glitch and Bombchu Hover are both still around, for instance.

The one glitch that is the most problematic is that sometimes, when you reset in the middle of a dungeon, the doors will lock but the Small Keys will not go back into their chests. You then have to keep resetting until it resets correctly, which should be the very next reset.

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Wart / Arrghus

Majora’s Mask may be the only Zelda game with two minibosses in every dungeon - one for the dungeon item, one for the Big Key.

That eyeball boss is Wart, the first of the two Great Bay Temple minibosses, who guards the Ice Arrows. It’s Arrghus from Link to the Past, who was always called ワート WART in Japanese. In the 3DS version, its name in several other languages is the same as Arrghus’s.

Wart is the most annoying enemy in the entire game. He’s a fucker and I hate him. The worst thing about Wart is that the only way to make his long-ass battle faster is to completely destroy your N64. You do this by shooting an arrow into his eye when it’s open, causing every single mini-eyeball to fall off of him, dropping your frame rate into the gutter. (It gets even worse when you start hitting them with the sword.)

You fight Wart again in the Secret Temple (which is basically a boss gauntlet.)

Fuck Wart.

And fuck the second Great Bay miniboss, the gecko in the blob.

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Bits and Bobs

Sometimes the game’s camera cuts (such as when night falls and the game pauses to announce it) interrupt the gameplay. I don’t remember whether the camera angle you had before the cut effects the camera angle after the cut.

While not strictly required, the Bunny Hood literally only makes you run much faster, and makes the skeleton captain sequence (and 90% of the game) much easier. Always use the Bunny Hood when you don’t need any other mask.

OOTA: You should always be tapping the Lens of Truth on and off to use way less magic. (Basically zero, if you tap it rapidly enough.)

The Goron Race is one of the most frustrating parts of the game, and you need to complete it by the 2nd Day or else you can’t get the Gilded Sword. To get the most amount of time possible to complete it:

Confront Ghot at least once

Save a lot of Rupees in the bank

Get the Powder Keg certification

Start a new cycle

Buy a Powder Keg

Use Fire Arrow to ready forge and turn in sword for Razor Sword

Defeat Ghot (necessary for races to start)

Use bought Powder Keg to blow up boulder (shoot it with an arrow to detonate it)

Complete race as soon as possible for Gold Dust

Get Razor Sword

Turn Razor Sword right back in

Get Gilded Sword

Nintendo has never had good control sticks; the N64 and the Joycon alike both have shitty sticks that experience drift or misalign after a few months of use. This is probably why James is unable to roll Goron Link straight forward, or stay on the pipes, despite the N64′s analog stick locking into an octagon to ensure the 8 main directions are easy to hit.

You have to hit the trees with the Hookhot, but the stupid turtle wobbles around, so the trees are hard to hit. I’m not sure how the game determines whether the Hookshot connected or not. Is it checked on fire? Is it checked on arrival? No idea.

The reason the Ice Arrows are not working is because James is shooting too close to the wall. The ice platform would then clip through it. The game could move the platform to be further from the wall but decides to just not form any platform at all. I remember being pretty pissed off with it myself.

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Video ending

The Nerd doesn’t have to do the entire dungeon over again, because he already has the Ice Arrows. He only has to get to and fight that stupid blob gecko again for the Big Key and then get back to the boss.

OOTA: Why would you walk into the giant exit light before you got the Heart Container. Hell, so far as I know, this is Every Zelda Game Also since all of them let you forget to pick up the Heart Container...

Majora’s a bastard. If you get every mask in the game and turn them all in to him, he will for some unfathomable reason give you the Fierce Deity Mask and let you completely whoop his ass with it. The Fierce Deity Mask makes the battle into an utter joke. In the N64 version you can only use it in boss rooms, unless you use a glitch. The 3DS version also lets you use it when fishing (which itself is not in the N64 version.)

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In summary

Majora’s Mask is definitely beloved more for its themes and characters than for its gameplay. It has some of the most beautiful music in all of Zelda, most notably the Song of Healing, and its advanced special effects and cinematography are top-tier by the standards of the N64. It is chock-full of bittersweet, heavy-hitting content and is a major source of inspiration for future "serious subject” indie games and creepypastas - not just BEN DROWNED and Spooky’s Jumpscare Mansion, but in general.

The gameplay is, for the most part, a weird Ocarina of Time mod. The mask forms play differently, and there are extra mechanics introduced by some songs such as the Elegy of Emptiness, but overall you solve puzzles and fight battles with the same “strategy” as in OoT.

MM has always been very divisive because of the time system, which the game does not adequately explain to most players, and which is particularly frustrating in regards to specific parts of the game such as the Gilded Sword or the Couple’s Mask quest. The Bomber’s Notebook helps keep track of some aspects (and is expanded in the 3DS version), but many players simply find the detailed scheduling and the sequence of events too much crap to keep track of and too many repeated chores in the event of failures and many resets, and do not develop a recognition - let alone appreciation - of when they have reached a checkpoint in the main game and can reset to a new cycle without losing anything, or how to gauge whether they have the time left to take on a new task whimsically rather than through planning.

When I first started playing I hated it, but over time I began to be okay with the structure around the time cycle, albeit a bit bored or frustrated when I had to repeat day 1+2 because I screwed up a quest on day 3.

There are so many cool moments in Majora’s Mask that, for me at least, it supercedes the frustrating parts of the quests that cover all 3 days, and some of the just plain annoying parts that are not strictly relevant to the time system.

How the dogs react to each form of Link

Any time you use the Song of Healing

Mummy-Dad and the Well

When you realize who the Skull Kid is

When you realize what happened to the Butler’s son

The full ending with 100% completion

I’ve often said that Earthbound is “a lousy game but a great experience”.

I suppose it’s not out of the park to say Majora’s Mask is in the same boat.