Why The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is a bit of an apocalypse
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (2000)
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (2000)
So here’s your story prompt - you’re sat on the loo, taking care of business and picking your nose at the same time. Then it happens: a red alert warning pops up on your phone, positively screaming at you, informing you that an enormous meteor will impact Earth in three days’ time and the cataclysmic smash will engulf us all in a hellacious ball of fire.
It’s a good thing you were already sat on the throne, because this revelation has really got things moving for you down there. It’s no false alarm, either like they had in Hawaii a few years back either - this is a bona fide apocalypse you’ve got on your hands. What's your next step?
Me? I’d just stay right where I was. Why not? There’s nothing I can do about it, except die. So why not die with a bit of comfort? You’ve got three days to prepare. 72 hours, you can get around the world in that time. But you can’t prepare for a meteor to hit you. No, that’s the sort of thing that you need a few months to acquaint yourself with.
There's just so many things that need doing, when it comes down to it. The grass still needs cutting, for starters. And I've been putting off this haircut for quite a while. I've got a few major downloads ongoing. I never finished Final Fantasy 8. And when will I get time to complete that most vital pre-death task of all, clearing my internet search history?
Immediately after the red alert warning, you'd get people screaming and scrambling around, all in a panic. This is wrong. It arouses contempt in the meteor-heart. No, in my daily life I don't really have the time or energy to get stressed, so I just don't bother with that. I'm much more likely to treat impending doom with passive acceptance.
To wit, I would most probably greet certain death by standing with my legs apart, putting my head down between them, and kissing my butt goodbye. Although if I had a bit of time, I'd stand up on the roof of my house, strip off naked, wave an enormous Ireland flag, and blare Darude - Sandstorm through my phone.
This phone would then be held in place by my bumcheeks as I turned and welcomed the meteor with my mooning and erotic dance moves. Can you picture that? Good, I’m glad. That’s the thing about death, see - you have to embrace it. Dance, dance against the dying of the light.
At no time in Majora’s Mask did it ever look likely that Link would take such a cavalier approach. Like us doomed humans, Link’s got an apocalypse to deal with in this game. But this one’s got personality - this isn’t a generic asteroid he’s up against. It’s a very angry, iconic moon that's causing all the aggro. Not to mention a very bratty Skull Kid, being forcibly controlled to do evil by the malevolent Majora’s Mask in question.
You might remember Skull Kid from the indomitably popular Ocarina of Time. In fact, you might remember a huge chunk of the characters and assets from that game as well. Released less than two years after Ocarina, Majora’s Mask was considered a stiff challenge to the Zelda development team: get a new Zelda game out in 18 months, by whatever means possible.
Of course, a lot of recycling of assets had to happen to get anywhere near that target. Gamers who were around at the time will remember just how often Ocarina was delayed, after all. It must also be said that, by the turn of the millennium, the Nintendo 64 was nearly out of tricks - results had to be produced fast.
This all led to Majora’s Mask being a much more self-contained game: you start in Clock Town, located in the dead-centre of the mysterious alternate dimension world of Termina. The game’s four dungeons are located in the four cardinal directions, and you've got to evict the bosses of each of these dungeons in 3 days, or it's a fiery grave for all.
That's not 3 real-life days, mind you. We’re talking about a matter of 54 minutes, 18 minutes per day, which is a pretty tall order. No matter, you can always use your Ocarina to time travel back to the beginning of the 3 day cycle. But as you might expect, everything reverts.
You will lose all the bombs and arrows on hand - slightly annoying, but easily and quickly rectified. You will keep your grubby mitts on key items, songs, and your money if you remember to speak to your banker first. That’s all fine.
The real kicker is that travelling back to the start of the three-day cycle will erase all dungeon progress if you haven't beaten the boss. Not to mention that this is a game all about side-quests, being in the right place at the right time.
There’s no such thing as half-done in Majora’s Mask - it’s either done or it ain’t. I suppose the same rules apply for any impending apocalypse - there’s no point doing half the laundry, or building half a nuclear bunker. You’re either all in, or you suffer the consequences.
That was the crux of Majora's Mask when it released in 2000, a time when the Nintendo 64 was just about clinging onto the generation by its fingernails, fingernails which the PS1 was teasingly running its shiny Doc Martens over, ready to stamp down on the N64 for good.
That’s really going back a while, but the game has had a few re-releases since: a GameCube version, with the same graphics, worse sound for whatever reason, but unfortunate sudden freezes and crashes - very unfortunate, actually, considering you can’t just easily save and quit in this game. Many a gamer’s long work through a Majora’s Mask sidequest has been wiped by the treacherous GameCube edition suddenly deciding not to play ball.
If you’re looking for improved graphics though, the 3DS version might just be for you. Released in 2015 following the immense success of Ocarina of Time's 3DS port, Majora hit the 3DS as well, another portable Zelda adventure on two screens.
Let’s talk about items, another important thing for Zelda games to get right. And Majora’s Mask never did a great job here as such: with the severe reduction of dungeons, the item variety suffers as well: the items of the four dungeons are, in order, the Bow and Arrows, the Fire Arrows, the Ice Arrows and the Light Arrows.
Isn't that great? Predictable dungeon items, with very limited use for the latter two. A whole six Bottles instead of four (seven on the 3DS), which tends to be one or two more than necessary anyway. 3 spaces on your item screen are reserved for trading items which serve little purpose to Link beyond satisfying a character’s needs - until you go back in time and erase your kind gesture from history anyway.
But your item buttons won’t be left barren, as one of Majora’s Mask’s primary gameplay changes comes to the rescue: the masks. 24 in all, with all kinds of varying effects. 3 of them are major masks, constantly used in transformation throughout the game: the Deku Mask, the Goron Mask and the Zora Mask, allowing Link to transmorph into each of these three species.
Other masks allow Link to be rendered invisible, to speak to Gibdos, and best of all, to run faster. However some masks are just about worthless, used only for heart pieces, of which there are a whopping 52 - still a series record.
The graphics and framerate on the 3DS version are at least a lot better than the overambitious N64 original, and that was even with the (mandatory) Expansion Pak backing it.
The 3DS version also gives sidequest hints, and details of their starting points and your current progress are made more accessible. A big improvement from the original, where you could either use a walkthrough, stalk everyone at every minute of the day, or wisely say “to hell with that” and beat the game with 7 hearts and no optional extras instead.
As you might have gathered, there is quite a bit of emphasis on the build-up to dungeons in this game. This is the same angle they later tried in Skyward Sword, and it didn’t work well there either. It becomes the kind of stuff that simply obstructs the player from having fun. You can compound that frustration by a thousand if you get caught short with the time and you have to play the Song of Time once more, erasing all your progress.
I've said it before, and indeed it should go without saying, but a Zelda game lives and dies by its dungeons. Don't hit me with your Breath of the Wild retort either - at least that game let you keep your sticks and cooking pot lids, until they broke. With only four dungeons to its name, and the repetitive faff involved in getting to them, I find it hard to have fun with Majora’s Mask.
It’s a shame, and this game has gone on to become a sacred cow. It really does have a fantastic, foreboding atmosphere, often crossing over into the surreal. As a fun distracting game, though, I’m afraid Majora’s Mask was doomed from the first tick of the clock.
13 February 2026