The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

aka: The Legend of Zelda: Mask of Majora, Zelda Gaiden, Zelda no Densetsu: Mujura no Kamen, Zelda: Majora's Mask
Moby ID: 3550
Nintendo 64 Specs
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Description official descriptions

After having fulfilled Princess Zelda's request and saved the land of Hyrule from grave danger, Link departs on his horse Epona. In the Lost Woods he is ambushed by Skull Kid, an imp who dons a mysterious mask, accompanied by the fairies Tael and Tatl. Skull Kid turns Link into a small plant-like creature known as Deku Scrub and takes away his horse and his magical ocarina. Shortly afterward Tatl joins Link and agrees to help him revert to his native form. A meeting with a wandering mask salesman reveals that the Skull Kid is wearing Majora's Mask, an ancient item used in hexing rituals, which calls forth a menacing moon hovering over the land of Termina. Link has exactly three days to find a way to prevent this from happening.

Majora's Mask is a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time. It utilizes the same engine and visual style, and virtually identical interface. The game retains the traditional elements of Zelda games (dungeon exploration, sword fighting, bows, bombs, heart containers, etc.) as well as those introduced in its immediate predecessor, such as active blocking with a shield, various throwing items, and the usage of melodies played on the ocarina to solve puzzles. Compared to the previous Zelda games, this installment is more oriented towards interaction with NPCs and has a larger variety of items, optional quests, and mini-games.

Also unique to this entry is its time system. The game has an internal clock, with one hour roughly corresponding to one real-life minute. If the player hasn't completed all the objectives within three in-game days, the moon falls on Termina, annihilating everyone and ending the game. However, the player can return to the first day at any time by playing a song on the ocarina, saving all quest-related progress and inventory but losing other items such as ammunition or money (unless stored in a bank). It is also possible to learn melodies that slow the time passage significantly or advance the clock instantly to the next day. Some events happen only at specific times, and many characters follow their own schedules throughout the three days. Owl statues scattered across the land provide quick-save points and serve as teleporters between areas when discovered.

Collection and usage of masks play an important role in the game. Most of the twenty-four masks that can be found in the game are optional, and usually serve to solve side quests or enhance Link's abilities, allowing him, for example, to run faster or to become invisible. Transformation masks can be used to turn Link into a Deku Scrub, a Goron, or a Zora. Each of these forms has access to unique abilities, many of which are essential to the completion of the game. Among other skills, Deku Link can shoot bubbles from his mouth and float between flowers; Goron Link can operate heavy switches and walk through lava without taking damage, and weigh down heavy switches; Zora Link can swim fast and generate force fields.

Spellings

  • ゼルダの伝説 ムジュラの仮面 - Japanese spelling

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Credits (Nintendo 64 version)

106 People (100 developers, 6 thanks) · View all

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Cinema Scene Director
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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 93% (based on 57 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 152 ratings with 6 reviews)

An innovative "Zelda" game

The Good
Although I never finished the game, I thought that the three day clock was one of the most innovative features of this or any game. It was fun trying to help the characters; I spent most of my time helping people. From what I saw of the dungeons, I thought they were challenging but not too difficult. There were many new enemies. The fighting system remained the same as "Ocarina of Time" which is a good thing.

The Bad
Although some call it "darker", I didn't think it was. The minor characters would say the same thing after you returned to the first day. I hate that I never finished the game.

The Bottom Line
I could't describe the whole game to you since I never completed the game. However, of what I played, I thought it looked a lot like "Ocarina of Time" with a different story.

Nintendo 64 · by gamewarrior (5040) · 2004

The pinnacle of pure gaming immersion

The Good
I could start this off any one of a million ways, but I think I'll just get straight to the point and say that this is, in my opinion, not only the greatest Zelda game I have ever played, but the best game Nintendo has ever released, period.

Ocarina of Time was admittedly a tough act to follow, and while it still ranks very high on my list, Majora's Mask just outshines it in nearly every way. I could make countless comparisons as to why it's better than OoT, but instead I think I'll just say what Majora's Mask does right, regardless of how it compares to OoT.

The story is one of the game's strongest points, especially given that it is a Zelda game, and almost every game in the franchise up to this point has had a very similar, predictable, cliche story. Instead of the tired "defeat the evil king/lord/wizard and restore peace to the world" story arc that has plagued past iterations of the series (save Link's Awakening), in Majora's Mask you must save the land of Termina from being crushed by the moon. The catch is, you only have three days before the moon lands...luckily, you have the power to go back in time to the first day over and over as many times as it takes to save the world. This alone sets the game apart from any other in the series, but even this isn't the game's strongest point.

The single best part about this game is that it is a lush, living, breathing world. From the bustling Clock Town to the rustic Ikana Canyon and everything in between, the land of Termina is probably the most tangible world I have ever come across in gaming. Every single NPC in the game has their own schedule, and they follow it to a tee every single time you return to the first day. Every NPC has personality, everyone reacts differently to their impending doom. The swordsman in Clock Town, for example, puts on a brave face until the last minutes before the moon hits, when he is reduced to a frightened, cowering mess. The head carpenter in town, on the other hand, refuses to accept that the moon will actually fall, even when it's two minutes from hitting the ground. These are very real people, by far the most believable, sympathetic characters I've ever met in a video game. They make Termina so rich and full of life - some you only meet in passing, others you get to really know and care about. No game does a better job of making you actually feel something for the people you are trying to save. As you go along, you want to help these people, not because you'll get anything out of it, not even because you'll get satisfaction from beating the game, but because you really, truly don't want them to die. It's something I have yet to come across in any other video game.

As for the mechanics of the game itself, this is where you're going to hear a lot of different opinions. The game has a save system unlike any other Zelda game - in order to save your game, you must return to the first day and essentially "reset" everything. This means you lose all your items (i.e. you start off with zero Deku sticks, arrows, bombs, etc.) and Rupees (thankfully you can store these in a bank, which DOESN'T get reset). In addition to this, the temples are reset as well - fortunately, if you beat the boss once you can return to the temple and warp straight to the boss room and beat him again without having to go through the entire dungeon all over again. It's an odd system and it's likely to frustrate many, but once you get used to it it's really not all that bad. You're never really pressed for time, and either way there is a song that allows you to slow down time to half its speed. This effectively gives you almost three hours in real-time before you absolutely MUST reset the clock, and that should be more than enough time to finish any temple. I personally never found it to be an issue.

The other major addition to this game is the use of masks. This game focuses HEAVILY on collecting masks. There are four transformation masks that turn you into another creature - for example, one mask you find turns you into a Zora, and as a Zora you get new abilities like swimming underwater and using your fins as boomerangs. Each transformation has its place in the game and as you go through it you'll find yourself switching forms quite often to solve puzzles or reach new areas. It's an innovative concept that works really well as a gameplay mechanic and makes the game much more fun. These masks also have many practical uses, such as using the Goron mask to roll around Termina field and get places much quicker than you would on foot.

Besides the transformation masks, you'll also find yourself collecting a lot of other masks that have their own uses. For example, the Bunny Hood lets you run faster and the Stone Mask makes you invisible to certain enemies.

This kind of leads to my next point, which is that in order to get these masks, you have to do a lot of sidequests. This game is made up primarily of sidequests and minigames. The bulk of your time will not be spent solving puzzles and fighting enemies in dungeons like in past Zelda games, but instead you'll find yourself helping the citizens of Termina, usually in return for masks or, occasionally, Pieces of Heart. This is usually a lot more fun than it may sound, and there's tons of variety in what you have to do to get these rewards. One or two (maybe more) of the quests even span the entire three-day cycle, where you have to do certain things at specific times during a specific day. A lot of the quests can only be received and/or completed at certain times of day depending on people's schedules, and keeping up with this is made much easier by a notebook you get that will keep track of every important character's schedule, so you know where to find them or what to do.

Graphically, this game is absolutely outstanding. This is the best example of what the N64 was capable of, and to this day it stands as one of the richest visual experiences I've ever experienced in any game, next-gen or not. It rains occasionally, it turns from night to day (obviously), it snows in Snowhead and it's a visual feast at Great Bay. Even though today most people probably wouldn't think much of the graphics, I personally love how well they go with the theme and direction of the game itself. It all blends together so well. Most games today can't match up with this game's graphical/gameplay harmony.

Sound is also top-notch. Familiar tunes along with some new ones abound in the game, and what makes this aspect of the game so fantastic is the subtle ways the music changes as time advances. On the first day, the music is slow, laid-back, and calm - peaceful, almost. But on the third day, the pace has increased noticeably, and there's a twinge in the music, as if whoever's playing it is doing so so fast he's occasionally making mistakes. It's almost creepy, and there's a definite sense of urgency in the air by this point. In the last five minutes of the game, no matter where you are, there's a forlorn, hopeless tune that floats in the background, and you feel the weight of the moon crushing down on you. It's one of the game's most important aspects, and the music honestly contributes a huge amount to the atmosphere this game evokes. It's spectacular.

The Bad
Finding bad things to say about this game is difficult. Probably the worst thing about it is that a lot of the game comes down to taste. You'll either love it or not care for it at all. The game depends heavily on whether or not you enjoy dungeon-crawling more, or if you enjoy sidequests/minigames more. The bulk of the game is spent outside of temples (there are only four of them in the entire game), and if you think this will be a problem...well, the game may disappoint you.

The temples themselves are also not the high points of the game. Most of them are well-designed, but the puzzles tend to be frustrating, obscure, or just forgettable. I always hated actually doing the temples, because I knew that all the fun was in the rest of Termina. Replaying the bosses can also get to be on the annoying side, though it was an unavoidable consequence of the time system Nintendo decided to integrate into the game.

The time system itself is also a matter of taste. I personally like it because it makes for a really interesting and unique story, and I'm willing to make a small sacrifice for the sake of an awesome story. It does have some downsides though, and you'll find yourself doing the same things over and over so you can get Pieces of Heart or masks.

The Bottom Line
If you're someone who cares less about story and more about actual gameplay, this may not be the game for you. The gameplay isn't bad as a whole, not at all, but there are some aspects about it which will frustrate the less patient gamers to the point where they may just put the game down. If you find yourself fitting that description, all I can say is beware.

For the rest of you, you will find that this game constantly rewards you with its beauty and personality. The NPCs become a part of your life, they're not just a part of the game. You'll want to save them. You'll care about them. You'll love some of them, hate others. But you'll always enjoy the interaction, and watching them live their lives as they go about their schedules. This is a game that's so easy to get lost in, a world that you'll honestly miss during your gaming down-times. This is gaming at its most personal, and if you love gaming at all, you will walk away from this game with different expectations than from when you first fired it up.

And how many games can truly boast that?

Nintendo 64 · by CrackTheSky (30) · 2007

Not quite as fluent or progressive as Ocarina of Time but still enjoyable.

The Good
Majora’s Mask is the follow up to the immensely successful Ocarina of Time and it does a pretty good job picking up where the original left off. In this rendition of the Legend of Zelda our hero Link is riding Epona through the woods when his Ocarina is stolen by a mysterious masked Skullkid. Link is transformed into a deku scrub and from that moment he embarks on a quest to thwart the destruction of Clock Town and stop the insidious Skullkid from doing whatever is he is aiming to do while possessed by the mask he is wearing.

The flow of the game is very different to Ocarina of Time. You’re kind of expected to know what to do at all times, bar the helpful introductory tutorial when you begin the game. There is a three day clock and the way time flows affects the game in many different ways. People’s schedules adhere to the clock, things might appear at certain times and places might only be accessible on certain days. You need to memorize all of these things and work out the patterns to finish side quests are further the primary one. After three days have been exhausted Clock Town is destroyed, however you can rewind time whenever you want to the beginning of the first day and it isn’t as game breaking as you would first assume. It’s very easy to pick up where you left off, bar some particular occasions that I will get to soon. The two quest elements; primary and side quest, kind of bleed into each other occasionally and it’s very easy to lose yourself in the sidequests. On the whole, they’re pretty well designed and quite engrossing. Lots of little stories are playing out in Termina and you’re only a very small part of the grand design, even if you are the protagonist.

In addition to the regular Zelda style questing (solving problems thusly opening a dungeon, identifying the next problem and so on...) there are neat gameplay mechanics that have been introduced to differentiate Majora’s Mask from Ocarina. To begin with the emphasis in MM is on mask collecting. Each mask does something different, imbuing Link with a myriad of different special powers. There are also four transformation masks that turn Link into a Goron, Deku scrub or Zora guitarist. There is also another transformation mask that does something very, very cool. But I won’t tell you what it is. Each form has a set of distinct strengths and weaknesses and even when you’ve moved on from the area that requires the mask you’ll have to keep putting it on to solve other problems as they arise. It’s brilliant and keeps the game really refreshing.

The core gameplay dynamics beyond the mask collection and time system are essentially the same. Majora’s Mask is very samey, with many things recycled from the first game. It’s not essentially a bad thing. Ocarina of Time played like a dream and Majora’s Mask feels a lot smoother thanks to the RAM expansion and refined control scheme. Link feels lighter on his feet and performs some (entirely cosmetic) cool flips when he jumps now.

The good graphical elements of Ocarina of Time have been improved with slightly increased texture resolution (it is noticeable, especially in areas like the spring time Mountain Village and Great Bay), slightly improved polygon counts and a slightly increased level of graphical tricks like motion blur and lens flare. You can tell Majora’s Mask looks better than Ocarina of Time, but it takes a little while to notice the improvements. Probably the most telling improvement in the game is the sheer scale of things. The extra RAM is put to good use to render huge caverns, mountains and expansive bays with very minimal pop-up. It’s very, very impressive. The two most impressive looking parts of the games though have to be the rotating dungeon in Ikana Canyon and the beautiful Moon area. The moon is stunning and rendered beautifully.

The Bad
Majora’s Mask is a good game. However, it has its fair share of foibles.

To begin with, A LOT of elements from Ocarina of Time have been recycled here. Not just sound and textures, basically every single (minor) character model from Ocarina of Time has been magically teleported to Clock Town and given a new vocation. It’s all well and good having nice little references to a prior game but recycling nearly every single supporting player so you don’t have to render new ones is a little lazy.
It doesn’t matter what mythology they want to spin to make this move seem less lazy, but from a game design perspective it’s just weak. There are maybe six new characters in Clock Town.

On the topic of recycling Nintendo picked some of the worst moments of Ocarina of Time to put back into Majora’s Mask. The sneaking sections from Gerudo Fortress and Hyrule Castle are in there, as is the “go the wrong way and it’s back to the start” exploration section from the desert. There’s even the Lost Woods with monkeys. Nearly every single enemy from Ocarina of Time is present in Majora’s Mask to the point that it’s actually a surprise to see something new. I mean, to make pirates do you think they rendered people that looked vaguely like pirates?. No, they took the fortress guard character models from Ocarina of Time and called them pirates.

In terms of resources used in the game for every new element there is something that has been recycled and repurposed for use in a different environment. The level of recycling is just silly.

Most of the time Majora’s Mask plays quite well, however I’ve been left scratching my head on several occasions in terms of not knowing what the hell I was supposed to be doing. One particularly frustrating occasion left me having to repeat the same course of action 3 times before I finally figured out I had gone about the entire quest line wrong and I had to go looking for something new. This wasn’t a case of me being ignorant, it was just purposefully vague. It was making me rely on trial and error to progress through the game. In any other Action/Adventure/RPG this wouldn’t have been a problem but because of the way the time system works where everything resets after 3 days it meant I had to constantly repeat the same actions over and over again until I got the sequence right. By that point, tedium and frustration had well and truly set in and I had begun to get sick of the game. Perseverance won the day and I continued, however it should never have gotten to that point. I just don’t appreciate trial and error gameplay. In it, you have to do everything slowly and methodically. In Ocarina of Time each event kind of flowed into the others very elegantly, while there is this constant jarring jump from sequence to sequence in Majora’s Mask as you rigidly adhere to the vague trading sequences.

Also, Goron racing sucks.

The Bottom Line
Majora’s Mask plays well most of the time. It’s a fairly smooth ride with a really interesting time based quest that requires a lot of thinking to progress through in a timely (see what I did there?) manner. The myriad of little story lines at play are really engrossing and the multitude of side quests are real time sinks. The game plays like a really refined Ocarina of Time and design of dungeons and bosses is beyond reproach. I absolutely adore the mask transformation mechanic and collecting all of the other masks is really addictive. In general, Termina is beautiful and rendered very competently. Each compass direction holds its own distinct beauty and mystery with detail crammed into every corner.

It’s just a shame Nintendo spent so much time working out how the time system would work that they forgot to include more new things in the game. Nearly every single NPC model from Ocarina of Time has been repurposed for Majora’s Mask. Nearly every enemy from the original is present in the game, every piece of incidental music, every texture, every item model (bar some noticeable exceptions). Why does Termina have dodongo’s? Why are the pirates dressed identically to the Gerudo Fortress guards from Ocarina of Time?. Even gameplay elements from Ocarina of Time got recycled for use in Majora’s Mask. The game also loses its way now and then, forcing you to constantly refresh the time line to get a simple item collection sequence completed.

With all of my criticism, it makes it seem like a I didn’t like playing Majora’s Mask. That couldn’t be further from the truth. If that was the case, why did I keep turning my Nintendo 64 back on?. As much as I might have liked it to be perfect, this is not a perfect game.

As a sequel to Ocarina of Time though, it doesn’t feel like a sequel. It feels like an extension of the game. It’s just way too samey. Is that a bad thing? Not neccessarily, because you know you’re going to have a good time. That is what is important when playing a game; to have a good time, and that is what you get with Majora’s Mask.

Nintendo 64 · by AkibaTechno (238) · 2011

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Genre Correction Mark Picard (1) Jul 8, 2013

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The N64 version of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Development

As with Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask was meant to be released for the 64DD add-on, but eventually got crammed into cartridge format. Producer Shigeru Miyamoto originally wanted to re-purpose Ocarina of Time's dungeons into a new game and only gave director Eiji Aonuma a year to create the game. When Aonuma requested that he create a brand new game in the series instead, Miyamoto agreed, so long as the one year deadline remained, creating a rushed development cycle.

Ganondorf

Both this game and The Minish Cap are the only Zelda games in which Ganon/Ganondorf doesn't appear, not counting Link's Awakening in which the shape-shifting final boss assumes his form briefly.

Music

The song Ballad of the Wind Fish previously appeared in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.

References

Several persons, items and music from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time return in this game, in either the same or a different role.

References to the game

In the MTV animated series Undergrads, the game's black countdown screen (which greets you at the beginning of each dawn, provided you're not in a dungeon) was parodied with the words "72 HOURS UNTIL THE END OF FRESHMEN YEAR" in the season finale.

Tingle

This game marks the first appearance of Tingle, the strange man who thinks he is a fairy.

Awards

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
    • February 2006 (Issue #200) - #155 out of 200 of the "Greatest Games of Their Time"
  • Game Informer
    • August 2001 (Issue #100) - #68 in the Top 100 Games of All Time poll

Information also contributed by Big John WV, gamewarrior, Mark Ennis, Tiago Jacques and Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kartanym.

Wii added by Robond. Wii U added by Michael Cassidy. Nintendo Switch added by Rik Hideto.

Additional contributors: PCGamer77, Exodia85, Sciere, gamewarrior, formercontrib, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack, Deleted.

Game added April 3, 2001. Last modified March 23, 2024.