Majora‘s Mask at 25: the reccurring influence of Nintendo’s ‘weird Zelda game’

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again. Just don’t look up…

Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (2000) is built on a time-loop. Narratively a sequel to Ocarina of Time (1998), Nintendo took a sidestep here in both theme and mechanics. The result was an experimental experience, often referred to as ‘the weird Zelda game’.

Majora’s Mask finds our hero, Link, navigating a strange new world. Turned into a plant-like Deku Scrub by the mischievous Skull Kid, Link emerges in Termina, an alternate version of Hyrule with a frightening moon hanging overhead. There he meets the Happy Mask Salesman, who promises to lift the curse if Link retrieves his stolen mask – Majora’s Mask, an item of great power. The catch? The Salesman must leave in three days’ time. The time when the moon will crash into Termina, destroying the world. Those 72 in-game hours last approximately one hour in real time, and the more time passes the closer the moon creeps. Time is running out.

On the evening of the final day, Link confronts Skull Kid atop the Clock Town clocktower, recovering the Ocarina of Time but failing to retrieve the mask. As the moon crashes down Link plays the Song of Time, returning to the Dawn of the First Day. And the loop begins again, the player starts over. 

Majora’s Mask introduces an almost rogue-like mechanic to the series with repetition and learning, while the ‘reboot and restart’ aspect plays with the concept of video games in general. The in-game clock was not new when Majora’s Mask released, but the way the game uses the time loop was, in many ways, groundbreaking. As players traverse the landscape of Termina they come to learn the schedules of the non-player characters, where they are and what they’re doing at certain times. Doing so allows Link to carry out side quests, all of which play out on their own timeline. Perhaps the most iconic of these is the bittersweet mission to save the engagement of Anju and Kafei, who reunite just in time for the moon to crash down upon them.

While Ocarina played more explicitly with the idea of growing up, with Link travelling between childhood and adulthood, Majora’s Mask feels thematically more adult. Link’s physical transformation here is not through time but through masks, which allow him to take on the appearance and abilities of the Deku and some of the franchise’s other races – the Goron, the Zora – all of which are vital to traversing the relevant landscapes.

The idea of masks as transformative is a concept which appears across cultures, and here takes on a literal meaning. The transformation cutscenes are accompanied by horrific screams and visual contortions, the suggestion of what is happening to Link’s body portrayed through unnatural camera angles and rapid cuts. These sequences drive home the body-horror aspect of Majora’s Mask – the idea that being physically transformed really hurts – and would perhaps feel more at home in a horror game. These moments exacerbate the fear and dread which creep into the player’s mind as the countdown ticks, reflected in the Happy Mask Salesman’s line upon meeting the transformed Link, “You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?”

Majora’s Mask released two years after Run Lola Run (1998), an experimental film which plays out in a time-loop as Lola traverses Berlin to save her boyfriend, Mani. After her first attempt ends with Lola’s death, the scene resets. She awakens 20 minutes earlier and has another chance. This time, Mani dies. Again, she resets. Attempt number three is an apparent success, and the film ends with Lola and Mani reunited.

There have been conflicting reports regarding whether Run Lola Run was an influence on Majora’s Mask. According to an interview with designer Eiji Aonuma, director Yoshiaki Koizumi’s pitch for Majora was, “What if we made something like [Run Lola Run] into a game?” Shigeru Miyamoto said that he saw a trailer for Run Lola Run while Majora’s Mask was already in development and was struck by the similarities between the game and the film, thinking: “Oh, this is crazy!”

It’s a notable parallel given how closely the two projects released and how experimental they were within their medium. Nowadays the barriers between video games and cinema are becoming increasingly blurred. Games now lean further into cinematic elements, exemplified by The Last of Us (2013), now a popular television series, and other narrative-focused games like Heavy Rain (2010). And the reboot and restart narrative model has become its own genre since Run Lola Run, seen in films such as Edge of Tomorrow (2014) and Happy Death Day (2017).

Real-time countdowns have become more commonplace in games since the release of Majora’s Mask, from Nintendo’s island-simulator series Animal Crossing to 2019’s Outer Wilds. The latter draws heavily from Majora, the gameplay looping on a 22-minute cycle, which counts down to a star exploding and wiping out a planetary system. Like Majora, Outer Wilds tasks the player to use the time loops to understand why the star is exploding and attempt to divert disaster. 

Returnal (2021), a psychological horror featuring a player character trapped in a time loop who must continuously die and resurrect to progress across a hostile planet, won more awards than any other at the 2022 BAFTAs. There is still substantial audience appetite for this form of gameplay.

Twenty-five years later it seems we, like Link, cannot escape the legacy of Majora’s Mask. The game celebrated its 15-year anniversary with a 3DS remaster in 2015, with the original still available via Nintendo Switch Online’s Expansion Pack. Perhaps there is a sense of comfort in returning to the games that – for many of us – defined our childhoods and adolescence, in the idea of returning to the beginning again, carrying with us all we have learned on the journey thus far.