Figured this was worth a thread if anyone else loved this game. To me, this is the gold standard for sequels. I have a pretty long history with Ocarina of Time and for years this was its very mysterious, somewhat inpenetrable sibling. I played it when I was really young with my family, and it had the reputation of being “the harder Zelda.”
As a teenager I went back and played through it and it floored me. There’s no other game quite like this for me. The shared foundation with Ocarina of Time is part of the magic, but it’s how they built on it and did something so novel that makes it sing.
I have a lot of fond memories of exploring clock town, trying to somehow catch Kafei before he escaped into that door, playing the first three deku scrub days over and over.
It sounds like development was a nightmare. Everyone’s aware of the one-year dev time the game was granted. Somehow something really special came out of that. 15 years later when the game got a 3DS Remake (which I still really enjoy) a lot of the game’s rough edges were sanded off, but I agree with the opinion that they went a little too far (and seriously, what was the deal with the remake’s zora swimming)?
I play this game about every 2 years or so. I plan to do my next playthrough via Zelda64Recomp on PC.
Lastly, maybe of interest to @Ferg - MM’s Official Player’s Guide is by far the strategy guide I poured over the most as a kid. Even with its help I couldn’t progress far, so I’d just read it to see what happened. I remember imagining the fight with Majora’s Wrath based on the guide’s descriptions, and when I finally got to that last phase it was even cooler than I thought haha
To this day, i never finished it, but am always fascinated by it
I think i started this game a lot of times, and always end up getting very lost at some point in the middle. It’s so good at setting creepy and intriguing vibes
Hehehe you’d be right on me being interested. My MM experience was on GameCube bc of the Collector’s Edition that had Zelda 1, 2, OoT, and MM.
The guide I have from back then was the VersusBook strategy guide by Casey Loe. It’s my gold standard for the paperback strategy guide. It’s brief enough to be light but detailed enough to get you through the game. I’ve used it until the covers have about fallen off. It probably has about two more full playthroughs before I should retire it.
This is one of my favorite games of all time. It had a major impact on my life. My love of the Zelda series was deepened with that game and I’m sure that’s what made me a fan for life. That eventually lead me to the Zelda community and eventually my awesome wife!
For one reason or another it never dawned on me an n64 title came out in 2000, that’s wild to me. I never played the game, and at this point I almost am afraid to with the mysticism around it and the following it has gotten over time. I’d feel even worse to bounce off of a game so widely regarded as good, though I do still enjoy watching others play it and have fun with it ;;
Actually the last time I played MM was a Randomizer. My god, I thought I knew that game. With the randomizer I found so many chests I had no clue even existed.
My god, I thought I knew that game. With the randomizer I found so many chests I had no clue even existed.
Randomizers do that to people For me it was Prey ‘17, I tried and failed so many times at the ranomizer. Can’t take shots at it anymore easily since Prey’s is a windows exe, but I still adore a good randomizer run
Majora’s Mask is the first video game I ever bought on release day.
It’s also the first game I was on the Internet to read about. Both of the current major Zelda fan sites we still have today (Zelda Universe and Zelda Dungeon) were not quite around yet (2001 for both), but there was an absolute mess of other Zelda fan sites excited and speculating about the new game - usually called Zelda Gaiden and then later “the Mask of Mujula” before the official English name was revealed.
I replay it regularly; on average, every other year. It’s still a really special game.
There are some sections I really dislike (especially Zora Egg hunting), and I think all but the last dungeon (Stone Tower Temple) are just okay. But everyone knows the side quests are what makes the game special; the main quest takes a back seat.
I also think the 3DS remake is better than a lot of folks say. I dislike what they’ve done to the bosses (especially Gyorg and Twinmold), but Zora swimming never bothered me. The original version of Zora swimming is cool, but it has very few practical uses. Any time I needed to actually swim, it was annoying. I like that the 3DS version defaults to normal swimming instead of “dolphin swimming”.
i think i remember when they announced this album. didn’t they do it with a mysterious countdown to midnight on like dec 25th 2012 or something, and everyone thought it was either a majora’s mask remake or the end of the world haha
pain 
For me it was Prey ‘17, I tried and failed so many times at the ranomizer. Can’t take shots at it anymore easily since Prey’s is a windows exe, but I still adore a good randomizer run