Right, I should address the elephant in the room first — Majora’s Mask is divisive, and I understand why. The three-day cycle means that the game is constantly putting you under time pressure. You can’t just sit and explore without worrying that the game will run out. If you want to do everything, you either need multiple playthroughs or be very efficient about what you prioritise. The game makes very little effort to help you. In fact it actively fights against casual play.
And that’s why it’s brilliant, even if half the people who play it will hate it for precisely that reason.
I’m an IT manager, which means I appreciate systems which are clever even when they’re inconvenient. Let’s face it, Majora’s Mask is inconvenient. It’s also one of the most ambitious things Nintendo ever attempted and the fact that we’re still talking about it twenty years on shows that they were genuinely willing to risk failure.
What Does Majora’s Mask Actually Do?
You are Link and the mischievous Skull Kid has turned you into a Deku Scrub. He’s stolen your Ocarina. You literally have three days before the moon crashes into Termina and destroys everything. That’s not a metaphor. There is a moon armageddon with a face on it. If you don’t do something, the world ends. Every seventy-two hours (that’s effectively three in-game days) the cycle resets back to dawn on the first day. Everything you’ve done resets. Except you. You remember and keep what you’ve collected, learned and rescued.
This is completely cuckoo game design from the modern perspective. Players expect persistence. They expect that their actions matter with permanent effects. Majora’s Mask says “nope, the world resets, you deal with it.” Most people bounced off it instantly. Some people found it freeing.
The three transformation masks — Deku Mask making you tiny and capable of gliding, Goron Mask turning you into a heavy invincible rock creature, Zora Mask giving you swimming speed and electricity powers — utterly change how you solve problems. You’re not just Link who can do different things. You are three different creatures with utterly different movesets. The Deku Scrub can’t swim, but can glide. The Goron can smash through walls, but moves slowly. The Zora is fast in water, but vulnerable in air. Each transformation is an entirely different experience.
The four main dungeons are smaller than Ocarina’s, but are tightly designed for that reason. You’re not wandering for hours on end — you’re executing a set of tasks within a contained space. Woodfall Temple introduces players to Deku Scrub mechanics. Snowhead Temple requires Goron strength and patience. Great Bay Temple requires proficiency in Zora abilities. Ikana Canyon, not exactly a dungeon, requires all three transformation masks and a level of spatial comprehension that isn’t always present in Ocarina.
The Time Loop As Narrative Component
What’s a big deal to people about Majora’s Mask aside from its play styles is that it’s a different narrative than Ocarina. You’re racing against the clock, sure. But you’re also watching out for dozens of NPCs scheduled to appear at various points with various problems of their own, who will only appear at certain times. Anju the rancher is dealing with a thief who is stealing her chickens. The Potion Shop owner is mourning her husband. The Bomber kid needs some help retrieving his stolen deed. These aren’t side quests — they’re character stories that unfold within the three-day cycle.
You cannot save all of them. You cannot solve every side quest in a single cycle. You have to decide. Do you help the rancher deal with the thief, or do you help the Bomber kid, or do you pursue a main dungeon? Majora’s Mask forces prioritisation in ways that most games do not attempt, imbuing decisions with stakes — these characters aren’t disposable because you’re not going to be able to help them all.
The Elegy of Emptiness transformation sequence is still one of the most disturbing things Nintendo ever put in a video game. When you put on the Elegy mask an angry, wronged version of Link appears and it’s genuinely distressing. This is not entertainment — this is existential dread rendered in 16-bit form. They put this here on purpose to make you uncomfortable, and they succeed.
Why The Time Limit Isn’t Punishment
Yes, we all see the time limit as punishment, but functionally, it’s liberating. You’re never really going to lose progress because you’re just going to reset anyway, so be free. Experiment. Try a strategy that might not work and just reset and try something else. The time limit removes consequence from individual choices because everything is temporary anyway.
The Song of Time that lets you reset the cycle — you can play it whenever you want. You’re never forced to encounter a complete failure state. You can restart at any time. This is incredibly forgiving game design dressed up in punishing design. Most players are stressed by the time pressure, and can’t see that mechanically, Majora’s Mask is safety-first design.
What I appreciate from an IT perspective is how much of a technical solution the three-day cycle is. The N64 had cartridges and technical limitations. You can’t give unlimited exploration without hitting memory constraints. The three-day cycle means you’re reloading the same world over and over again, just with different NPCs in different locations. It’s a smart technical solution — it lets you have rich NPC schedules without blowing up cartridge size.
The Soundtrack That Matches The Dread
Koji Kondo wrote an unsettling score for this game. Majora’s Mask sounds more like the soundtrack to a horror film in a lot of ways than the comforting music of his other Zelda works. The Clock Town theme is almost too catchy and anxious at the same time. The final hours theme, when you’ve only got about six minutes left, is genuinely disturbing. You can’t relax to it. It keeps you just uncomfortable enough to fit the theme of the game.
The music of every transformation is unique. The Deku Scrub theme is whimsically eerie. The Goron’s Lullaby is a mournful tune for a long-dead giant. The Zora transformation theme is haunting. Skull Kid’s theme carries a sad melody beneath the rest of the noise. The music does not merely scaffold the experience — in some places it drives it.
Tatl, your fairy companion, is leagues better than Ocarina’s Navi. She has personality, agency, and actual character development. She starts as Skull Kid’s servant, then becomes your partner. It doesn’t feel like she’s just telling you what to do — it feels like she’s growing alongside you.
Does It Hold Up, Or Is It Just Weird?
To be blunt, playing Majora’s Mask now is both great and genuinely hard in a way that few modern games are. The time pressure is real. Keeping track of multiple ongoing objectives is demanding. You will lose out on side quests. You will have to choose between conflicting priorities. Some people find that liberating, and others find it a petulant burden.
The control scheme is fine — it’s Ocarina’s, and if you’re comfortable with Ocarina, you’re comfortable with this. The graphics reuse Ocarina’s assets, such that the world feels both familiar and strange in deliberate ways. The dungeons are smaller, but denser. The overworld is jam-packed with stories and characters.
Some parts of the design haven’t aged perfectly. The Bomber’s notebook is too clunky to navigate. You’re going to wish for a quest log. The Zora swimming mechanics take some getting used to. A couple of the tighter platforming sections are legitimately frustrating. But these feel like minor issues in a solid experience rather than fundamental design flaws.
Why It’s On This List When It’s So Divisive
Majora’s Mask is on this ranking because divisiveness is a sign of brave design. Games that everyone loves are usually playing it safe. Games that create real debate are usually trying something new. Majora’s Mask tried something genuinely new — a linear time loop in an adventure game, where reset mechanics are textually part of the game, where you can’t do everything in one playthrough, where the world keeps going regardless of what you do.
Some of that works brilliantly. Some of it is awkward. The fact that I can have serious arguments with people about whether Majora’s Mask is a masterpiece or an interesting failure is proof that Nintendo did not play it safe. And I think they nailed it.
The three-day cycle isn’t punishment — it’s a constraint that enforces creativity. The smaller dungeons aren’t lazy — they’re tightly designed. The NPCs with schedules aren’t busywork — they’re character stories limited to a narrow window of time. The transformation masks aren’t a gimmick — they’re completely distinct gameplay experiences.
The Verdict
Majora’s Mask is divisive, and it should be. It’s also brilliant, and it should be. The three-day cycle creates genuine stakes. The transformation masks give you entirely different movesets to master. The NPCs have actual arcs. The dungeons are tightly designed. The music is phenomenal. The whole game is unlike any other Zelda.
If you bounced off this game because of the time pressure, I get it. Come back to it when you’re ready for a game that plays weird and inconvenient. If you loved it you already know why — this is gaming as art made by people willing to be strange for the sake of expression.
But Majora’s Mask definitely belongs on every serious ranking of N64 games, even if reasonable people disagree about how high.
Rating: 9/10 — The Zelda game that proved Nintendo understands ambition
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John likes things a little weird even when it makes them annoying, which is probably why he still doesn’t have a real job, and still owns an Amiga. Born in Manchester, he writes about games the way a sysadmin approaches a helpdesk ticket — understanding that the best fixes feel strange at first and make perfect sense once you know the rules.
John
John grew up swapping floppy disks and reading Amiga Power cover to cover. Now an IT manager in Manchester, he writes about the glory days of British computer gaming—Sensible Soccer, Speedball 2, and why the Amiga deserved more love than it ever got.
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