You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you? Let's Play Majora's Mask!

I never owned a N64 back in the day, but I did play Ocarina at a friend's house and remember when MM came out playing it some, but I never got far. I think the whole rewind and undoing stuff kinda confused me at the time. I came back to it not long ago, but never finished it despite the fact that I enjoyed what I played.

Looking forward to following this tread through a game that deserves a bit more respect than it gets.

I liked this game as a kid, and got pretty far. I got to the stone temple, then i got stuck on one of the early puzzles in the temple and gave up. I started over and tried to get into it, but i just couldnt get in the mood. The time thing for me was interesting, kinda annoying, but i never had a problem with the time limit.

I played through with your (awesome) fire emblem lp. It was what actually taught me how to play fire emblem. I used to be REALLY bad at it, never had an idea of how to do it, but with that lp, i managed to beat it, and go through it on hector mode. Its my favorite fire emblem game. I am hoping that this lp will get me in the mood to play this game, so i can finally complete where i got stuck.
Good luck with your LP!

Aww.

You've made a (presumed) child happy, Tanto!

I never really gave Majora a chance (a lot of this had to do with my selling my N64 for a PSX before it came out and disliking every attempt at emulating it). I never have gotten on VC yet, but I think I'll wait.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that Majora's Mask would work great as a portable title. Much like the recent Dragon Quest games, I think it would lend itself to a portable playstyle very well. You could play in short sessions, making progress bit by bit.

So count me among the hopefuls that a Majora's Mask port follows Ocarina.

Yes yes yes, a thousand times yes.

I think it would be great if it had better quick saving. If they just threw in a suspend save feature for dungeons it would be an excellent portable title. Without one, though, the dungeons are probably too long for a portable title without a means of saving your progress easily.

Hahahaha, Majora's Mask is far from underrated these days.

In these parts. I think most gamers either disliked or ignored it.

You could always just close the 3DS lid.

I really don't think the flow of MM lends itself well to playing in small chunks at all. I love the game but it's kind of stressful to play because I feel that I need to plan out a cycle and stick to a schedule all the way through to be able to make significant progress. I wouldn't mind a 3DS port either but I do all my portable gaming at home in big chunks anyway.

I think they should do more than a port, and allow you to take notes on the bottom screen. But just being able to close the lid and walk away would be an improvement over playing it on any console.

I want this before a new 3DS Zelda.

...I'm the only one who doesn't want a Majora's Mask remake?

Wow.

I wouldn't mind it, but I'd much rather have a new Zelda game. Let's face it; if Nintendo ported Majora's Mask I'd buy it, but I don't see a pressing need for it. I'd never play it on the go, and neither the graphics nor the controls of the N64 version bother me.

I'd much rather the 3DS have full acess to the Wii's Virtual Console, actually, and play it that way, but the chances of such seems more or less nil.

The only reason I want a Majora's Mask remake now is because there may not really be another chance for it to happen. It's not something they can pull out of the blue like they can Ocarina of Time and expect it to sell. Piggybacking it off of a remake of Ocarina seems like the perfect thing to do.

So just as a request, on your very last cycle try and save as many people as you can.

IIRC, if you play your cards just right you can help everyone but the Bomb Lady.

Didn't it win a vote for best game of the last decade on GameFAQs? Not that I know how representative that audience is nowadays.

Why not her too? I remember pulling off saving her and starting the Kafei sidequest through a combination of the Inverse Song of Time, the Deku Mask or Bunny Hood, and really lucky timing beating on the thief. It's certainly possible to work it into your objectives if you manage your time right.

Granted, he won't return to his hideout after helping the old lady out, but there's a certain glitch you can pull off in order to sneak your way inside.

You shouldn't have started this LP - it's a harbinger to disaster. For tonight, the moon will come closer to earth and shine brighter than it has in years - it's become a supermoon! So play the song of time or summon the guardians, because we don't have much time left!

I just don't see the need for it, personally. To me, a remake should accomplish at least one of three things:

1) Fixes major flaws with the original game. (For purposes of this discussion, I'm willing to accept "dated graphics" and "not portable" as major flaws.)

2) Adds new content to the original game.

3) Allows people to play the game who would otherwise not be able to.

A theoretical Majora's Mask remake would only provide the first, and only if you accept the graphics/portable clause. It would be nearly impossible to add new content to Majora's Mask -- like Chrono Trigger, everything is so well-integrated into the whole that adding more stuff would just be superfluous and dumb. And it's not like Majora's Mask is so rare that it's difficult for a person who wants to play it to do so, a la Chrono Trigger pre-DS port, EarthBound, and the first Shantae. I just don't see the point, other than "Majora's Mask is a good game and we can make money from repackaging it".

For the record, I'm not entirely sold on the necessity for Star Fox 64 and Ocarina of Time remakes either, but that's water under the bridge at this point.

Yeah, this isn't happening. I'm pretty okay at Zelda, but not a goddamn superhero. It would be a massive pain in the ass and it wouldn't even be interesting. Remember, by the end of the game I'll have already done everything at least once, and talked about it in likely-excruciating detail. It's hard to build an entertaining update out of "And we do this again... and we do this again..." Imagine having to write an essay about the teleporter room in a Mega Man game.

In a normal playthrough I go straight to the endgame in the same cycle as clearing the final dungeon for a reason. I may not do that here, but if I don't it won't be because of some mammoth "save everyone" effort right before the end. (If anything, it'd be the exact opposite... spoilers!)

And no, you cannot save the bomb lady + do certain other stuff in the same cycle. Yes, you can glitch your way in there, but that breaks the narrative (there's no reason for Kafei to go to Ikana Canyon unless he spots Sakon fencing the Big Bomb Bag at the Curiosity Shop), and I won't do that.

I do agree that Majora's Mask is perfect the way it is. I wouldn't want it messed with, whether that be adding or taking away anything. I just want a remake for the portability because it's a pain for me to access any of my consoles and will be for quite some time. Even if the 3DS were able to access a Wii's Virtual Console, I'd be happy enough with that to go without a remake, but I really don't see that happening.

I've noticed this has become more and more of the business strategy for many Japanese companies.

if non-Japanese companies had any good games from previous console generations to exploit, I'm sure they'd do it too!

They do, they just release them digitally via XBL, PSN, Good old Games or Steam.

I would love a remake of Majora's Mask. Updated graphics, controls and the ability to quicksave anywhere would benefit that game hugely. And this is from someone who already loves it.

By the way, great LP so far Tanto. You're doing a great job of conveying what makes this game so great. It's making me really want to play the game again.

When it came out, maybe...But we live in a post Wind Waker world.

Naw, im a 40 year old dude living in my moms basement.
jk

Welcome back to Let’s Play Majora’s Mask. Last time I promised you main story, and main story you shall receive.




First things first, though. I start the cycle by playing the Inverted Song of Time. This ended up not being necessary — the game’s first arc is significantly shorter than the other three if you know what you’re doing, and I probably could have squeezed it all in at normal speed — but I wanted to get back into the habit of doing it for purposes of this LP. I’m trying to keep to a one cycle = one update schedule here, and how tedious would it be if I had to start a cycle just to finish off the fragmentary tail end of the previous update?



Anyway, last update Tatl told us to go south, so that’s where we’ll head first. If we explored around some, though, we’d quickly find that we didn’t have much choice — we’d soon have run into roadblocks if we’d tried going in any other direction. Majora’s Mask is the first game in the series that more or less demands that its dungeons be completed in a particular order, something that’s now a matter of course in the Zelda series, for better or worse.



We discussed Termina Field fairly thoroughly in the last update (even though we haven’t yet found everything there is to find there — not by a long shot), so we make a beeline for the south instead of farting around.




As we near the entrance of the southern area, however, Tatl calls a halt.





Having spotted this memento of cheerier days, Tatl begins flashing back to when she and Tael first met the Skull Kid. She can remember it like it was yesterday... yesterday... yesterday...




Tatl and Tael were flitting around in the rain when they decided to duck under the wooden tunnel to dry off.



It was there that they first spotted the Skull Kid, alone, shivering, and making the most heart-rending noises you can imagine.



Huddling together for warmth, a new bond was formed.

The fairies and the Skull Kid spent their days engaging in harmless fun and pranks, until...





Tatl just kind of trails off awkwardly here.

This is the only bit of characterization you get for the Skull Kid aside from the opening and ending cutscenes (and what little can be gleaned from his appearance in Ocarina of Time). The purpose of this scene is to establish sympathy for the Skull Kid. It would be easy to hate him after his shenanigans in the prologue, but he’s not the real villain here — Majora’s Mask is. The Skull Kid may not be entirely innocent, but he is, at worst, a patsy. He needs saving just as much as the people in Clock Town do.



The Southern Swamp is separated by the main Termina Field by this short little pathway. Wolfos haunt this place at night, but it’s safe enough during the day. That dead end off to the side is an archery range, which we can’t make use of until we get our hands on a bow. Tingle is also hanging around here, and I bought the Southern Swamp map from him, but I won’t show him because I like to pretend I live in the happy alternate universe where he doesn’t exist. Other than those two, the only thing of note on this short strip is the scary-looking tree located in the center.



It can be climbed, but the thing is swarming with Keese, so pick off as many of them as you can with a ranged weapon, like the Deku’s snot shots, before you try.



Heart Piece count: 08/52

Once the coast is clear, climb to the top and collect the Heart Piece there.

As a consequence of having so many, Majora’s Mask has more Heart Pieces just laying out in the open than any Zelda game short of A Link to the Past, where almost all of them were like that. In subsequent games they tended more towards being prizes for sidequests and minigames, to the point where “walk up and collect it” Heart Pieces are more or less extinct these days.





The primary gimmick of the first three major areas is that they’re all suffering from some manner of disaster as a result of the boss monsters having taken over the resident temples. This is true for all the areas except Ikana Canyon, the final one, which was a shithole long before the Skull Kid, and perhaps even Majora’s Mask itself, were a gleam in anyone’s eye.

The Southern Swamp’s problem is that its water has been contaminated thanks to the monster Odolwa appearing in Woodfall Temple. This means that getting anywhere with human Blondie is difficult; you’ll need to make heavy use of the Deku’s ability to hop along the surface of the polluted water to get anywhere here.



The first thing you should do when you arrive at any new area is hunt for the local Owl Statue and activate it. By the end of the update we’ll have our warp song, and finding the Owl Statue of a given area will save us a trek across Termina Field, even if we accomplish nothing else that cycle.



Near the Owl Statue are Deku Babas, which, as in Ocarina, can be killed for Deku Nuts and Deku Sticks. Deku Sticks are actually as powerful as Blondie’s most powerful sword in this game, which is handy in six-day runs where collecting the Gilded Sword is not on the menu. They break after one hit, however, the broken Sticks have an appalling short range, and you lose it whenever you put it away to use something else. As in Ocarina, the primary use of Deku Sticks is transferring fire (and filling up your inventory screen, of course).

Near the Swamp Tourist Center is a Business Scrub. If you speak to him as a Deku, he’ll over you Magic Beans for ten rupees a pop, but he’ll mention wanting a change of scenery.




If you offer him the Clock Town Title Deed, he’ll trade you his spot here for it, allowing you to use his Deku Flower.

Note that doing this locks off the endgame for that cycle (because the Business Scrub will move to the Clock Town Deku Flower and cannot be dislodged), so don’t do it in a cycle where you’re planning on confronting the Skull Kid.



Heart Piece count: 09/52

Anyway, here’s the Heart Piece in question. It (and all other Heart Pieces in the field) is replaced by a normal Recovery Heart on all subsequent visits to this area.




There isn’t a lot to see in the Southern Swamp... to proceed, we’ll have to head further into the muck, but the Deku can’t hop that far. Instead, we’ll have to take a boat, but the the Boat Tour attendant, Koume, is missing. She left a note asking us to inquire at the Potion Shop, though, so we’ll head there next.




This requires hopping between lily pads as the Deku.




At the Potion Shop, Koume isn’t in, but her sister, the Potion Shop manager Kotake, is. Kotake sells the usual assortment of potions (and quite cheaply, too, relative to other Zelda games), but that’s currently useless to use because we don’t have any Empty Bottles. Instead, we grill her as to the whereabouts of her missing sister.





Kotake gives us the scoop: Apparently Koume does her sister a solid every so often by heading into the Woods of Mystery to search for Magic Mushrooms, the key ingredient in Blue Potions. This time, however, she’s been gone quite a bit longer than usual... Kotake recruits Blondie to head up the search party, and suggests that he seek aid of a simian persuasion.



Uh... will do.