#7
We're going to greet the morning, together.
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo 64
Release Dates: April 27, 2000 (JP), October 26, 2000 (NA), November 17, 2000 (EU)
263 Points, 10 Votes, Highest Vote: #1 (Adrenaline)
I distinctly remember conversations online about which thing people were going to pick up on October 26, 2000: Were you going to buy a shiny new Playstation 2? Or were you going to buy the brand new Zelda game? While the PS2 did end up having one of the greatest libraries of any console in existence, its launch titles were mostly meh. So I would say that the person who held off on that and got Majora's Mask instead was going to have a more enjoyable fall that year.
I did neither. I did not own a Nintendo 64. I would not play Majora's Mask until a few years later on the Gamecube compilation disc. I did not buy a PS2 until almost a year later, and mostly used it for DVDs until Final Fantasy X came out. It was interesting, though, seeing which people were plunging headfirst into the new generation, and which ones were sticking around for the winding down of the then current one. Sure, games for the Playstation and Nintendo 64 continued to be made and sold for some time afterwards, but Majora's Mask and FFIX were the last two real marquee releases for the generation. So it's fitting that Majora's Mask tackles some of the same themes as FFIX, and like that RPG, it carries a certain wistfulness. The fifth generation was a time of experimentation and upheaval, and it created things that the sixth generation would refine. The generation also straddled turning points for most of us, too. Either the line between youth and adulthood for those of us on the older fringe of TT, or between childhood and the confusing world of one's teens for those here that are a bit younger. Either way, the close of the 32/64-Bit Era also closed a chapter on most of our lives, so it's no surprise that so many of us look at these two games the way we do.
Even more so than FFIX, though, Majora's Mask is about loss, about impermanence. It's certainly one of the darkest games in the series, and yet there is joy there, too, if you look for it. These were things we were dealing with in our own lives, and here was a Zelda game, dealing with them, too. Kind of ironic that the game where you play as child Link the whole time is also arguably the most mature game to bear the Zelda name. So yeah, it's a quality game, one of the best, but like Final Fantasy IX, it is also inextricable from that time in our lives when we were starting to have to figure it all out for ourselves.
And heck, as far as swan songs for a system goes, the N64 definitely got one of the best.