Ocarina can't be beaten in terms of revolutionary game play, epic scale and mythological story telling, but this 2000 N64 title packs a punch that has more engaging characters, side quests, and dungeon crawling/puzzle solving than its predecessor. There may be only four main dungeons, but there are plenty of masks, bottles and heart pieces to collect to keep a gamer busy for hours (particularly if the temptation of a walkthrough or strategy guide is firmly avoided, which is difficult for more than some of the side quests).
It's nice to play a Zelda game and actually care about the people and land in peril. This time, Princess Zelda is practically gone from the story (aside from a brief musical memory scene), as is the Triforce macguffin, leaving only the land of Termina (a sort of parallel world to Hyrule, in the tradition of Koholint Island from Link's Awakening) for Link to focus on saving.
The moon fills the sky as it grins maniacally down at Link, an ever-present reminder of the chaotic influence of Majora's Mask, which seems to be drawing the moon toward Termina. It is three days away from crashing and wiping the land and people out forever. The solution to this is a fair amount of time traveling to beat the necessary dungeons and collect the necessary items to stop the impending crash, which is where the challenge sets in; this is the only Legend of Zelda game with a constantly running clock to remind the gamer that doom is crawling closer and closer.
What this essentially means is that the player has three days to beat a dungeon, collect the necessary masks to progress through the story and get closer to the goal of preventing Termina's demise, before playing the song of time and warping back to the beginning of the first day, once again with three days to complete the next set of objectives. Three days may sound like a long time, but even if Link slows time down by playing the song of time backwards (which slows down time to half its default speed), he is going to have more than a little trouble fitting all the things there are to do into one day.
The time-jumping challenge is generally the chief cause of complaint amongst folks who play Majora's Mask and come away with a bad taste in their mouths. The truth is, this heightened difficulty level is a major strength in a series that often makes things too easy (who really had any trouble getting through Ocarina of Time, aside from the somebody who had never played a video game before?).
For the original N64, this game is a bargain potentially if picked up cheap, but that is unlikely to happen for under $30, and it shouldn't even be bothered with without an Expansion Pack, an additional $15 investment. The Legend of Zelda Game Cube Collection is a better deal, as it includes Ocarina of Time, as well as the original two NES titles, but even that is tough to find for under $30, and the emulation on the game cube version of Majora's Mask is prone to audio and video lag. The best bet is to snag it off the Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console for 1000 Wii Points, which is exactly $10, with smoother graphical and musical emulation than its predecessors.
For Club Nintendo participants, it can be picked up through the end of this month (admittedly a paltry 36 hours as of this writing) for 150 Club Nintendo coins, which are earned by players that register their products with Nintendo and fill out short surveys about the experience.
For those who are looking for a great game at a great bargain, ten dollars/1000 Wii points is a pretty good deal for Majora's Mask.
-Jado
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Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Developer: Nintendo
Released: 2000 (Virtual Console 2009)
Cost: $10=1000 Wii Points
The bargain bin price is found on Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console.
The bargain bin price is found on Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console.
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