I had attempted (and wrote about) this game a year ago. It was on a Gamecube disc played through Wii, which is cumbersome enough, but then I didn't realize how saving worked and basically lost 2 hours worth of gameplay to the apocalypse.

But I'm trying to start it again, this time on the Virtual Console, which is much easier to deal with. I just beat the first temple.

If I could describe this game in a word, it would be: Unnecessary. This is the most unnecessary Zelda game, which is kind of why I skipped it, in terms of story--it's set in a parallel universe, within a parallel timeline. But then again, my favorite Zelda game, Link's Awakening, was also similarly detached, and I loved that one. Like Link's Awakening, Majora's Mask creates it's own little world and fills it to the brim.

But "unnecessary" seems to be a running thing throughout the game. I'm somewhat of a completionist, but not to an OCD degree. This makes Majora's Mask especially addictive, as every major endeavor comes with 20 minor offshoot endeavors that are completely optional. If you don't get all the little stuff while getting the big stuff, you'll have to do the big stuff a second time to get the little stuff. Also if you save/reset without tying up all the loose ends, you'll miss some stuff. This leads to me playing for hours on end, trying to economize time and get everything in order before I play the Song of Time and save by returning to the first day.

This game has more items than any other Zelda game (unless you count the 'rings' in the Oracle games, which function a lot like masks) and it seems maybe less than 30% of these items are needed to beat the game. But this is mostly because only items save between resets, with few exceptions. So if you put a lot of work unlocking all the rooms in a dungeon, you better make sure you picked up everything before you save/reset, or else you'll have to do that shit again.

Speaking of which, there are also these little unnecessary fairies in each dungeon. You have to collect all of them in order to get an item or skill upgrade from the Great Fairy they create. They're all pretty hard to get and well hidden, there's no way you'd find them all without intensely searching for them. It makes dungeons a lot more involved, as they're still typical Zelda dungeons, only now you have all these tiny heart piece-like things to find.

Also weirdly unnecessary, is the boss fight mechanics. I only fought the first boss, but it was... Weird. Recent Zelda games such as Twilight Princess or Spirit Tracks have bosses that are basically just minigames that test your effectiveness with a new item you just got. The bosses in Majora's Mask are more similar to the bosses from Zelda 1 and 2, Link's Awakening and Link to the Past, in that they're sort of a free roaming agent with several random attacks rather than a boss-shaped minigame.

The fairy implied I should use my bow and arrow on the boss, but I really didn't need to. He had a bunch of crazy attacks, and I had to dodge them and hit him with my sword a lot--arrows could've stunned him to make sword attacks easier, but I landed some attacks while I was out of arrows too. It felt more like a PVP battle than a boss battle. I kind of liked it that way.

Anyway, so far, so good.

I've been meaning to play this game for almost a decade. Oddly, my finding a used copy of the Zelda Collection disk thing at GameStop coincided with my playing of Astro Boy: Omega Factor which has a similar use of time travel as a gameplay/narrative device. You know the deal: The world is destroyed in three days, and you can play the Song of Time to reset before it's destruction.

Anyway, I've started playing it and I'm more consistently shocked than I expected to be. Considering how long it's been out, how many spoilers I've seen, how many reviews I've read, and that thorough analysis I read, I expected there to be no surprises here. Like that time I tried to watch Citizen Kane and all I saw were Simpsons references.

But that's not the case! Everything in this game is so striking, the story, the characters, the aesthetic, it's all so finely crafted, and somehow insane but all the insanity is pointing in the same direction which is amazing. The crazy mask guy and the uncooth fairies and the senile grandma, it all has this sort of similar off kilter feel about it. It's impossible to just get a 'sense' of it without playing it. Playing through the first three day 'block', I'm pretty sure I have a sense of this game, and it's pretty awesome. I never fully understood how the three day system works, but I do now, and it's a system that I've fantasized about myself in the past.

Basically, every thing the NPCs do is on clockwork, according to the time of the day. A lot of them only change at dawn/dusk of different days, which can sometimes be lame (for example, I wanted to approach a man in a hotel, but as I walked towards him the date rolled over, and when it cut back he was replaced with new tenants). But some of the other characters are more impressive, for example, the mailman running his route, and Malon (or whatever) saying she'll meet you in the kitchen at 11:30, and then walking there from her usual spot. It's by far the coolest "NPCs have places to go" game I've played.

Another cool thing is the way side quests work. Everything that is held on your person (except rupees, apparently they have to be deposited in a bank that can transcend time and space) can be carried over on the time travel reset. What's more interesting, is that you have a notebook where you mark all of your promises you've made, and your promises carry over, even though the person doesn't remember them. For example, I promised the mayor's wife I'd find her son, so she gave me a mask that would help me look for him. When I reset, I still had the mask and the promise keep, even though the mayor's wife didn't remember.

On that missing son sidequest; I asked the missing son's fiance about him. She gave me a letter to deliver to the post office. But, on the way out of the building, I passed by a guy who needed toilet paper, and I gave him the letter (when I know I could've acquired piece of paper a different way, but was too lazy) and he used it to wipe his ass and gave me a heart piece. But the letter was gone! D: I went back in time, and I'm pretty sure I can get the letter again, but I still feel bad about it.

I didn't enjoy Majora's Mask as well as the other Zelda games. It had an interesting premise and even pulled it off well, the time aspect of the game was interesting, but I was disappointed by the excessive reuse of NPC models. Just because the game was built on the OOT engine doesn't mean they couldn't make different characters doing different things.

In anticipation of Twilight Princess, I've been playing this game on Zelda: Collector's Edition.

I never really got into playing it before this. Ran around a little, but could never really get into it.

A few days ago, I played through and got to the end of the first dungeon, however, the game designed that would be a rather apt time to freeze up, right as I opened the boss door.

Ensue rage.

So I started from where I left off again today, and finished off the first dungeon rather quickly.

The game has an interesting feel to it. Once you know where you're going, everything is really memorable. Unfortunately, when you don't it comes off rather confusing. I still get lost in Clock Town, and when I forgot to go do something, like withdrawing Rupees from the bank person, it's always much too far of a distance to bother going back.

There-in lies the most signifigant problem with the game: It's too sprawling. Ocarina of Time came off as big, but not nearly as sprawling as this. And as such, Ocarina of Time suceeded. A huge world for you to explore that, after a few moments in any area was immediately recognizable. While Majora's Mask, well, for example: One side of Clock Town has nothing at all around the back side of it. The one time I was looking around it and wasn't sure which way to go, I went all around and found absolutely nothing. This took a good few minutes.

It's just too big.

But, overall, I dig the whole feel of the game, and as long as I use the Inverted Song of Time I never really worry about the clock at all and play at my leisure.

So here's hoping I can finish before the 19th.