Have I Said This Game Is Weird?

This game is weird. Majora's Mask has got to be the weirdest Zelda game ever. I fully believe no more than half the people who bought this game ever finished it.

HOWEVER! I have found something interesting about it, something very interesting. Something I have never heard anyone else mention about this game. There is a connection between this Zelda and another, one of my favorite Zelda games ever!

Majora's Mask is an odd game because of how familiar everything seems. It's all done in the same graphics engine as Ocarina of Time, so things are going to look alike, but it's not just that. So many character designs were not changed at all. I mean, many characters are new, of course, but SO MANY characters are just lifted from Ocarina and are not changed in any way. They may have different names. Although in one of the weirdest quasi-changes, the twin witches who were the boss of the Light Temple are in this game, their names are the same, they just happen to be good and run a business. Go figure. Enemies. Weapons. People. Music. Items. So much is so familiar.

The point is that this very familiarity affects you cognitively and emotionally because it's at the same time so goddamned different! It's different in layout, it's different tonally. This game is both a lot darker and a lot weirder.

It is essentially an Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass story. (Except it isn't. This game is not supposed to take place in an imaginary world, or even a parallel dimension.)

It gets better! There is a link between Majora's Mask and Link's Awakening. There is a band of Zoras that play a song called The Ballad of the Wind Fish. This is the same name as a song from Link's Awakening (the song in Majora's Mask, as far as I could tell from listening to the band's rehearsal, sounds nothing like Link's Awakening Ballad.) But it was very interesting to me that they would include the name of this song. Why? Because Link's Awakening is the other Zelda game that is an Alice in Wonderland Story.

Link gets trapped in an island, he can't get out, and he starts to realize he's inside the dream of the Wind Fish and to get out he must wake the Wind Fish up. (By the way, this is the point in Zelda history where Link starts to learn different songs.) That is the connection! Both games are about trips and self discovery and about distortion of the familiar. Let's acknowledge that by dropping the name of the song. I did find this out, both games play The Ballad of the Wind Fish in the credits. Coincidence? I think not!

Well, I'm almost done with Majora's Mask. I will keep you posted.