The Legend Of Zelda: Majora’s Mask Earned Its Place In Gaming Canon 25 Years Ago

While The Legend of Zelda series has been running continuously for nearly 40 years, it’s rare that any of its games gets a direct sequel starring the same version of Link. Even when it does happen, like the maligned Adventure of Link being a sequel to the original Legend of Zelda, Nintendo usually makes a big enough change in the setting or gameplay that the sequel feels like an entirely unrelated game. This year, what may be the strangest and most beloved of these sequels turns 25 years old, and it’s still just as bizarre and captivating as it was on release.

Aside from its time-travel twist, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a pretty straightforward game for the series. Ganondorf has taken over Hyrule and it’s up to Link to travel around the kingdom to stop him. But when Majora’s Mask arrived in Japan two years later on April 27, 2000, it couldn’t have been more of a surprise. Despite starring the same hero from Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask has little in common with its predecessor, or with most of the Legend of Zelda series. The most obvious change is that rather than Hyrule, the game takes place in the world of Termina, but the new location is the least interesting of its twists.

Rather than battling Ganondorf in Majora’s Mask, Link is fighting against the end of the world. When he arrives in Termina, the world’s moon is three days from crashing into the planet, ending all life on its surface. Fortunately for everyone, Link has the power to set the clock back to the day he arrived in Termina just before the moon annihilates it, setting up the boldest structure and the darkest story a Legend of Zelda game has ever approached.

Time-loop games are common these days, whether you’re looking at roguelikes built around repeated runs or games that use time travel as part of their plot. When Majora’s Mask was released, though, the concept was radical, and the way it uses its looping structure still feels inspired. Link’s goal is to awaken four sleeping giants to prevent the moon from falling, an impossible feat to finish in just three days. But by reliving the end of the world over and over, Link comes to understand Termina and find a way to put things right.

Even that isn’t guaranteed to lead to an innovative story — Link could just save the world like he would in any Legend of Zelda game, but in a slightly more abstract form. What makes Majora’s Mask a classic is that it uses its structure to focus not just on Link’s quest, but on the people of Termina. The world may be ending, but the people here still have lives to live, and as their leaders squabble over whether it’s worth cancelling a big festival for the apocalypse, Link is in a unique position to help them with their problems. By spending the same few days with them over and over, Link learns the best way to help with the small problems plaguing them, and in the process, finds a way to save them all.

The way Majora’s Mask came about is just as unorthodox as the way it plays. The game started out simply as an enhanced edition of Ocarina of Time featuring remade dungeons. But when its developers, including series producer Eiji Aonuma, grew bored of the idea, they switched to making an entirely new game instead. Majora’s Mask was able to be completed in a startlingly short period of time because its development team reused assets from Ocarina of Time rather than building everything from scratch so they could focus all of their energy on crafting its wild story and innovative structure. When Tears of the Kingdom was released in 2023, it got some criticism for reusing the map and other aspects of Breath of the Wild, but as Majora’s Mask shows, knowing when to recycle and when to make something brand new can actually help a game transcend its source material rather than hold it back.

All the risks Nintendo took with Majora’s Mask clearly paid off. It was not only a well received game at the time of its release, but a classic that’s still frequently named as one of the best games ever made today. Even with the experimentation brought to the series with recent titles like Breath of the Wild and Echoes of Wisdom, Majora’s Mask remains a defining moment for the Legend of Zelda, showing just how much room there is to innovate even in one of gaming’s most beloved long-running series.