After nearly nineteen years of longing to one day play Majora’s Mask, I finally got a chance to discover Termina by myself. I had grown up watching my older brothers play various video games and Majora’s Mask was one of them. I had memory fragments of Link being a cute little Deku Scrub and the statues Link made of himself in the Stone Tower Temple with the help of the ocarina, and I had always wanted to give the game a try myself. It was spring last year (2019) and I was watching my brother’s cats for two weeks when I took the opportunity to press the power button and let myself become obsessed over another Zelda game.
I had stepped into the Clock Tower during the final hour, faced Skull Kid, called on the four Giants to keep the Moon from crushing the town beneath it and was finally ready to beat Majora once and for all. I didn’t know what to expect up there, but it was with excitement and a determined mindset to do my very best as I let myself ascend to the Moon. After spending nearly every day of these two weeks on the game, I came to understand why Majora’s Mask was known for having a lot of darker elements. However, nothing could have prepared me for what I would see on the Moon — or, rather, what I wouldn’t see.
After seeing Link step into the light left by the evil Mask on top of the Clock Tower and ascend to the Moon, I wouldn’t have understood at all that I had arrived if it weren’t for some birdsong in the background. There was no music and the screen was all black.
Well, not completely black, as I noticed after a minute or two that I had a single strip of vision to the right of the screen. And I wasn’t even sure if the strip was showing me what was on the moon because it was almost entirely green. Surely the moon can’t be green? But I definitely heard birds and to my knowledge birds have never been so close as to settle down on the moon. Maybe I was wrong about that. Maybe this Moon was green inside.
My excitement and determination to beat the Mask had crashed over me like a wave hitting the shore just to roll back into the sea, taking all that excitement with it a few moments later. Was this it? Had I spent almost two weeks on a game that I now would never see the finale of?
It couldn’t be true, or at least I tried to convince myself that this wasn’t happening. I grabbed the controller and made Link take a few steps forward. I could hear his movements even though I couldn’t see them. A tiny spark of hope lit up inside of me; maybe I could still do this. Maybe I would find a way to finish the game in blindness. I knew how insane that sounded but I had to try.
So I ran around. I ran for a long time, trying to navigate myself by staring at that strip of green — and blue, I noticed — and I somehow understood that I was standing on a circular green platform of sorts with birds singing somewhere inside the Moon.
“Alright,” I thought to myself, “that doesn’t sound insane at all.” But I had also noticed that there was something inside the Moon that blocked the blue sky from being completely blue on my strip of vision.
This was when I got the bright idea to use video walkthroughs. If I couldn’t see anything, maybe I could let someone else guide me and help me progress at least a little bit more before I eventually had to face the truth and give up. So I immediately pulled out my smartphone and searched for a walkthrough on YouTube, and suddenly it made sense to me why the inside of the Moon was green and blue. The video showed me that I was standing on lush green grass and in the middle of the area was a hill with a tree. A tree where I figured the bird song must be coming from.
I tried to navigate myself once again. In the video, I only had to walk straight forward and towards the tree, so I stared intensely on my strip of vision, watching carefully if the green would take up more or less of the line. If it became greener, it meant I had found the slope of the hill, and if I had found the hill, I had found the tree and my goal. It took me a while, but I eventually found the right direction and began walking. Maybe I could do this after all!
Once I reached the tree, I wasn’t sure what to do as I practically couldn’t see a thing. I could hear the sound of Tatl flying somewhere, perhaps to steer my focus on something she wanted to show me, but I wasn’t sure what it was. So I used the walkthrough to guide me again and, oh, I had children to talk to. Children walking around the large tree and always on the move. How on earth would I be able to find them?
Not giving up yet, I decided to try my best despite the odds of succeeding being as slim as the strip on the TV screen, and I listened to Tatl flying away towards something nearby and figured it had to be one of the children. I found one sitting by the tree but they didn’t seem interested in me. Soon I found another and was relieved to see that the dialogue box was at least showing so I knew I could find some masks to gift them. My inventory was showing as well so I had no trouble with this part.
After giving them a few masks, I was happily surprised to see that I was able to see the screen again. I wasn’t blind anymore! I swiftly made my way through the mini-dungeon and found the child at the end of it, gave them more masks, felt a bit creeped out by the comment they made about my face and was teleported back to the Moon. And everything was black again. I had let myself hope for the screen to return to normal after playing with the first child and felt like giving up when all I had was that single strip of vision again. But I had come this far and wouldn’t give up. Besides, all I really had to do was walk straight forward to the tree and find another child.
It’s hard to say what happened to cause this in my playthrough. It could have been that the game glitched, or that there was a display error on the TV. In any case, after repeating the process three more times, it was child’s play to me. I found the child sitting by the tree again, spoke with them and finally — finally, the moment I had been waiting for was here.
Luckily for me, the screen was showing everything it was supposed to and I had never been happier to see a room with walls shimmering of every imaginable color of the rainbow as I was back then. Beating Majora was a challenge, but it didn’t come close to being forced to navigate in almost complete darkness, an experience I hope I will never face again.
Be sure to check out the rest of our articles from Majora’s Month, our month-long celebration of Majora’s Mask’s 20th anniversary!
