The amount of Zelda data to come from the recent Nintendo data breach has been staggering. Amongst the map, models, and lines of code, one seemingly small piece of information stood out as highly significant to me: There are assets of a Majora’s Mask build with the initial, seven-day timescale planned for the game, before it was redesigned with its final, three-day system.
This image, taken from the data leak and posted on Twitter, represents the days of the week in Japanese, showing here in a shortened version of their kanji form. The colors ascribed to each day of the week seem to match their ascribed element, as Japanese days of the week are named after elements; for example, Wednesday is water and Saturday is earth. Could these elements have been planned to feature into the gameplay?
This information, of course, isn’t new, having been revealed years ago in an Iwata Asks interview. In it, the late CEO of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, questioned Zelda Producer Eiji Aonuma on the development process of Majora’s Mask to celebrate the launch of Majora’s Mask 3D. Aonuma explained that the game initially didn’t use time as a crucial element of the gameplay, but it eventually became a major feature and the game was then designed to take place over the course of a week. The team found, however, that this made the game harder to play, as you couldn’t feasibly keep track of characters’ schedules over the course of a whole week.
What this particular finding from the data breach highlights is that the developers may have progressed fairly far into developing a seven-day timeline for Majora’s Mask before compressing the events down to three days instead. Majora’s Mask taking place over the course of a week would have been a completely different game, one I wouldn’t mind exploring.
