Ever since I was little I have been fascinated about space. I love to watch science fiction movies depicting the unknown and the out of reach for someone like me. Stargazing is my second nature, almost as if my brain automatically makes my eyes reach for the sky at night, searching for the little sparks of light that create a perfect oil painting in the calmness of the black waterless sea. The moon, however, is a completely different story and one that is all thanks to a certain video game and my wild sub-consciousness.
Majora’s Mask is one of the more twisted, darker tales of our hero’s adventures and one that I like to think of as the Mr. Hyde to Ocarina of Time’s Dr. Jekyll. Luckily, the dark never bothered me anyway (queue the dramatic letting go of my cape). In fact, one of my favorite top movie genres is horror. I love a good slasher film and was subject to Hammer House of Horror at the tender age of four. My mum and her identical twin even thought it would be funny to switch places and chase us around the house pretending one of them was a ghost, terrifying the Hestu’s gift out of myself and my older brother.
I rarely have nightmares though and when I do, I kind of enjoy them. I think it is an adrenaline rush thing, as even in reality I would be the first person to do something that may seem a bit scary to someone else. This is why I am truly surprised that playing a video game gave me such a nightmare that panicked me to the point of waking up in a sweat.
The first time I played Majora’s Mask was memorable but didn’t make an impact on my life as much as other Legend of Zelda installments. I can find change hard when it comes to my favorite franchise and it really does bring out my inner gamer angst so much that, meeting the parallel characters that were so different from their counterpart in Ocarina of Time bothered me. On top of that, I didn’t enjoy the first dungeon at the Deku Palace, and the three-day rule really grated on me.
Despite this and being a curious child, I had to see what would happen if I failed at saving Termina, which I’m sure we all did. Right? The sped-up bells gave me anxiety as the grimacing moon edged slowly to the town until the time ran out and it destroyed everything in its path. Anger issues, much?
Apart from not knowing what to expect as the timer hit zero and the bells making my heart rate accelerate, the scene was a bit anti-climactic. Or so I thought.
That night I dreamt of a news broadcast being cascaded across the world. The moon was slowly descending on Earth and there was nothing we could do about it. We had a few hours left to live and I remember feeling the pang of sadness whilst trying to comfort loved ones and say my goodbyes. The sky started turning a violent shade of crimson as embers rained all around, similar to when the Blood Moon arrives in Breath of the Wild. I would give anything to see the real moon, but not like this.
The closer the alien rock came, the more detail of every orifice I could see until it was in touching range. I was standing alone in the garden of my childhood home, surrounded by the deafening screams of terror echoing in the wind. I was trying to hold up the celestial being and, of course, failing. The cold coarse surface took the skin from my hands as I tried to push back. Slowly I was forced to lay flat on my back, my arms still raised trying to stop what was inevitably going to happen. I recall the excruciating feeling of the bones snapping in my arms as I was slowly crushed beneath the weight of this foreign object. Finally, I was consumed by its destructive path.
As you can imagine, after that wonderful home-made brain movie, I decided not to play Majora’s Mask again for a while. Even now, when I look up at the real moon and look past its beauty, the nightmare flashes as vividly in my mind as the night I conjured it. Even worse, a few months ago my friend made a comment that one side of the moon looks like a face, which of course, I now cannot stop seeing. Yeah, thanks for that!
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!
