STACK #124 Feb 2016

GAMES

FEATURE

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It was the follow-up to the acclaimed Ocarina of Time that divided the Zelda fanbase. Released right at the end of the Nintendo 64’s lifecycle, the darkest and least accessible entry in the Zelda franchise kicks off where Ocarina finished. A new world that featured real time night/day sequences, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask had a story that at first sounded utterly perplexing. It didn’t do the numbers of its predecessor, but Majora’s Mask became a cult classic and retains this status to this day. When Shigeru Miyamoto announced at E3 2012 that a remake was in ‘consideration’, the crowd at the Nokia Theatre erupted. Two years later, director Eiji Aonuma confirmed that development had commenced immediately after the completion of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. This month, the highly anticipated title is making its way to your local JB Hi-Fi. To celebrate the remake, we take a look back at the original and dig up some entirely useless, but ultimately interesting, facts about the game. You have three days to get through them.

Despite being total hands- on during the production of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time , Shigeru Miyamoto only acted in an advisory capacity on Majora’s Mask . Eiji Aonuma, director on Majora’s Mask , has worked on 16 Zelda titles to date (including the forthcoming Zelda on Wii U). Majora’s Mask was only his second. Miyamoto and Yoshiaki Koizumi, a games designer who had cut his teeth with Nintendo writing the manual for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past , wrote the background story to Majora’s Mask. The time between the release of Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask was just under two years. That’s unusually short for a Nintendo title.

Aside from the flashback sequences in the game, Princess Zelda does not appear in Majora’s Mask .

Temporary titles for the game included Zelda Gaiden and Zelda: Mask of Majora. With only four, Majora’s Mask has the least amount of dungeons in any Zelda title. Majora’s Mask sold 314,000 copies in its first week of release in Japan. Globally, it eventually sold 3.36 million with 602,000 attributed to sales in Japan.

Ganon doesn’t appear either.

The music in Zora Hall is taken from

previous games in the Zelda series.

Majora’s Mask was developed using an upgraded version of the Ocarina of Time engine.

There are many suggestions to the origin of the title Majora’s Mask . These include ‘Majou’, the Japanese word for witch, hinting at the mask’s evil powers; the Western Roman emperor Majorian; and an ancient Brazilian tribe named Marajoara that used masks resembling the Majora’s Mask design.

Miyamoto has revealed that the Happy

Mask Salesman was based on him.

Miyamoto was concerned that the difficulty level in the game would deter western audiences from buying it. His answer? The save system was adapted to make the game a little easier.

Players originally had seven days to

complete the game and not three.

FEBRUARY 2015 JB Hi-Fi www.jbhifi.com.au

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