The little sequel that could
Introduction
Dawn of the First Post
72 hours of work remain —
“Hiyeee! Welcome to the Happy Mask Shop! We deal in masks that bring happiness to everyone! How would you like to be a happiness salesman…..after you’ve sold all the masks, you will become happy yourself! Have faith…”
And so it began, the binding of these two characters was established. Link simply didn’t know yet how much effort accepting that proposal would entail.
What can follow up an epic game of cinematic proportions like Ocarina of Time? For most creators the only possible answer is bigger, louder, longer and bolder. But the Nintendo of the 90s decided—by necessity— to take only the last one and take it to the extreme they did.
The sequel to perhaps the most critically acclaimed game ever released, the stakes as high as they get. And even though the pressure of escaping the sophomore slump was there, Nintendo decided to create a new 3D Zelda game that was smaller, that didn’t have significant technical innovations, reused most of the characters and audio, as well as being developed with less time, resources and planning; all the ingredients in a recipe for failure. So the fact that the game in question is none other than the immensely rich, densely packed, cult classic The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask makes one wonder, what went right?
The Faces Behind the Mask
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask is a perfect example showing that artistic merit does not need to have artistic intention preceding it. Nintendo is, first and foremost, a company looking to create value; excellence in game design just happens to be one of its tenets to accomplish this.
The genesis of the story is found on a Nintendo 64 console that is completely abandoned by third party developers and is barely sustaining a fierce battle against the competition, losing the company its place as the go-to home console manufacturer. The company was in need of producing new gems quickly and, like for many things Nintendo, the man who took the first step was head of game development and Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto. He was worried about the huge time gap between titles in the series and determined that with the assets they had worked so hard to make for Ocarina of Time a new chapter in the Zelda brand could be opened easily and faster, dictating that a new game had to be made just in time for the launch of the upcoming 64 Disk Drive expansion for the console. The idea was initially simple, just rework the dungeons already present in Ocarina of Time to create new challenges within the game. The man entrusted with this task was the original dungeon designer from that game, Eiji Aonuma.
Eiji began working on the project but was quickly disappointed because he felt he had put everything into the original designs from the previous game, and after such a massive undertaking, felt burned out of working on the same thing over and over; he began to imagine new dungeons, puzzles and exciting possibilities. He came back to Miyamoto to propose a new plan without much hope of changing his mind: what if we make a brand new experience, the next installment in the series? Miyamoto looked at him and said “Sure, as long as it takes one year, do whatever you want…and you will be the man in charge this time”
Aonuma, surprised that it actually worked, started gathering ideas and team members desperately in order to get out of the predicament of making a game that lived up to Ocarina of Time massive expectations in a fraction of the time that it had taken to make; with a bunch of newbies and without the reliable guide of Shigeru Miyamoto, who at the time was enamored with testing new interactive experiences for the upcoming disk drive. In this scenario, the concept of fulfilling a quest in a limited amount of time is starting to be engraved into the development of the game itself.
Nintendo’s Unsung Hero
The project wasn’t making any significant progress and Aonuma was becoming impatient. Most Ocarina of Time veterans were working in other projects and weren’t as keen in dabbling into another Zelda right after finishing the previous one. Yoshiaki Koizumi, a key developer at the company, director of Ocarina of Time and the designer of the modern version of the character Link, was one of those.
A graduate from art and drama school who intended to become a filmmaker but opted instead for a game designer career in order to explore new forms of storytelling, Koizumi is the covert surrealist inside Nintendo; described by his own colleagues as an unapologetic romantic that is always striving to create meaningful stories with a heart, sneakily injecting them past Miyamoto’s focus on gameplay, sense of awe and atmospheric resonance. Yoshiaki Koizumi is probably the man most responsible for transitioning the Zelda series to a true high fantasy work of fiction, planting the seeds for the grander mythology of the franchise when he did the narrative found in the manual for A Link To The Past and then injecting character driven sensibilities and cohesive story flow in The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.
My first assignment was to do the art and layout and eventually the writing for the manual for The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past. What was funny was that at the time, it didn’t seem like they’d really figured out what most of the game elements meant. So it was up to me to come up with story and things while I was working on the manual
Yoshiaki Koizumi
Deeply personal, spiritual and surrealist, Koizumi has been the main driving force in giving Zelda a true legend-like voice with folkloric insinuations that make the world feel ambiguous and full of little inconsistencies, just like the real world stories and mythologies that humans have been telling to each other since the beginning of time. The guy even managed to somehow make the ending for Super Mario Galaxy weird and head scratching.
Majora’s Mask is just the sort of thing that happens when he is given unprecedented conceptual freedom. Aonuma ran into Koizumi who, inspired by a German thriller film called Run Lola Run (1998), was immersed woking on a small, compact project about policemen that had to caught a criminal in just a week. The kick was that this week would repeat over and over; a time loop just like in the German film. With the protagonists getting more clues each time the cycle renewed. Eiji was very interested in this project as he found that it could be the answer to making a smaller game with a great density of ideas provided by the repeated cycles. He proposed to Koizumi that they should use Ocarina of Time’s engine for time keeping and combine it with the policeman project to form the basis of the brand new Zelda. Koizumi wasn’t so sure. He wanted an original project with original ideas and Zelda already had a defined formula. Unlucky for him, Miyamoto agreed with Aonuma and said that Zelda was more important. Poor Koizumi’s project was ditched on the spot, probably originating a grudge that has made him not keen to work as a main director on any Zelda game after Majora’s Mask, focusing afterwards exclusively on the Mario series—nobody will dare to cancel a Mario project after all— He begrudgingly started collaborating with Aonuma and his team, telling him that at the very least he wanted more freedom to take the series to more outlandish places.
Shortly after, it was decided that the new adventure would take place on a different world from Hyrule just like Link’s Awakening; a strange land inhabited by doppelgängers of characters Link had already met in Ocarina of Time but with revamped personalities and character development. Termina is depicted as a darker, more unsettling version of Hyrule, in which landmarks are familiar and side characters are presented with individual stories of misfortune; uncanniness is the name of the game here. This would be a character driven story fundamentally exploring the mindset of a hero who lost its identity and has to find it somehow along with his purpose, helping others along the way.
I always liked the idea of you coming upon another character and hearing little bits of conversation that slowly begin to reveal different parts of the story. And that was the way that I tried to work on Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. A lot of the EAD games that do seem to have a lot of story, a lot of that came from my influence.
Yoshiaki Koizumi
Yes, he is very romantic. And he’s also good at animation. I’ve always watched over him to make sure he used those strengths but didn’t go overboard.
Shigeru Miyamoto
The initial plan of making the cycle last a week was reduced to just three days because it would be easier to remember all the events that would happen throughout the cycle. Thus the first theme of the game finally blossomed, time and the fight against its inevitability.
Side Stories Become Main Stories
There were ideas that weren’t fully utilised, and ones that weren’t used to their full potential. One of those was the mask salesman
Eiji Aonuma
So, the perfect partnership was born, with Aonuma making sure the project stayed true to what the essence of a Zelda game was and Koizumi given free realm to explore deeper storytelling and character relationships. Reducing a week to just three days meant that all the ideas they had collected were condensed to this smaller time frame, creating a game feeling like it’s packed to the gills with content.
But the game still needed to differentiate itself more from Ocarina of Time and innovate the gamplay somehow. The designers started to look for concepts in previous Zelda games that they felt could be developed more or maybe improve upon. Two games received a deeper look: the surrealist, character driven-not having anything to do with Hyrule Link’s Awakening lends most of its bizarre tone to Majora’s Mask, making the later a true spiritual successor to this unexpectedly influential Game Boy cartridge—the staple of Zelda characters having weird, suspicious elements was first conceptualized on that project— However, ultimately the game that ended being the most influential was the still fresh on their minds The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Inside that game there were a couple of concepts so well thought out that the developers immediately knew they could make a more fleshed up version of the subtle ideas they didn’t have the time to express in a more meaningful way.
If Ocarina of Time is a game about growing up, then Majora’s Mask is a game…..also about that. But growing up is not limited to the body and the abilities; for many Eastern philosophies, growing up is exclusively tied to gaining wisdom, character and finding your place in the world. The concept of the temple of wisdom found in Ocarina of Time, the Water Temple, was built around the four stages of awakening, all culminating with Link purifying himself at the very last level of that dungeon, conquering himself under the Bodhi Tree placed in the middle of a mysterious, ethereal room. The whole temple was a reflection of Buddhist ideas and the path to enlightenment. But it wasn’t the only allegory the developers placed.
Another short, unassuming side quest from the game ended up being the big eureka moment the team needed to continue at full steam. The mysterious Happy Mask Salesman that came from the East, who ran a shop dealing in masks and promised his young employee that by giving happiness he would find it himself, already had the conceptual framework and heart of the entire Majora’s Mask endeavor.
On this quest Link ultimately gained the Mask of Truth, a small allegory indicating that he had become enlightened by giving happiness to people across Hyrule; it was just a matter of having faith… In Majora’s Mask he is going to complete his awakening in grand fashion, with a more fleshed out story about how by healing the wounds of other souls, he ends up finding direction and exorcising his own darkness. The freedom offered to the Majora’s Mask team was seized to expand on the Eastern flavor that was already present in Ocarina of Time by taking a full shot at the small glimpses of Eastern religion. The whole game would be based around the concept of masks and enlightenment.
The teachings and ideas of Buddhism fit seamlessly with the cyclical nature of time in Majora’s Mask. Now it truly feels as if Link finds himself in a cycle of rebirth trying to accumulate karma, as represented by the masks which in this game equate to feelings of gratitude and emotions, in order to find his way in life.
Yoshiaki Koizumi seems to be a person fond of the idea of fighting your own dark side, a prevalent theme in many religions. After using the Bodhi Tree and the Mask of Truth allegory in Ocarina of Time, he went on to implement them fully fleshed in Majora’s Mask. And even when he left the Zelda series, he still repeated the same narrative on his directorial debut for the Super Mario series. Super Mario Sunshine, released in 2002, has a doppelgänger of the plumber hero also causing ruckus in a town. In addition, for the modern titles there is still this sense of reborn, like the ending of the first Super Mario Galaxy, which could be interpreted as the beginning of a new cycle of rebirth. So clearly the man has a huge influence from Eastern Religion.
In the context of the game being developed, the dark side of Link will come to be represented by the figure of the Skull Kid, another troubled child that is looking for an identity. In the land of Termina each character has a doppelgänger; in similar fashion to Dark Link inside the Water Temple, the mask of Majora now represents Link’s inner darkness and troubled heart. If the player manages to obtain all the karma (masks) by helping people and fulfilling promises, then the hero will be rewarded with the Fierce Deity Mask, an event signifying that Link has grown up and is able to annihilate easily the darkness within him.
By adding spiky thorns to the beautiful and pure shape that is a heart, we tried to strongly convey the mask’s sinister nature
Happy Mask Salesman
Perhaps the children on the moon look like children because Link is himself but a child?
Happy Mask Salesman
Other connections to Eastern philosophy dualism and the mask quest from Ocarina of Time can also be found with the prominence of the Mask of Truth in the main art of the game and on the ethereal final level with the Bodhi Tree, where dialogues that can only be accessed with said mask indicate the way to obtain all of the masks, even the mask of truth though the player already has it.
Apparently the doppelgänger idea was meant to be even more obvious; a mask bearing the features of Child Link can be found within Skull Kid’s game files as a replacement for the mask he ended up with in the final version of the game. There are three copies, each rotated differently, for use in different scenarios. There are also three corresponding models of Majora’s Mask, rotated in the same manner. This suggests that Skull Kid originally wore this mask or that perhaps it was just a placeholder before the design of the mask of Majora was decided.
The nods to Buddhism continue to be present in the series to this very day, with 2011 Skyward Sword repeating the whole Clock Town saga using gratitude crystals as opposed to masks, and also making its water temple a Buddhist shrine.
Buddhist doctrine, owing to the fact that it doesn’t possess a centralized institution or a definitive sacred text, appears to just take influences from every culture it has contact with, creating a complex system of beliefs and practices of interconnected and contradicting schools of thought; the word itself says little unless it is narrowed down. The fellas at Nintendo appear to drift closer towards some of the ideas from Mahāyāna Buddhism and its Pure Land branch (the most popular branch in Japan). With Link and the four guardian deities of Termina representing the Five Tathāgatas, Buddhas said to have taken an oath to protect and relieve all beings from suffering. Each are depicted presiding over their own land located at Center, East, West, South and North; you just need to chant a sutra in order to summon them to protect you and gift you their power.
Termina might just happen to be one of these so called pure lands, a realm existing in the primordial universe outside of ordinary reality arising due to the intention, merit and aspirations of a person. As long as a bodhisattva (person on the path to awakening) is still seeking full enlightenment, his “field” is not a “pure land”; thus, pure or purified denote the result of a long process by which the bodhisattva transforms a suffering world into a paradise or an ideal and marvel-filled world. An important caveat of Pure Land Buddhism is that the person who has attained enlightenment must remain in our world in order for them to pass their teachings and help yet more people.
So, is a ‘pure land’ a real place or does it live inside one’s mind? Buddhist themselves don’t seem to agree on that. The discussion is still going.
It is an undeniable fact of life that all those who meet must one day part. And this state of affairs did not begin today. So let us not be anxious or sorrowful. If the conditions created by our past actions are sufficient, we shall be reborn on the same lotus blossom in the Land of Bliss. In no time at all we shall meet again in the pure land!
Happy Mask Sale….Hōnen, founder of the first independent branch of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism
With this much Oriental flavor, it’s not surprising that the design choices of Majora’s Mask would tend to gravitate more toward the Far East as opposed to medieval Europe Hyrule, with architecture, notions and nods to these Asian nations, differentiating the game even more from its predecessor.
Journey to the East
From the very beginning, the Happy Mask Salesman was designed as an obvious Chinese mystic character whose strange shop baffled the inhabitants of Hyrule Castle Town, with mysterious dialogue talking about the true meaning of life, the true nature of people and how faith ultimately can conquer anything. This was not a whim of the team. Turns out masks are engrained in Chinese and, by extension, Japanese religion and culture. The character was unanimously chosen as the spirit guide for Link on his new personal journey. Therefore, Majora’s Mask gains fully its Oriental identity, which will affect its aesthetic design, narrative and, of course, its musical score.
The game basks in multiple Eastern influences, not only in order to differentiate itself more from the European medievalism common in the series but also to marry it to the concepts of masks and the story structure. China being the main focus.
China, having one of the largest expanses of land in the world and one of its oldest civilizations, has been the home of a colorful, rich culture that developed almost completely in isolation—it was one of the few parts of the world that didn’t have a previous established civilization give them the idea of civilization creation— A mini world in its own right, It has immensely influenced the rest of Asia, specially Japan. The range of traditional religious practices of China is an immense pot filled not only with the contents of more institutionalized religions such as Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, but also quite numerous folkloric traditions coming from all around the land; hexing rituals and exorcism of demonic forces are commonplace in many locations.
Nuo folk religion is a popular Chinese exorcistic religion—as a matter of fact, ‘exorcism’ is the original meaning of the word ‘nuo’—with its own system of temples, rituals, and gods. One of the most stunning characteristics of Nuo folk religion is its iconographic style, which represents the gods as wooden masks or heads. Folklore holds that these masks contain spirits and serve as a medium for them to manifest. Nuo ceremonies involve dance performance, music and sacrifices. With time all this practices developed into the art form known as Nuo opera.
Chinese Nuo had a huge role in the origin and formation of Japanese practices, most notable in influencing Japanese Shinto rituals; with the Japanese adopting the priestly figure known as a fangxiangshi, known in Japanese as hōsōshi. The fangxiangshi was a Chinese ritual exorcist whose name is often translated as “one who sees in all four directions” His primary duties were orchestrating the seasonal Nuo ritual to chase out evil spirits and leading a funeral procession to exorcize the deceased; nowadays it is a masked character in Chinese Nuo opera. The Happy Mask Salesman, taking inspiration from Chinese opera, will portray this character on this play; a spirit guide for the hero of time with a scary essence about his personality that is hard to read—He also acts as the guide for the Japanese Official The Legend of Zelda twitter account, meaning he truly knows more about this universe than may be apparent.
Beyond influencing Shinto, the Nuo rituals were long practiced in Japanese temples and places where the famous Japanese drama known as Noh theater was born, a practice where its iconic and colorful masks are used to represent roles such as ghosts, women, deities, and demons, integrating them with dance, music and tales from traditional literature.
The music of Majora’s Mask has a big influence from these Chinese and Japanese traditions, with both the titular Majora, the Happy Mask Salesman and many other characters, locations and scenes being given a musical identity based around the different Chinese opera variants like the aforementioned Nuo opera and the more mainstream Peking opera, which was also influenced by the Nuo mask culture. Koji Kondo would go on to incorporate new traditional instruments of Chinese origin and emulate others by clever use of previous samples to enrich his orchestral palette. Here is some media showing the flavors of these cultures and their sonic sensibilities
Nuo opera remains popular through rural areas of China—this thing has been around since the 11st century…..BC or even before!— Over there, people celebrate Nuo festivals and hope the drama performance can drive away bad luck and bring good harvest. The moment a dancer puts on his mask, he will not speak or act casually since putting on a mask means the spirit is on him already. The number of masks used in one drama ranges from several dozen to two hundred.
It is also in these rural areas of China where we find the inspirations behind the design of the main hub of the game. Clock Town, a village whose dynamism and richness can still sit comfortably alongside modern video game cities, even if the later are more expansive; in Clock Town, villagers have schedules, relationships and unprecedented development for the Zelda series. Its layout is based around, literally, the Chinese dwellings known as Tulou, which were mostly built between the 12th and the 20th centuries. A tulou is usually a large, enclosed and fortified earth building, most commonly circular in configuration housing up to 800 people; smaller interior buildings are often enclosed by these huge peripheral walls which can contain halls, storehouses, wells, and living areas, the whole structure resembling a small fortified city.
Other important locations also have strong Eastern ties, like the ancient kingdom of Ikana, in which the motifs of ancient imperial China seem to be the most prevalent; from the parallels of the undead soldiers and statue souls with the idea of the terra-cotta army, to the constant invasions by outsiders, to the kind of garments wore by the king of Ikana, the ornamental hat being the same that ancient emperors of China wore, situating the valley approximately in the Gobi desert—as opposed to the Hyrule Egyptian desert—The place where the cultures of the Chinese and the Mongols started to collide.
And this is only the tip of the iceberg. The game is packed with Oriental references through and through, from the importance of the moon on this land (a celestial body so important in East Asia that it informs the celebration of the new year in many countries over there, often designated the lunar new year and based off a calendar specifically tuned with the moon and its cycles), to being some of the first locations where implementation of sophisticated timekeeping arose—mechanical water based astronomical clocks first originated in China and, you guessed, that is precisely the mechanism that powers the Clock Tower in the main village—From magical foxes (reverence for foxes is very common in China and specially in Japan), to imperial and modern Eastern pop music, to dancing monks; from Kabuki theater, to Tingle being an stand in for Otaku culture, or the Pangu giant from Chinese myths being the creator of the world, and who knows how many more traditional folktales served as a basis for plot points and locations on the game; perhaps the significance of the monkeys in the realm of anger (where, ironically, the king has more of a monkey mind than the animals themselves) or the giant turtle from Great Bay are notions we found in the Far East too. Here are some more landscapes reminiscent of the game and relationships between the East and Majora’s Mask:
→Chinese Huli jing
→Japanese Kitsune
→Pikachu
The music is the one that will give us the answer
A Link to the Future
The influences don’t limit themselves to place; time and the mastery the people of Termina have over it, courtesy of their sophisticated astronomy, means that technology has thrived here and their level of advancement is quite up a notch from that of Hyrule, With telescopes, cameras, radio, motorboats, electricity and even modern musical instruments. It’s all over the place but the main objective is, to distance itself in any possible way from the medievalism present Hyrule; magic and swords being perhaps the only remnant. After Majora’s Mask the series would begin to slowly incorporate more high tech elements.
Nonetheless, aesthetically the period that would better match what Termina finds itself in is the Western baroque period, when the first telescopes were being invented and timekeeping was becoming a more accurate and serious business. The baroque influence translates to the music, with the harpsichord being given a more prominent role, and one of the main themes of the game, the theme from Clock Town, deserving of a true baroque dance welcoming our hero previous to the upcoming carnival of time. It is also the period where monarchies start being abandoned in favor of elected officials. Clock Town reflects this by having a mayor put in office by popular vote; out with the king, in with democracy
This modern sensibility also helps Koji Kondo to broaden his instrument palette, going so far as to incorporate obvious sounding electronic devices, modern jazz—some of it played by a popular modern band—and unabashed pop music. This mixture of influences from place and time adds to the wacky tone already present in Majora’s Mask.
Extra Dimensions
As has been said, some of the major influences on Majora’s Mask were the video games The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and its predecessor Link’s Awakening. The movie Run Lola Run certainly kickstarted the idea of a repeated cycle, plus visual nods to the shamanic journey from Alice In Wonderland. But are there extra influences that might have inspired more of the music? There are some obvious ones like electronic synths for the alien invasion that attacks the ranch—in fact, the game communicates that these beings are aliens only through visual and musical cues connecting them to common tropes found in media— others mix various influences to create true originals like on the Woodfall area, where we find a location inspired by Meso-American and South American sensibilities, snd a royal palace that manages to engrain its royalty within an indigenous accompaniment; or the very last dungeon which mixes Mongolian themes alongside the Chinese and military flavor of the region. All of these reinforced with the characteristic symphonic orchestra of the adventure genre. Also, this time the temples are more freeform than in Ocarina of Time, with a base concept founded mostly on gameplay focused ideas; the music of these locations gives mostly an ambient flavor that works with the atmosphere.
However, there is a very popular television series in Japan whose influence runs deep in the series and Majora’s Mask might be its culmination. During the development of the after school project known as The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, the designers were injecting all kinds of surreal elements that wouldn’t normally fly on mainline Zelda titles, like characters from other Nintendo franchises, a world with a strange feel to it totally different from the cavalier Hyrule. Contributing to this sensibility was its cast of motley oddballs that populated Koholit Island. This was not due to a particular sense of quirkiness the Japanese posses but a conscious decision to incorporate the Genre-Busting surrealist feel of David Lynch’s American 90s classic Twin Peaks, opening the door for how far Zelda could take its weirdness in future installments. There was a desire to populate the world with suspicious characters living in a bizarre idyllic small-town, where the lines of reality, dreams and magical realism get blurred and wrongness lurks beneath its surface—there is a lady on the show that claims she can talk to a log, and by end of it, we aren’t sure she can’t.
Majora’s Mask takes the concept and rolls with it further, populating its already oft kilter world with numerous characters that have all kinds of relations with each other and who, after getting to know them better, start to peel off layers of nuance and personal agendas. Just like the protagonist of Twin Peaks, Link arrives at an unknown town where he will have to solve a case by interacting and spending time with all kinds of characters, sometimes deviating from his mission to help them.
This connection was not lost on Koji Kondo, who now felt the necessity to dial up and put at the forefront his “Twin Peaks synth”; sporadically used throughout Ocarina of Time, now the sounds of the iconic Roland D-50 string pad are given a prominent role in some of the most important tracks of the game, just like this synth sound used to set the tone for the influential Twin Peaks score by Angelo Badalamenti.
The ocarina, the interactive musical instrument from the previous game, also returns for the sequel with a new set of melodies for the hero to learn. This time, however, the melodies will take for the most part the darker shade of the game they find themselves in. The slightly-off Lydian portion of the ocarina scale previously discussed will take the lead in most of the new tunes (tritones galore) whereas in Ocarina of Time only the Nocturne of Shadow and Saria’s Song used this profile—in fact, Saria’s Song, the bringer of joy and and binder of friendship, reappears here upside down, just like the world itself. It ends up with the honor of becoming the main theme from The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask; our hero is just not in the mood for that happy tune right now (that is, until the very end when the song is allowed to being back the bringer of joy)
The Swan Song
Majora’s Mask marks the dusk of the auteur era for music not only in Zelda but in video games in general (mitigated somewhat now that indie game development is taking hold). After the Nintendo 64 era, mainstream video game development would entail projects so massive that the scores have to be done by teams of composers and sound designers. Koji Kondo himself would transition into a supervisory role and will not continue to be lead composer in any of the subsequent Zelda games.
The breakneck pace of the making of Majora’s Mask and the amount of tracks meant that he had to compose faster than ever, reuse cues and melodies and, for the first time, share the role of composer with new hire Toru Minegishi, a Koji Kondo’s protégée who tried to follow very closely the compositional style of Koji for the main battle cues he composed. A composer with a similar background to Kondo as a self made musician, Toru Minegishi, being mainly a drummer, brought catchiness to the rhythm of the battle music from the game—the newbie composer would go on to become the lead composer for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, crafting a wagnerian score also full of memorable melodies.
If The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time showed how cinematic video games could be, then Majora’s Mask shows how video gamitic a game can be, by going straight to the heart of the medium, present since back in the days when Mario was having his first adventures, and crafting its whole concept around it; what would I do differently if i had multiple attempts at clearing a level? It is simply a work that could not exist in any other medium.
The Legend of Zeda: Majora’s Mask has been variously described as dark, unsettling, creepy, depressing, uncanny or just plain weird. However, the game is ultimately about relationships and character growth. An effort was made to make the characters more compelling and real, getting to know how they react to the impending end in a world in its terminal state—the script is significantly larger than in Ocarina of Time— Like the intro to the game says, it ends up being a personal journey for the Hero of Time, him looking at the beginning for Navi being an allegory for finding direction and identity after losing it at the end of the previous game. Other characters in the game reflect the struggles he is dealing with, like an skull kid being abandoned by the people he cared about the most, Kafei sharing his fate of being reverted to a child’s body, or even the infamous Tingle coping with the fact he does not belong with the forest children.
Just like the Happy Mask Salesman promised him when they first met “by making others happy you will become happy yourself” Just have faith and believe in your strengths. Turns out that, as many of its maniacal fans have been claiming over the years, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask is indeed intended to be a deep, meaningful experience.
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♫ Media files and support for future interactive tools: https://bit.ly/officialmusictracksmedia
♫ Youtube channel for music visualization of the soundtrack: Official Music Tracks
More of the Zelda music and influences
Inside the Score – The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask – Stone Tower Temple
From hell unto heaven The heart of the land of the dead, where belief in your friends might be the only way to conquer it. “It all happened after somebody thrust open the doors of that Stone Tower” the place where the curse placed upon Ikana was born. When Link entered Termina the entire world…
Inside the Score – The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask – Great Bay Temple
A full blown infusion of technology into a fantasy setting Another game, another confusingly difficult water temple. Oblivious to the critiques of the previous water temple, Nintendo went again a fabricated a puzzle heavy lair where you have to change the water levels and, on top of that, you have to control the direction of…
Inside the Score – The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask – Snowhead Temple
Repurposing the instruments of a region found at the intersection between sound design and music We find ourselves upon the giant ice palace known as Snowhead Temple, an structure that seen from the outside looks just like the ice enemies that used to roam the Ice Cavern, blizzard attack included and all—although it is later…
Official Music Tracks 
Do you have any information on the Keaton music? Like the instruments used and inspirations behind it? It has always struck me as a interesting track and I’m just fascinated by it!
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Hi Anne. Yeah, you can check a full analysis of the track at the youtube channel Official Music Tracks. There is lots of info there
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