HYPERTEXT WONDERLAND

Me and Majora’s Mask have a bit of a tumultuous history. I first played it as a teenager through a ROM emulator and promptly broke the whole thing by using cheats to reach areas I wasn’t meant to. I tried again in 2017 back on the Wii U during my master’s degree and gave up somewhere around the second temple Snowhead. Playing - and finally finishing - it on Switch last week, I finally understand why it took me so long. Because it’s a game built on many dazzling highs and equally frustrating lows.  If you’ve somehow missed the last 15 years, Majora’s Mask is the direct sequel to what many consider the best Zelda ever made, Ocarina of Time. It was developed in just over a year by Nintendo’s EAD studio and saw Eiji Aonuma returning as director, Shigeru Miyamoto producing, and Koji Kondo composing the music. The story takes Link to the mysterious land of Termina where he’s caught in a repeating three-day cycle as a mysterious mask named Majora threatens to pull the moon down onto the w...