This is the first entry in the core seriesnote If we go outside of the core series, the first instance would be BS The Legend of Zelda for the SatellaviewSuper Famicom, in which a boy or girl avatar was playable in which the player gets to directly control a character other than Link, even if only for a very brief section: Kafei, in one moment during his sidequest.
Absurdly Short Production Time: The game received its Japanese release in April 2000, just seventeen months after the release of its prequel Ocarina of Time. For reference, every mainline 3-D Zelda title since then has required 3-6 years of development time. The original plan was to re-release Ocarina of Time with higher difficulty and scrambled levels, which they later did when porting it to the GameCube as Ocarina of Time Master Quest. Consequently, the development team was given a very small window to make a sequel, leading to elements like the three-day time loop mechanic, reused character models in the parallel world of Termina, and only four dungeons compared to Ocarina of Time's nine. Against all odds, the game garnered the same amount of widespread acclaim as its predecessor.
The game features a number of minor typos and grammatical errors. The Bomb Shop's owner says "We just a got a larger Bomb Bag in stock" if you managed to recover his mother's stolen luggage from Sakon the previous night.
Likewise, there's the well-known "You feel all warm and fuzzy! inside!", when Link receives a hug from Cremia.
On the Second Day, after Romani invites Link to live at the ranch full-time, she tells him "You're our bodyguard, Grasshopper, so you all you have to do is practice hard!"
After defeating Gyorg, the Professor at the Marine Research Lab asks Link "Did you come here to spash around in the sea?" The European version fixes this.
With the exception of certain main-story encounters, the game doesn't alter character actions or dialogue to be in line with whether the player has viewed a certain scene in a previous cycle. This results in Link and Tatl having the same reactions to the same events each time you sit through them. These include finding out that Epona is safe at Romani Ranch, discovering that Pamela's father is cursed, and various parts of the Anju & Kafei sidequest.
Creator Backlash: While Eiji Aonuma doesn't exactly dislike the final game, he sees it as the marked result of a very hectic development. During pre-development of the 3DS remake, Aonuma replayed the original game and came up with a list of features needing changing and problems needing fixing, and he phrased it as a "What in the world" list (as in, "What in the world was I thinking!?"), constantly apologizing for the questionable design decisions he made when he was younger.
Creator Breakdown: The very concept of the game and the sequence when Link is turned into Deku Link are coincidentally based on daydreams and nightmares. The stress of the deadline Eiji Aonuma had to make a Zelda game in a single year gave Aonuma nightmares, one of which involved Deku. The next day, the scene director showed him a scene he created for the game, which was just like Aonuma's nightmare; they decided to keep it in. As for the concept of the game, it was partially inspired by Yoshiaki Koizumi's daydreams, where he would wonder what it would be like if the moon suddenly fell down to Earth, and how people would react.
A few placeholder graphics for the other instruments, presumably meant to replace the ocarina graphic when you are transformed, were found hiding in the ROM, along with some location intro cutscenes that are never used. These were restored in the 3DS version of the game.
Data mining has also revealed removed cutscenes featuring Link being physically trained by two Great Fairies to learn the Spin Attack and Double Defense upgrades, and other cutscenes with the remaining Great Fairies were removed to free up cartridge space. In addition to looking more than a little suspect, the extra scenes were also somewhat pointless since Link would already know these things from the previous game. The cutscenes remain unused in the remake.
Executive Meddling: The game was originally supposed to be an expansion to Ocarina of Time, titled "Ura Zelda", and would use the Nintendo 64DD hardware add-on. However, when the designers expressed displeasure with this idea and the Nintendo 64DD failed, they were challenged to make an entirely new adventure in 1 year.
God Never Said That: Aonuma was once asked about of a couple of the prevailing fan theories about the world of Termina, specifically the ones about it taking place in Link's dreams (hinted by the Ballad of the Wind Fish being in the game), or the land representing the five stages of grief (Denial for Clock Town, Anger for Deku Swamp, Bargaining for Snowhead, Depression for Great Bay, Acceptance for Ikana Canyon). Aonuma's answer on both counts was a simple no and that those cases were a Development Gag and simple happenstance respectively, though he adds that he appreciates the love these fans have for the series to come up with such ideas.
Inspiration for the Work: In a 2000 interview with Famitsu magazine, Shigeru Miyamoto commented that 1998 German film Run Lola Run was the inspiration for the time-looping structure of the game. You can read further details here.
It has a "Collector's Edition" in America that came with a cartridge that had a holographic label.
It has a "Limited Edition Adventure Set" in Europe limited to 1000 pieces that came with a shirt, a watch, a 2 CD soundtrack, a poster, a sticker and 2 pin badges.
The 3DS version has one with a Skull Kid statue in North America. The European version has a SteelBook case, an artbook, and a pin.
The 3DS version also has a bundle with a New 3DS that is golden and has a design with the titular mask on it.
Magnum Opus Dissonance: The 3DS remake highlighted that the playerbase and the developers have a disconnect in how much of a Sacred CowMajora's Mask actually was. Some fans praised the game's higher difficulty, darker atmosphere, and changes to the general Zelda gameplay conventions. On the other hand, the developers (which included Eiji Aonuma himself) saw these points as negatives which they used the remake to address.
The original was released in North America just before Halloween, which is appropriate given the game's mask motif and dark themes.
The 3DS remake came out on a Friday the 13th, which also suits the game's macabre tone, and the fact that many characters in the game suffer bad luck and curses.
New Work, Recycled Graphics: To cut down on development time and resources, the game recycles many assets from Ocarina of Time, most notably reusing character models for the majority of the extras. One area where the developers goofed with this is the arch at the entrance to Romani Ranch, which is the same as the one at the entrance to Kakariko Village in Ocarina of Time, including the sign with Hylian text that translates to "Welcome to Kakariko Village''. The 3DS remake fixes this, however.
Do you live outside of Europe and/or Australia? Want your hands on that Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition with its steelbook case, poster, and badge? Tough. Especially painful since the 3DS is region-locked.
Orphaned Reference: In a demo version of the game, Cremia refers to Madame Aroma as her aunt. This was likely taken out as it would've made Cremia's crush on Kafei a Kissing Cousins situation, and she just refers to Aroma as "some middle-aged woman" in the final game. The fact that the two characters still have the exact same hair color is likely a reference to their now-deleted familial connection.
Refitted for Sequel: The Swamp Spider House and the Beneath the Well mini-dungeons were both originally created for the cancelled Ocarina of Time 64DD expansion.
Serendipity Writes the Plot: The developers only had a year to complete the game (which is very short compared to the other Zelda games), forcing them to reuse models and sound bites from Ocarina of Time to save production time. They justified this by having Majora's Mask be set in an alternate Bizarro Universe of Ocarina of Time.
Short Run in Peru: The 3DS remake released in North America and the European Union one day before its Japanese release.
Throw It In!: Link hugging Cremia and having his face pressed against her chest as an alternate reward for successfully completing the milk delivery sidequest was born from an error. Link was originally just going to get a normal hug, but he was positioned too close to Cremia on accident during the animation process. The team decided to keep it in because they thought it would appease their mostly young male audience.
Troubled Production: While development went relatively smoothly, the stress of making a Zelda game in only a year (when they normally have at least triple that) took an immense toll on the dev team, especially Eiji Aonuma, who had nightmares as a result of the tight schedule. Lingering bad memories and a distaste for changes made as a result of the lack of time are what motivated the significant changes found in the 3DS remake.
The game began development for the N64 add-on called the 64DD (or the "Nintendo 64 Disk Drive"), and was going to make use of some of the add-on's features. The game would have used a real time clock instead of the in game one, and was going to use a full 7 day week instead of three days like the final game (the 7-day cycle was later shown during the 2020 Content Leak). These were dropped from the final product since there were difficulties trying to get these features to work on standard N64 hardware (even with the required RAM expansion pak), and because the developers realized that developing strict schedules and time-based events over the course of a single week would be too complicated and frustrating to manage, especially if the player had to wait days at a time for a specific event to happen. There was also a proposed feature regarding being able to literally buy time from a merchant, but the change to the clock system and lessening of days made the merchant seem less important.
There was going to be a mask in the game that would have let Link turn into his adult self from Ocarina of Time (evidence of its existence can be seen in really early screenshots). This mask was scrapped for being mostly useless since all major equipment could be used by young Link this time around. Remnants of this idea include the fact that Fierce Deity Link reuses adult Link's voice clips and model (not textures), as well as an unused mask depicting Link's regular face.
The Giant's Mask and the Fierce Deity's Mask were originally the same item that would turn Link both giant and godlike, but seeing how utterly game-breaking this was, the decision was made to split the effects into separate masks. They were also originally intended to be usable anywhere in the game - and indeed, glitching the game to use the Fierce Deity's mask outside of boss rooms shows that it was mostly functional - but the idea had to be dropped due to the Absurdly Short Production Time.
Early screenshots display various changes to textures throughout the game. A small example is that the Deku Pipes originally were colored white instead of brown, but a much bigger example is some of the wall textures for both inside and outside of Clock Town. The textures originally were a bit more surreal with weird-looking suns, but in the final game the walls textures instead got somewhat less surreal looking designs. Perhaps another very interesting change is that Link was originally going to have the Deku Shield from Ocarina of Time return in place of the Hero's Shield (or perhaps as an alternate starting shield), and the Kokiri Sword originally looked exactly like how it did in Ocarina.
Originally, separate icons were used in the HUD for each of Link's instruments (which change depending on which form he's in). The final game just used the Ocarina icon. This idea would be revisited for the 3DS remake, which did have separate icons for each instrument.
Early screenshots showed the Megaton Hammer or something like it as Goron Link's weapon. This was replaced by a simple punch for the final game.
One image taken from the earliest stages of development showed that all three Gorman Brothers were originally one character, and originally worked for Cremia on Romani Ranch.
Before release, the game contained something called the Inspector's Mask, and you were to receive it from Mr. Toto. This mask did not make it into the finished game, and what it would have done remains unknown; however, considering Mr. Toto is familiar with Kafei's mother, and that Kafei's mask allows you to ask people where he's been, it could just have been an earlier version of that.
Shigeru Miyamoto told Famitsu that there was going to be an enhanced fishing minigame. In the game, Link would be fishing for the legendary Jabu-Jabu — the Terminan version of the whale/fish deity from Ocarina of Time of the same name. If he managed to catch the giant fish truly bizarre things would happen, such as halting the fall of the Moon, or rupees raining from the sky. The minigame wasn't implemented partially because Kazuaki Morita — the programmer who would have worked on it and did the original fishing minigame — thought it would distract players from the main quest too much. invoked Fishing would later be implemented in the remake, and it is possible to catch a rare fish that resembles a smaller Jabu-Jabu named "Lord Chapu-Chapu," though nothing spectacular happens when you do.
The 3DS remake has unused models for Ganondorf, Sheik, and Impa in its files, with their filenames suggesting that they were planned to be involved with the fishing ponds in some way.
The first trailer for the 3DS remake shows that the sun would have started rising a few in-game hours before the moon collides with Clock Town, like the original version. In the game proper, the sun never rises again once the final night starts, with the sky becoming an ominous dark red all over Terminanote The only area that is exempt from this is Ikana Canyon, which will have the sun begin rising at 5 AM just like the base game, but only if Twinmold has not been defeated yet.
Word of God: In a 2015 interview with Nintendo Dream, Eiji Aonuma claimed that the character designer, Takaya Imamura, named Majora (whose Japanese name was ムジュラ - Mujura) after the last two syllables of his surname plus an extra syllable from the name of Jumanji. In addition, Termina itself was essentially named after the type of buildings we call "terminals".
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