It’s no secret that my favorite video game is Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. It was one of the first video games I ever played, and it was love at first sight.
I can’t be certain of the exact year I got my Nintendo 64, but I know it was around 1998 or 1999. It was my second console, the first being my Playstation. My N64 was a Christmas gift to be shared by my brother and me, but I was really little, so he did most of the playing.
Our first game for the N64 was Donkey Kong 64, but we had Majora’s Mask very soon after we got the console. I can remember curling up on the floor next to my brother and watching him play…and get incredibly frustrated as six or seven-year-old boys are apt to do when confronted with such a complex game. I tried playing it myself a few times, but I could never seem to accomplish much. That does not, however, mean that I disliked it in any way.
No, I was fascinated.
There was this whole world inside this cartridge. It was a world of magic and fairies and adventure. The masks creeped me out at times, sure, but I ignored that because I was so in love with the game.
Over the years, I’ve come back to Majora’s Mask many times, but I could never seem to beat it. That changed, however, when I was about fourteen or fifteen, and I finally broke down and printed off parts of a walkthrough to reference whenever I got stuck. I still find random pages of it all over my house.
I remember late nights spent lying on my bed with the lights out, trying to keep the volume down low enough so that my dad wouldn’t hear me up and tell me to go to stop playing and go to sleep. I remember frustration and anger and failure. But I also remember that familiar feeling of fascination and excitement every single time I loaded my save file. Each time, I wondered if I would finally win, if I would finally beat the Skull Kid. And, eventually, I did.
When I finally beat the game for the first time, I was incredibly happy. Over decade of failure had finally come to an end, and it really paid off. It was incredibly difficult, but I wouldn’t change my experiences playing Majora’s Mask for anything in the world. I feel this game made me a better gamer, and it made me truly fall in love with video games. I owe it a lot, and I am so incredibly grateful that my parents managed to stumble across it all those years ago.
