Termina Is a Beautiful Place to End the World

The moon is falling. It has a face—a horrible, leering face, like something that enjoys what it’s about to do—and it has been there the whole time, just getting closer, and the people of Termina have mostly decided to panic or pretend. You have seventy-two hours. You’ve always had seventy-two hours.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask was the strange sibling when it came out on Nintendo 64 in 2000. Where Ocarina of Time was myth and open fields and the promise of becoming something, Majora’s Mask was grief and repetition and a dread that sat just underneath everything. You play Link trapped in a three-day loop—reset the clock, lose everything you did, start over. Every person you help won’t remember you helped them. Only you carry the memory forward. It’s a game about the loneliness of being the only one who remembers.

The 3DS remake that arrived in early 2015 was exactly what the game deserved: sharper, more detailed, and above all portable. Something about experiencing this particular story quietly, on a handheld, on a train or in bed in the dark, fits it. The intimacy suits the subject.

There’s still a debate in certain circles about whether Majora’s Mask surpasses Ocarina of Time. I’ve never found the contest interesting. One builds a world and gives you a hero to become. The other watches a world end and asks whether saving it changes anything. They’re not competing. They just have completely different things to say about being alive.