Majora's Mask 3D!

[torkell]

You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?
Happy Mask Salesman

Unlike elemnar, I never actually completed the original Majora's Mask. I was short a few masks at the end which meant no Fierce Deity mask (not that elemnar had that either - it was many years later when we finally worked out how to solve the Goron challenge), and as I recall I got soundly splatted by one of the forms of the Mask itself in a battle where I couldn't see any way to actually hit the blasted thing. So this time I intend to not only beat the game, but am also going to try for all the masks as well. Hopefully I'll be more successful than I was um... 14 years ago or so? Crikey, I feel old now.

Anyway, onto the game itself. Let's see... after the initial getting eaten by a giant business scrub and turned into a Deku Scrub I've healed the Great Fairy of Clocktown, discovered the Bomber's Hideout Code, collected a Moon's Tear and traded it for a Deku Flower. That's taken me up to the middle of the second day. Time certainly seems to pass a lot faster than I remember, though that's partially because I've not learnt the Inverted Song of Time yet (which significantly slows the passage of time) and partially because instead of a stylised analogue clock the 3D version has a sort of progress-bar-like-thing with a digital display. Including minutes, which count up at a scary rate.

I may have in the process accidentally converted a friend at work to the 3DS as well :)

The characters and world is somewhat how I remember it - there's a few new hints that weren't there before (like a sign right at the very start which goes something like "You probably already know this, but here are the controls...") and it's had a significant graphical facelift. Some characters seem to have changed a bit though - I don't recall Tatl being that much of a taskmistress, always pestering me with where to go next, hurrying me around because there's only threetwo days left. Others are just the same, and that little chuckle of the Happy Mask Salesman is just as creepy and unnerving as it's always been. It very much makes you wonder just what he's up to.

Anyway, onwards! I've got about a day to fill before the Clock Tower opens and I do battle with the skull kid (and hopefully do not get splatted by the moon - which looks decidedly angry in this version).

Oh yes, one other thing - saving is actually sensible in this version. In the original N64 game, saving was weird in that you could either return to the first day, or save at an owl statue at any point in the cycle. But in the latter form when you saved it exited to the title screen, and once you loaded your save it was deleted! If you powered off without saving again then you got returned to the first day (my personal theory is that the space that was used for suspending was also used for tracking state when actually playing). It certainly made for interesting gameplay, especially coming from Ocarina of Time where saves were fast, could be done anywhere, and didn't exit the game (I got into the habit of saving whenever I was in the menu switching items). Anyway, the 3DS does away with all that and goes back to traditional save stations - saving at an owl statue does not exit the game but lets you keep playing.