“I didn’t think of them as scary at all” One of Zelda: Majora’s Mask lead designers must be braver than all of us, because he didn’t think the moon or titular mask were nightmare fuel in the slightest
We all know The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask is a terrifying game, but apparently one of its lead developers didn’t at the time of making it.
If you ask me, Zelda is at its best when it’s at least a little bit scary. There’s just something inherently unnerving about the series’ whole reincarnation dealio in the first place, so when the games really go for the frightening angle they hit pretty hard. Obviously the game that does this the most is Majora’s Mask, from that simply terrifying moon constantly moving closer and closer until it eventually crashes, resetting everything, to the titular mask itself, with its mysterious, ominous backstory. As it turns out, though, the art director of Majora’s Mask Takaya Imamura didn’t feel his designs for both those things were all that scary.
Speaking to Edge Magazine (via GamesRadar), Imamura explained that “Some key elements had already been decided, like the moon falling and the mask and that kind of thing. I needed to come up with a world that they would fit into and that would fit them in turn.” He goes on to explain, “In terms of the design of the mask and the moon, personally I didn’t think of them as scary at all. I had in mind coming up with a unique design approach for them, but everybody told me how scary they were. People on the team were like ‘whoa!’. It’s just how it came out, I guess.”
I think we can all agree that Imamura is wrong, because there’s probably no more stressful and anxiety-inducing a mechanic in any game than the moon falling in Majora’s Mask, but that at least adds to the game’s overall charm… if you can call it that.
If you’ve not actually gotten round to playing Majora’s Mask, I’ll remind you that the N64 version is available via Switch Online’s Expansion pack, though it would be nice if Nintendo brought the 3DS remaster/ half-remake to the Switch too.