This game means a ridiculous amount to me. I could rant about this game forever; so, I will.

Color

I think the most evident influence that shines through on my website is the game's vivid use of color. The first game is beautiful in its own right; emerald and lush or stately and pristine with dots of color for thematic significance. It's conventional but no less masterful for it. Just to get that disclaimer out of the way...

Majora's Mask codified the use of color to represent danger and unfamiliarity for me. I've always had an intense relationship with color due to my synthesia (and probably also from growing up in the wild 90s) and this mesmerized me. I loved exploring just for the sake of it; even blindly sometimes, the finite, three-day cycle only added to the experience for me - seeing how everything changed over the course of the presumed end of this world's existence. I still remember how everything grabbed my attention in the heart of the game - Clock Town. The wood and sandstone was so cozy, but the interiors of the building were all rich with color that made the shops and offices feel like the kind that you visit in a dream. Most of all, the Astral Observatory - it felt like something you might find on your way to heaven, which made sense with the celestial motifs.

The swamp showed me the venomous, alien* side of color. Putting aside the off-putting lavender water, even the green tones you'd expect are electric and foreboding. The orange of the foliage is reminiscent of both fruit and flesh - everything feels simultaneously alive but dangerous. The buildings are strange too, inside and out. The Spider House looks like a hive on the outside and an imperial palace or eastern religious temple on the inside; Kotake's potion home would be strange enough as it is but it oscillates in colors to boot. Even the most normal of them, the Photo Hut, exists on stilts with the strange, purple Woodfall looming overhead. And the Deku Palace with its greens and reds show in no uncertain terms that outsiders are unwelcome. I love how the foliage of the Deku people complement the environment - it likely has the opposite affect on a species like them.

*Literally alien! 'They' use purple and orange in their character models.

Speaking of that - I never really see anyone theorize about the Fearful Spider House. There's a tiny bit of lore with the man at the entrance, the Mask of Truth, and even the nearby dog's scathing commentary about its owner. But isn't it interesting how the place has the same color scheme as the Deku Palace, albeit with none of the other Deku sensibilities? I suppose there is the tree room and a few overgrown places but it's largely stone and gold which are notably absent in the Deku Palace proper. I wonder who used to live or worship there, if anyone, and if it has any bearing on the clearly tense relationships the humans of Termina have with the Deku people. Of course, that could just be me thinking entirely too hard about the game given its likely nature of not being real to begin with, but clearly Termina has significant history, real or imagined! It's probably just a manifestation of greed, however...

I'll skip over Snowhead for now as it suits my next real point better. Instead, I wanted to note how striking Zora's Domain felt in Majora's Mask - the pool lined with coral and other undersea plants was stunning even if it feels a little silly to say about something so polygonal now. The rest of Great Bay feels more tropical than the freshwater Zora River and Domain. But the most prominent use of color is the bizarre Great Bay temple; an enigmatic factory. It makes sense that most of it would be color coded for ease of use, but who used it? What for? Even Gyorg's boss room has multicolored lights (which my friends and I jokingly pointed out correlate to Mountain Dew flavors). It isn't universal, but this temple made me notice that a lot of times this vivid use of color highlights things that weren't present in Ocarina of Time.

This note is more general, but it's one of my favorites: an otherworldly rainbow (or at least contrasting/multicolored) palette is often associated with the dead. Maybe it isn't even intentional, and it's not exclusive, but I love this. Great Bay's Mask Room which is full of Ikana's Stalchild soldiers, the Goron Graveyard (one of the only colorful points in Snowhead altogether), the Poe Sisters (even if that's an artifact from OoT), and the underground graves of Ikana's graveyard. Though much of Ikana subverts this, it's still there (such as the inside of Pamela's father's 'coffin')- and is the region where you receive the Light Arrows - and I just adore it.

The Moon's surface is so pristine that you nearly forget about this surreal color motif until you fight Majora itself, but it still lingers on the edges of signifance in the Moon Children's masks and the challenges based off the four regions. The colorful malice of the game is most apparent against Majora itself, though, and honestly there's no better way to tie it all together. Even Fierce Deity has muted shades of colors we've never seen before or since on Link - and the insipid silvery green of the Helix sword seems both holy and unnatural. In fact, touches of color are some of the only identifying remnants of Link himself when he transforms into the other species of Termina, and it's something he loses when using the Fierce Deity mask. Thankfully, it's a temporary transformation like the others but it's a profound not to why this mask is so dangerous, subtle as it is.

Promos

Before the game even came out, Nintendo made sure that we knew we were in for something different. The official art had such striking shadows and highlights (check out this complete archive from History of Hyrule!). I was definitiely picking up what they were putting down, whether I realized it or not. I was also excited to see even simple things like a younger Link able to ride Epona; so I was already ready for my expectations to be mixed around. Little did I know.

The advertising really doubled down on this. This was one of my favorites, it's so stark and ominous. While I won't go into it because there are some sad real-life implications, it's eerie - both on its own and in retrospect.

Magazine Ad

And who could forget those commercials? I remember hoping my parents didn't see them out of worry they may not let me get the game; or at least ask too many questions.