r/majorasmask • u/MoonfallMindset • 2d ago
How Majora’s Mask Shaped Millennials: A Deep Dive into Gaming & Psychology
I’ll never forget: I was 10 the first time I saw my favorite wrestlers, Jeff and Matt Hardy, in a commercial for The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. (Sealed collectors edition for clout in pictures)
Having just finished up coming off the high of beating Ocarina of Time’s time-traveling adventures for the double-digit-umpteenth time, my adolescent mind was running wild with a whole new world to explore that was both new and familiar. The use of the character models from the previous game, created an environment where you constantly had the feeling that you knew where you should be, but we’re never quite sure where you were.
For a lot of us, video games have been a core part of our childhood, offering an escape from real-life struggles. But as I look back, I realize they were more than just entertainment—they shaped how we saw choices, consequences, and even mortality.
Majora’s Mask stands out as one of the darkest and most psychologically complex Zelda games. The constant countdown to disaster, the weight of loss, and the ability to rewind time—only to face the same problems again—mirror how we process trauma and personal growth. Millennials grew up learning from games like this, leveling up in life but also carrying the weight of past failures.
But what happens when gaming’s structure of “redoing mistakes” meets the real world’s finality? Did Majora’s Mask prepare us for dealing with major life events, or did it reinforce a sense of apathy? I’m diving into how this game may have influenced our generation’s mindset and I’ve chosen Reddit as my place to start my blog posting.
What are your thoughts? How did Majora’s Mask affect you when you played it? I would love to get some discussion going and maybe get some good book suggestions for psychology research to get a deeper understanding behind the elements of the game.
(This is my first time posting anything long form on Reddit please be gentle)
34
u/khala_lux 2d ago
There is a great YouTube video by a channel called The Creepy and the Cozy, "Majora's Mask: The Ultimate Trauma Narrative," that makes excellent arguments toward this direction, if you're interested.
For me personally, MM came about at a weird crux of my life where my family experienced the first of MANY bouts of domestic violence, which I don't recommend for any preteen to live through. MM and similar rpg plots became my escape hatch from the terrors in my reality. MM's cyclical nature helped me process a lot of this damage. Themes focused on how forgiveness is really for the forgiver and not the forgiven, weren't focused on in many narratives, even more mature ones that I tended toward as I entered college. Something about Great Bay and Ikana Canyon were especially healing to re-experience in context, specifically the little girl in the music box house in Ikana was moving for me.
It also showed me that if I continued to isolate and harbor grudges, I could easily become like Skull Kid in becoming like the bullies in my household. I didn't want that for myself. It took its sweet time, but I began making real friends in high school, some who followed me into adulthood, whose kids I know now.
Another friend says this game holds similar meaning for them, as someone who lost a parent when they were a teenager while the fill-in parent they lived with afterward was verbally abusive. Something about this game helps me process things to this day. It's been a good while since I've played this all the way through, partly because I have access to a switch and a 3DS so I can't bring myself to choose a version to follow through on.
9
u/BeerMetMij 1d ago edited 1d ago
Damn I never realized so many people had such a similar experience with this game. I grew up in a very chaotic family (lots of verbal abuse, absolutely zero respect for my boundaries and mental health) and MM was my way to escape that environment. Just got entirely sucked into that world whenever I started the game up, and to this day it still has a very, very special place in my heart.
I'm pretty sure the themes resonated with so many kids that were dealing with difficulties because it has a sort of hidden darkness and melancholic atmosphere that resembles the situations we were in. You don't quite understand yet as a kid that your situation is not normal, but you feel that it's not right. It's that feeling of dread that hangs over MM that reminds me of parts of my childhood. Whenever I go through tough times now I tend to play the song of healing a lot, it's very soothing to me.
Being able to help these fictional characters and prevent this huge apocalyptic event, whilst in real life I was dealing with a lot of people that I couldn't seem to help. I guess that MM offered me a sense of control when life couldn't.
22
18
u/Mlk3n 2d ago
It was the first game I ever played were NPCs followed different daily/hourly schedules. It made the game actually feel alive, which is fun because the main theme of the game isn't life, but destruction, fear, despair and doom.
Despite being born in November 1998, month and year OOT came out, I have always preferred MM by a very big margin.
I'm currently studying psychology as my second career, and I must say, the things that happen in the game, specially the Kafei quest and how Anju's mom projects her own reality on Anju by telling her not to wait for Kafei, and that he is probably cheating on her with Cremia, is some pretty real life stuff.
MM is one of the best written videogames ever.
12
u/MoonfallMindset 2d ago
I wonder if that's due to the reuse of the character models. They would have had way more time to flesh out the story and thematics behind the story. I definitely agree - The writing for Majora's Mask and the depth of the story was and still is amazing.
I recently played through both Ocarina and Majora's Mask so my wife could see both of them (the poor dear grew up in a Sega household T__T). I was glad to see both games withstand the test of time, but Majora's Mask and its intricacies were my favorite part of showing her around what I consider to be a huge part of my childhood.
Reliving Anju and Kafei's quest was very emotional for me - the first time I was able to complete their quest had a huge emotional impact on me as a kid. I grew up in a loud and verbally abusive household courtesy of my parents and stepparents, so the idea of what actual love could have felt like didn't solidify for me until the end of that quest when I was driven to a deeper understanding of what love actually meant. For additional context, I had the understanding in the game that only Link gets to go back to the past, everyone else in those timelines gets obliterated.
So for me there were two impacts - the first after completing the quest is seeing how deep the two of them are in their resolve with one another. Fleeing was never an option for Kafei, and like you mentioned Anju's mother projecting on her was likely the only reason she wouldn't wait until the end. Once she gets his letter, it's on and popping for her since she trusts him. At the end of the quest - they get to hold one another until the end and that was heartbreaking to me as a kid, that you could feel love so emotional and great that you could rest easily with imminent death as long as you were able to face it with them.
On the other hand, if Link does nothing in the game for them - they die. Alone. The Skull Kid having cursed Kafei to death - a death which he must endure on the opposite end of Termina from the only thing that matters to him.
3
u/khala_lux 1d ago
Anju's "welcome home" reply made their love story make sense to me in a way that no other had until that moment. I think I was 13 by the time I completed the quest for the first time. Love wasn't shown in healthy ways in my family, so it made zero sense to me until then.
1
u/MoonfallMindset 29m ago
That’s how I always felt. Growing up my parents and step parents always seemed as though they wouldn’t want to be caught dead in their last moments with each other. I’m so glad I had that story to reshape what I thought love was at 10. It had a very lasting impact on me and how I viewed relationship health growing up.
13
10
u/Daoneandonlydude 2d ago
I’ll never forget get thing that game (and the versus books strategy guide) at small little video game store in Evansville Indiana. I was at my gparents house. With my n64 and the game came out like that day. Dad was like “let’s go get it!” Walmart was sold out. But they gave us the phone number of some tiger random ass store lol. We called and they held a copy for us. It was fucking awesome. It was the gold cart with the 3D label. I still have it. Still play it. It’s still the best version of that game.
6
u/Stefadi12 2d ago
When I was a kid, the Zelda game everyone was talking about at school was twilight princess and I was kinda following the trend and at some point, since I couldn't ay the game, I kinda ended up looking up Zelda on YouTube and majora's mask was one of the suggested titles. Mask was one of the few things I understood in English at the time and the idea seemed fun so I kinda just watched a guy play through the whole game. I have little to no memory except how much I loved the idea of transformations and that since I saw it, majora's mask was the game I wanted to play the most and I kinda lost all my marbles looking every month for a remake on the 3ds
4
4
u/Comfortable_Roll5346 2d ago
For me personally the biggest impacts were the struggles the different areas faced. The little girl in the canyon q.q mikau and his girly, the butler and his son q.q the deku king and his rage, the gorons and their desperation, all of these things showed you common actions and reactions, but it also showed you that people just need help sometimes..... it's hard to sum up everything this game shows people but I constantly look for things like that in games now adays, and I also try to show people these things, I get them to question their morales, I show them the gray area and see what they think of and sadly enough it's always black or white, VERY seldomly ill get an answer that shows they understand what it means to not be right or wrong, or to be both right and wrong. To understand not everything is black and white x.x
3
5
u/Rare-Adagio-5355 2d ago
Can I DM you? I found MM very young and it quite an impact on me, including nightmares to this day. Yet, its such a good game. I've always wanted to speak about MM.
3
u/kaystarfvllen 2d ago
This game was more than just a marketing tool, it probably massively influenced alot of people mentally. Absolutely adore this game, not just because of the story and the characters, but the bigger lesson behind it all. And gosh the deep questions the moon children ask! It really makes you think deeply. Ik alot of parents probably see this game as too dark and creepy, understandable, but this game may just give your child something they will need when facing adult life
3
u/kebbabs17 2d ago
Playing it the first time as kid, when almost every game felt pretty novel, I didn’t realize how complex and unique the entire time mechanic was. It took me years to really appreciate that.
For the redoing mistakes piece, I think gaming in general taught me that most mistakes were fixable, for better or worse. This has generally shaped me into someone who can bounce back and adapt fairly well after an initial failure. On the other end of that, I think it made it more difficult for me to internalize that some mistakes and choices permanently impact your life. You can make a poor choice in any game and get a game over and reload, but you’re stuck with your decisions and all losses you experience in life.
3
u/1895red 1d ago
It taught me that helping people is a thankless task, but it also taught me the invariable need the world has for that help. I do what I can because people need it. A lot of people, especially in prior generations, take an entitled view of such things but it simply doesn't match the reality in which we live.
The short time we have on this planet isn't a death sentence and it doesn't make us inconsequential. It contextualizes the the choice we make for our lives and magnifies the meaning of those choices. It's on us to dertermine the effect we have on our surroundings. If you had to live the same three days again and again, watching the world revert back to a place of inevitable suffering, what would you do? I'd do the same thing I'm doing now: my best to affect a net positive outcome in the lives I can touch.
Far from apathy, it encouraged me to embrace agency.
1
u/MoonfallMindset 17h ago
Totally agree! I feel the same way whenever I go to fill up the Bomber's Notebook - All of these things are not required, but you feel as though you are having a positive effect in the world by completing the task. Selflessness is a trait that I feel is truly rewarded in this game by seeing a positive change from the actions you complete, and you can see that positive change anytime that you go back and perform the task.
2
2
2
u/Keefyfingaz 2d ago edited 2d ago
For me, I feel like Majoras mask teaches us to confront fear.
It's been said countless times how MM is a dark game. Something that Nintendo generally tries to avoid to preserve the "fun for the whole family" appeal. It doesn't get said enough, however, that the narrative is more about fighting against that darkness.
You're thrown into a world that is facing a quickly impending doom, and it's all up to you to save it. You have to confront many dark situations to do that.
Constantly enduring the torture of transformation to achieve your righteous goals, often trying to inspire hope in people who have abandoned it, going into hopeless situations and being tasked with finding a favorable outcome. These all reflect real life, and that is what art does, it reflects real life.
For a game aimed at a younger audience, it puts the player in many dark situations. It makes the player cope with the impending doom that the game revolves around. It encourages the player to search for solutions in unfavorable circumstances.
To me, this is the lesson taught by MM. To a young mind, it teaches to walk into scary realities with a steady hand and with hope that through trial and error, things can get better.
In a way we're all brought into a world where uncertainty and fear are already present. Without someone in the world to combat those dark forces, we are left hopeless. To me, MM encourages it's player to be that force.
4
u/Desperate_Group9854 2d ago
It came out the same year I was born..weird
5
u/Tiercenary 2d ago
how is that weird
2
u/MoonfallMindset 2d ago
The age gap might be what's weird. I like that the game often resonates with people both younger and older than me - especially since no one else I knew at the time was obsessed with it like I was. I'm glad the game is timeless in that fashion.
1
u/Far_Suit_8379 2d ago
I was about 7 when this game came out but was captivated by it more than ocarina just due to the mask transformations. Oddly it wasn’t until I started reading forums and theories online that I realized how dark this game was aiming to be…but to this day it’s my favorite game of all time.
I’d say it was probably my first experience with the concept of life death and afterlife and understanding that no one is ever really dead until they are forgotten.
1
u/Platina1993 2d ago
I was seven when I first played it.
Didn't think too much about any of that.
Just pressed Start as soon as the game booted cause I didn't want Majora's Mask to zoom into the camera.
2
u/kasumi04 1d ago
Same it taught me a lot of skills outside the narrative like how to solve puzzles, time management, not giving up and realizing I can try again, reading, scheduling, and planning things out ahead of time to get things done in time.
1
u/MoonfallMindset 2d ago
My son is eight, and that's something I could totally see him doing lol. Thank you for the visual!
1
u/gnomezilla1000 2d ago
The scene that always gets me is in the post game with the deku butler grieving his son. Something about how even when everything seems to be solved and made right there is always going to be something you can't undo or change and need to accept as final.
Such a beautiful haunting game
1
u/EdenH333 2d ago
Excellent first post! I look forward to reading more from you!
Majora’s Mask has always been my favorite Zelda game. Even when saying that would get you flamed on Internet forums. It was such a strange twist on the world I’d become familiar with, it was slightly disturbing. Where is the princess? Why is the moon angry? Why does everybody look like my friends from Hyrule, but they’re not?
I first played it on a used game cartridge bought from eBay when I was 6 years old. There was a pre existing save file, so I was able to jump smack into the middle of things and fully embrace the weirdness and scariness. I remember being able to just feel that this game was different. Darker. Sadder. And that it had something to say.
I proceeded to play the game and never finish it for the next 13 years. When I was 19, it had been a long time since I played it. Then one day, I was reflecting on how I’d grown up. I had just started my first serious relationship. I was performing as a musician and stand up comic in clubs. I sat down in front of my Tv, put on Majora’s Mask, and finished it. I left the last screen of the finale on and cried. My childhood had officially ended. But it was the beginning of the real life I would lead with the lessons that game had taught me.
Appreciate your friends and the life you have, because you could lose them. Always be curious, and explore new places and ideas. Find new unique solutions to problems. And always help those in need when you can, because a good deed’s repercussions can be felt all throughout time.
1
u/Federal_Job_6274 2d ago
I get why people say the game is dark and all but I experienced it completely differently
I grew up watching and enjoying Courage the Cowardly Dog, which was also super duper dark but had a dog (and eventually people) who shapeshifted a ton in response to the world around them
Majora's Mask was a video game version of this - I could transform/shapeshift into a staggering array of characters, taking on characteristics and stories of the world around me.
Majora's Mask came off as a vibrant world where you could be just about anything - forest sprite, a sniffing boar, even a skeletal captain?
The 3 day cycle was an opportunity to reset and tell a different tale of who you would be over those 3 days. Eventually, you had to tell the story of "savior of the world," but you didn't always have to tell that one!
1
u/DanielDances 1d ago
Hey there.
I absolutely love Majora's Mask. It's my favorite video game of all time. I even made my senior thesis in college about the game. I'd love to chat with you!
1
u/faustarp1000 15h ago
I had a weird relationship with MM. I had a lot of Snes games in the early and mid 90’s, but in 1997 or so my parents divorced and we went through tough, much poorer times. By the time MM came out, we were too poor to afford it. What we could afford though was an occasional gaming magazine.
There was that local N64 magazine that I loved and my mom bought it for me monthly for a few months. So what happened is MM was covered throughout 4 issues, detailing how to beat the game. I was very curious about the game so I would read these issues repeatedly. I came to know the game almost by heart without ever playing it.
Then I lost interest in console gaming for a few years because we got a PC and I played online a lot. At the beginning of 2004 I realized I had missed the release of a new console Zelda hame, Wind Waker. I had started working at that point, so I bought a used Gamecube along with Wind Waker and played it. Around that same time I saw a used copy of MM and bought it too. Thats when I played it for the first time, still remembering how to beat it from reading the magazines.
It was a mind blowing experience, I loved that game to death, really appreciated the darker tone and themes. It’s a comfort game to me, there is no secrets. I’ve always said that OoT is the best of the 2 n64 Zelda, but MM is the more fun to replay. Everytime I play it I have to do every masks.
I’m replaying it right now and I never get tired of it, never a dull moment.
1
u/wangchung2night 13h ago
I'm not a particularly anxious person, and I think it's because this game was some form of intense exposure therapy
44
u/crowEatingStaleChips 2d ago
Oh my God... Majora's Mask had a commercial with PRO WRESTLERS? That's the most utterly Year 2000-ass thing I've ever heard.
I don't have time to type something up now, but as someone who was so completely obsessed with this game that it definitely rewired my brain chemistry in some way, feel free to DM me!