For the love of...The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

How do you follow up one of the best games ever made? After the Ocarina of Time lit up the N64 back in 98' Nintendo faced this very problem. What we got was the most original Zelda title of the 3D generation, a game equally dark, innovative and artistically original. So as Nintendo continue to avoid questions about a possible new Zelda title, we look back into the past to remember the green hooded hero's most inventive adventure.

Majora's Mask never intended to out do its predecessor in the epic stakes. Instead we received a more condensed, character focused game. After falling through a portal during the game's opening, Link found himself stranded in the mirror world of Termina where many of Ocarina's characters returned, albeit in slightly different guises. Unfortunately for him Termina is about to come to an end, it's grimacing moon set to crash to earth in only three days time thanks to the evil schemes of the title mask and it's possessed host. Thus begins Link's quest to stop the apocalypse with the help of a time reversing song and a nifty collection of masks.

The dungeons, fighting locales and enemies are all pretty much standard Zelda fare, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. What was unique here was the atmosphere. Every stage is filled with a feeling of ominous foreboding, be it the moon's visible descent towards the land, the steady ticking of your clock (the three days lasted about one ninety minutes in real time) or the stand out music. Moreover should you wait until the last half hour of game time, the world would become bathed in fiery red, people would cower in their houses facing inevitable death and the music would become dominated by bass, organs and the tolling of death knells. More than the machinations of Ganon, or the obscure motives of Zant, this game came with a visible, impending enemy which immersed the player like no other Zelda game since.

This Zelda game also had the greatest focus on NPC interaction. Your journal would slowly chart the course of other characters across the three days allowing you to undertake several optional quests to brighten the lives of Termina's residents, such as saving a farm from alien invaders. The most memorable was perhaps the epic quest to see two lovers, Kafei and Anju, reunited through a series of quests requiring you to travel back in time several times to fulfil every requirement. It was arduous, but the emotional reward is poignantly affecting to a level that no other Zelda game has ever achieved.

Even better, most of these quests you reward you with a mask, each with their own special property, which made undertaking them all the more worthwhile as opposed to the Ocarina of Time's side quests which usually rewarded you with rupees for your already full wallet. For the only Zelda game not to be set in Hyrule, it was also the one with the most involving and touching world.

More than just a gimmick, the masks were in fact one of the best elements of the game. While a few merely allowed you to run faster or attract fairies, others allowed you to transform (rather disturbingly) into other creatures. You could become a Deku Scrub with the power of flight, A mighty Goron able to roll around at breakneck speed, or and elegant Zora with the ability swim like a dolphin about the many rivers and oceans of Termina. Together these make the wolf in Twilight Princess feel twee and dull at best.

Sure, Ocarina had the traditional epic storyline and Twilight Princess had the longest quest, but it's Majora's Mask that remains the most immersive and affecting Zelda game, it took all of the classic Zelda elements from puzzle-solving to horse-riding and mixed them into a cocktail of artistic genius and dark imagery, it was the bravest and most interesting Zelda yet and deserves to be remembered just as well as it's comrades.