Majora's Mask: Great Bay Temple

This game doesn’t have the small fairy fountains that Ocarina did, but I’ve found that the owl statues always have a fairy in a nearby pot or bush for Link to grab, along with arrows, bombs, and a magic refill. It’s a quick way to restock on some of the most important consumables, so of course I figure this out now that I’m trying to empty Link’s bank account and buying arrows and bombs and such in town is a nice way to spend money. Anyway, Link restocks, calls the turtle, and hookshots onto its back. During the turtle ride, the Gerudo pirates make their own attempt at approaching the temple, only to get swept up and blown away by the tornado swirling around it. The turtle safely delivers Link, who cutely waves goodbye as he prepares to head into the temple. (He does the same wave as the great fairies go back into their fountains.)

The Great Bay Temple has none of the things that annoyed me about Ocarina’s Water Temple, and yet it manages to be just as frustrating an experience. I wonder if part of the reason I hated putting on/taking off the iron boots so much is that I wasn’t used to it, having only gotten the iron boots in the minidungeon immediately before the Water Temple; by now swapping out masks is close to second nature. The biggest frustration for me here was the main room with the swirling currents; it could be serious chore to get into the right gateway, and the only thing to do if Link went in the wrong one is work the way through the next several rooms against respawning enemies. Like I said, without the beavers’ swimming challenge actually teaching me the swimming controls, I don’t know that I could have done this. As it is, the first two dungeons I’m pretty sure I could have completed in a normal cycle without the Inverted Song of Time (maybe not in time to get my sword reforged twice), but this one might have gotten pretty dicey.

A lot of that time was spent fighting the first miniboss, Wart. Wart’s a boss in the tradition of patras or Arrghus or Barinade: a central eye surrounded by like a hundred blobs of goo. As such, the idea seems to be to knock the blobs of goo off of it and kill them to reveal the core eye, and I tried it patiently with fire arrows, but like Odolwa it was taking too long so I had Link go in with nothing but nothing but his sword and his lack of caring if there’s a better way. This went pretty quickly, and kicked off phase two, in which Wart zooms around the arena ramming into Link. This was also hard, because it didn’t leave just a whole lot of time to get an arrow shot lined up. This was probably the fight where I took the most damage thus far, even worse than the iron knuckles in the graveyard.

The treasure in the dungeon is the ice arrows, which actually have a use in this game. They can freeze enemies to use as platforms, or when there’s no enemies to freeze, freeze patches of water. They’re also needed against the second miniboss, gekko, who summons a blob of ooze that he tries to smash onto Link but breaks apart if frozen, leaving the gekko vulnerable. The gekko turns into a frog when defeated, and now it’s time to start rounding them up. Link speaks to it wearing Don Gero’s mask, and it promises to return to the mountains come spring.

Halfway through the dungeon, Link needs to reverse the current in the central room by changing which pipes are spinning a giant water wheel, and this leads to the final boss, Gyorg, a gargantuan masked fish. This is kind of an underwhelming fight. He’s dangerous, no doubt, doing big damage when he catches Link before he can get back onto the central platform and his jumps make it hard to stay on that platform if Link’s near the edge (which he needs to be, to shoot Gyorg). But the routine is simple: stand on the platform, shoot Gyorg with an arrow, put on the Zora mask, float down to the bottom, shock him, get out of the water before Link gets eaten. I had more trouble with hitting the wrong button (usually rolling into the water rather than shooting an arrow, which is decidedly Not Ideal) than anything Gyorg did.

Link and Tatl get to meet with the giants again, and Tatl’s demanding that they help. Their response is “Save our friend,” which Tatl takes to mean save the fourth from the canyon dungeon. For rounding up stray fairies, the great fairy in the bay area awards Link with halved damage. Lulu’s voice is back, so the zora band is back on for the Clock Town festival performance, and Link gets to join in as they rehearse the song the bandleader stole from Mikau, Link, and one of the bandmates.

With the pirates’ presence reduced and the waters cleaned up, the fisherman has set up a jumping game that requires riding an automatic boat and hookshotting off to a group of islands. This is a fun and easy game: five islands in an X shape, with torches on the outer islands, and Link has to jump to the island with the lit torch and back. I do wish if the camera were fixed in an odd place, it would be one where I could see all four torches at once. Getting 20 earns a heart piece.

There are four other frogs: one already in the gathering place, one in the swamp, one in Clock Town’s laundry pool, and one left behind after defeating a gekko in Woodfall Temple. Once Link defeats Goht to bring spring back to the mountains, he’s greeted by the reunited frog choir, and thankfully doesn’t have to do anything else after having to visit three different dungeons to get them back together. For his help, he gets a heart piece. While the mountains are thawed, Link can also get a heart piece in the water surrounding the islands leading into Goron Village.

Next: Finishing the Bombers’ Notebook.

Majora's Mask: Heart Piece Collection

The scarecrow in the astronomy tower has a counterpart in the town’s trading post. In addition to teaching Link tricks he can do with the Song of Time, they respond if Link shows his ocarina and encourage him to play a melody for them. I chose one of the unused songs from Ocarina, Saria’s Song (extended by two notes), and the scarecrow promised to show up if Link played the melody. There are two useful places I found to play it: one on the road to Snowhead, which also takes the Lens of Truth to get, and one near where the pirates’ fortress is, which also requires riding a magic bean plant (which can be grown quickly with the Song of Storms). There’s heart pieces in it for both.
On the way to the beach is a boulder that can be exploded to reveal a hole. In the hole is a pond, and by sinking to the bottom, Link can get another heart piece here.

There are two aquaria in the lab, one to hatch zora eggs and the other with a couple big fish that Tatl notes look hungry. (I didn’t notice the egg aquarium at first, so I spent a bunch of time trying to drop the eggs in to get eaten. Fortunately, it wouldn’t let me, and my frustration eventually led me to the right place.) The hungry fish want Link to bottle fish and drop them in for him. After four, they reward him with another heart piece.

The next stop is Zora Cape, where a couple zoras have set up a pot-breaking game, as if Link needs the incentive. Actually, this one has a bit of a disincentive, threatening to fine people who recklessly break the pots. In other words, it costs 10 rupees to play, but that’s taken after the game is played, not before, so if you come to this broke (or go broke trying to win), there’s no punishment for failure. The pots are set up in a W shape, and there’s a spot and throwing angle where if Zora Link throws at the center pot with the double boomerangs, they’ll smash the other four pots in their return arc. The setup allows for small-scale corrections to Link’s starting position/angle. The reward for this is 100 rupees, minus the pot replacement charge – for the one good throw only; he doesn’t remember all the other times. If I still needed rupees for the bank, this would be the way to make them now.

The last point of interest for this collection is the waterfall at the end of the cape. Under the waterfall is a like like that drops a heart piece when killed. Above the waterfall are a series of ledges with single trees on, which means Link needs to find the lowest one and make his ascent with the hookshot. Finally, he enters a cave and finds a beaver, who doesn’t want to talk to Link. Link presses the issue by putting on the Zora Mask and pursuing the beaver underwater.

The beaver knows Link’s after a bottle, and promises one if Link can beat his swimming challenge. Said challenge involves following the beaver through a river and passing through all of the rings, in order. This gave me fits at first, because I hadn’t gotten a grip on the swimming controls, so if I moved fast enough to make it to the end of the course, I didn’t have enough control to pass through the rings, and if I took my time on the rings, I didn’t have enough to make it through all of them. It was a happy accident that let me stumble on the fact that if I held down the swim button, Link would continually be in swim mode and could be guided with the control stick. So I’m really glad for this minigame, because not knowing how to swim would probably have made the next dungeon miserable [1]. Once Link beat it, the beaver summoned his older brother for help. The brother also challenges Link, and his race has more rings and a trickier path. Once that’s done, the beavers give Link the promised bottle. Link can challenge them again, and after making it through both courses with a stricter time limit, gets a heart piece.

If Link stops the thief from stealing the bomb bags on the first night, the Curiosity Shop owner has a mask on the third night that won’t let the wearer fall asleep. It was apparently used as a torture device, but Link has a different use for it. He starts a new cycle and goes to the inn. The innkeeper’s grandmother mistakes him for her son, and she loves to tell stories, but Link doesn’t find them interesting and falls asleep when she tells them. The All-Night Mask lets him stay up through the stories, and she awards him “candy” (heart pieces) for listening so well. The stories seem to be about the guardians/giants and… the Skull Kid? If so, he’s really old.

Now it’s time for the temple; the stories already took up half a day, so Link resets time to have a fresh cycle.

Next: What is it about water dungeons?

[1] Miserabler.

Majora's Mask: Last Request

So, it turns out the reason I couldn’t find anything to do in Great Bay Coast is because I didn’t look to the south. There are two houses there. One seems to be abandoned but the name indicates it’s got some eight-legged inhabitants, so that can wait until I’ve quested some. The other is a fisherman’s hut. Apparently the water’s gone hot and murky, and that’s not good for anyone. He says he saw a zora dying out in the water. He’s also got a seahorse who asks Link for help; the fisherman says he’ll let Link have the seahorse in exchange for a picture of the pirates from the fortress. Right, that’s not a creepy request, but I’ve got a feeling I’ve got to do it anyway.

Out in the bay, Tatl sees the seagulls around the dying zora, Mikau, and Link goes out and pushes him to shore. When Link talks to him, it’s plain he’s dying, with just enough strength to get up and perform one final guitar solo while singing about how he was mortally injured, as is customary. The basic story: the singer in his band laid some eggs that were stolen by the Gerudo pirates, and so he went to try to get them back. He failed and now he can’t even die in peace. The song of healing works wonders on his soul, letting him move on and leave behind the zora mask, which will let Link navigate the waters a little easier.

The pirate fortress, like the Gerudo fortress of Ocarina of Time, is largely a stealth mission. The biggest difference: Link has the stone mask from the invisible guard, which makes him invisible to the pirates, and so he can sneak by them. Or, say, up close enough to snap a picture. Link can overhear a conversation between two of the pirates: they have four of the eggs, and three more are lost in the murky waters where they were beset by sea snakes. There are a few scripted encounters with pirates who can see through the stone mask’s illusion; usually one right before each aquarium where an egg is. In addition to the four eggs, Link finds the hookshot and a piece of heart. Then he warps back to the research center, drops the eggs in the hatching aquarium, and sets out to find the other three.

Now Link can tackle the skulltula house. There’s no one to greet Link here, and the building is falling into disrepair. Like the previous skulltula house, there are 30 of them spread throughout. This is mostly a workout for the hookshot and fire arrows, two tools Link didn’t have when he took on the swamp house. He also has to knock some loose from the ceiling with a goron smash, and goron form is needed to roll out of the basement. There are also a bunch of stalchildren here who have researched the solution to a puzzle, which they tell Link if he’s wearing the captain’s mask. He can put the solution in place to get a piece of heart. With the skulltulas all gone, when Link leaves the basement he meets a guy looking for a place to take refuge (from the moon, I’m guessing), who gives Link the second wallet upgrade. Now he can take 500 at a time out of the bank account, which will probably give the banker an aneurysm.

The fisherman gets his picture, so Link gets the seahorse. He take the seahorse out to the entrance to the Pinnacle Rock area, and lets it go and follows it through a signpost maze to a deep chasm with sea snakes living in caves. Three of the snakes are guarding the last three zora eggs, and if Link kills all eight, the seahorse reunites with its mate, and they give Link a heart piece as thanks. Link takes the eggs back to the lab, where when all seven eggs are in the aquarium, they hatch, and in a really clever scene, the tadpoles shape themselves like music notes in front of the background which looks like a staff. The scientist realizes what it is, and zora Link gets out his guitar and plays the song suggested by the notes.

The scentist suggests playing the music for the mother of the eggs, so Link sets out for Zora Hall. Three of Mikau’s bandmates are practicing in their rooms, playing songs from previous Zelda games (the dungeon and game over themes from The Legend of Zelda, and the cave theme from A Link to the Past). Link can find Mikau’s diary, which talks about jam sessions he played with Japas. Then the two get together for another jam session, and Link plays the notes he read to complete the song. The zoras all excitedly listen in, but the bandleader seems uninterested when Link plays it for him. However, if Link takes off the mask and plays the song on the ocarina, the bandleader eagerly steals credit for the song and gives Link a heart piece to ensure his silence. In Lulu’s room there’s a business scrub wanting to move somewhere less wet.

Lulu herself is outside, staring out at the ocean. Link plays the New Wave Bossa Nova for her, which summons a turtle from the deeps who offers Link a ride to the Great Bay Temple. There’s also an owl statue here. I want a new cycle for a dungeon, and the zora mask and hookshot have opened up new opportunities that’ll take some time to explore, but there’s two things to wrap up this cycle. First, Moon’s Tear, city flower, swamp flower, mountain flower, ocean flower, heart piece.

Second, back at the Milk Bar in Clock Town, Link can run a sound check with the zora band’s manager. Gorman, the theater troupe’s leader and brother of the asshats harassing Cremia, complains about the noise. However, after Link’s done the sound check in each of his four forms, Gorman’s reduced to tears because of memories associated with the song and gives Link his mask. The song’s called “Ballad of the Wind Fish,” but it bears no resemblance to the song from Link’s Awakening.

And now it’s time to start the next cycle.

Next: Lots and lots of sidequests.

Majora's Mask: Link in Black

Tatl says the next destination should be the ocean dungeon to the east. This is blocked by a fence, which Tatl says Link could jump if he had a horse before having the decency to remember why he doesn’t have a horse. Except Link and Tatl know where the horse is, so it’s time to find a way to convince Cremia and Romani to give her back. There’s a goron in the town shop who sells powder kegs, so Link can blow up the giant boulder blocking Romani Ranch. The man who was hacking at it is annoyed at Link’s intervention, because he doesn’t get to spend two days of back-breaking labor hacking a path through the rock, but decides as long as the path is clear, he’s cool with it. When Link arrives at the ranch, whatever happened to Romani hasn’t yet, and she’s practicing archery near the barn.

Romani explains why she’s training: every year as the festival approaches in Clock Town, aliens (the game calls them ghosts, and they look like poes, but it’s aliens) come to the ranch and steal the cows. This is so out of nowhere that it’s hard not to laugh, but two things make this sidequest work. First, we know the consequences if Link fails. The aliens do something to Romani that leaves her an empty shell, and her sister blames herself for what happened. Second, although it’s ridiculous, it’s played completely straight, so it can be taken seriously. After Link does a quick round of riding the horse around the ranch popping balloons to prove he’s an able helper, Romani teaches him Epona’s song, allowing him to summon Epona (I guess it is her!) from anywhere. She tells him to be back by 2:00 for the alien fight.

There’s a lot of time left before then, so Link and Epona leave the ranch to go exploring. The first stop is the Gorman Brothers’ race track, just off the Milk Road. They make fun of Epona and challenge Link to a race. To be honest, they’re not terribly good at racing, but the one thing they do really well is get in Link’s way. If he’s not way ahead coming over the final obstacles, one brother charges in out of nowhere at an angle that can only be meant to block Link’s progress while his brother sweeps out to the lead. With the bank maxed out and the takkuri right there, the money’s not an issue, but it’s frustrating to come so close and lose and have to do it again. When Link finally beats them, they try to figure out what to give him and eventually settle on a mask.

I’ve still got a lot of time, so let’s go to the ocean and look around. There’s actually not much here; it says don’t swim out to the building, but nothing stops Link if he does, so he can get out there and thwack an owl statue, shoot down Tingle and wish for ear plugs and buy maps, and visit the laboratory inside where the scientist is concerned about a late delivery of zora eggs. Up to the north there’s mentions of a pirate fortress.

I’m probably not going to make it to the dungeon this cycle anyway, so I decide to let the pirate fortress wait for another cycle and see what lies to the east. There are some fences Epona can jump over, but then a giant cliff bars the way. There’s some interesting stuff here: a guard who can only be seen with the Lens of Truth and needs healing, and the graveyard is apparently watched over by a giant sleeping stalfos. Link wakes up the stalfos and chases him down, which makes the stalfos surrender and leave command of his followers to Link. Each night, Link can approach groups of stalfos in the graveyard, open a grave, complete a puzzle, fight a miniboss, and get a reward. The first day’s miniboss is an iron knuckle, which probably means I’m not supposed to be out here yet because fighting that on 11 hearts is mean. After it’s dead, Flat, one of the royal composer ghosts, comes to Link. He says Sharp sold his soul to the devil, and teaches Link a song that represents his anger and sadness over the betrayal, the Song of Storms.

Okay, now it’s time for Link to put on his black suit and go back to the ranch. I don’t know why the game had Link practice alien hunting with Epona, because it’s frankly easier to put on the bunny hood, follow the dog around on foot, kill all the aliens Link can see, and hold out until the break of dawn. Dawn comes, the aliens all poof, and Romani calls him “little hero” and gives him a bottle of milk, then sneaks back to the house to go to bed before Cremia catches her. Cremia’s making a milk run to Clock Town that night, and invites Link to come along. It’s a good thing he does, because the Gorman Brothers put a fence in her way, forcing her to take less safe paths to town, and then ride after her wagon trying to break her jars of milk. Link keeps them at bay enough to stop all the milk from being destroyed, and Cremia rewards him with a mask that lets him visit the milk bar in town. There doesn’t seem to be much interesting here just yet, but Link can buy a special milk that will leave his magic meter maxed out until he resets time.

Now it’s back to the graveyard, stopping en route to heal the invisible guard and receive his mask. The second night’s puzzle involves the Lens of Truth, and after another iron knuckle fight, Link gets a heart piece. The third night Link helps Dampé summon a poe. This puzzle is terrible, because Dampé is so goddamn stupid. Okay, I get he can only follow the light of the fairy. But if I lose Z-targeting on him, does he keep going the way he was? Stop until Tatl comes back? No, of course not. He wanders off in a “random” direction which always seems to be opposite the way Link was trying to drag him. Oh, and there’s a wall master, and if it catches Link, it resets the puzzle. Summoning and killing the poe rewards a bottle, which is nice.

And then it’s reboot time.

Next: Trespassing on their private pirate property.

Link’s Awakening: Nightmares and Awakening

“We were born of nightmares… To take over this world, we made the Wind Fish sleep endlessly! If the Wind Fish doesn’t wake up, this island will never disappear! We would have been masters of this place… but you had to come here and disrupt our plan!”

So… hrm. The Nightmares mucked with the Wind Fish so it wouldn’t wake up. And Link got drawn into the dream world, so he can’t leave without breaking the Nightmares’ hold on the Wind Fish. Considering only those people, it’s easy: screw the Nightmares, save the Wind Fish, and Link’s free. But what about the other creatures of Koholint? So far they don’t seem to be faring too badly in the Wind Fish’s eternal nightmare-infested dream, but that could change. If it were even possible for Link to get away from the island without waking the Wind Fish, how would things be for them afterward? And what about the next poor sap who gets sucked into Koholint accidentally and may have an even harder time leaving than Link?

All in all, waking the Wind Fish, ending the dream, and returning the other inhabitants of the island to nonexistence is the best thing to do, but… I mean…


(xkcd “Nightmares” by Randall Munroe. [CC BY-NC 2.5] [More info])

The final Nightmare assumes a number of different forms, most of which are familiar to Link from his previous adventures. First there’s a giant zol, which is not terribly threatening but immune to just about everything except magic powder. Then come echoes of three bosses from A Link to the Past: Agahnim, a giant moldorm, and Ganon. Then there’s a lanmola that dies pretty quickly, and it’s time for the final form, DethI [1].

DethI is yet another eye monster, with two armed with spiked appendages it swings at Link. So, Link has to play the deadliest game of double Dutch ever [2] while finding time to shoot the eye with arrows. Alternately, one shot from the boomerang does the trick too. Either way, the last Nightmare dies.

“This island is going to disappear… Our world is going to disappear… Our world… Our… world…”

Meet the Wind Fish

A staircase appears in front of Link, and he climbs and meets the owl one last time. The owl explains that it’s part of the Wind Fish, thanks Link for helping free the Wind Fish, and says goodbye.

The Wind Fish then arrives with a godawful trilling sound.

“I AM THE WIND FISH… LONG HAS BEEN MY SLUMBER… IN MY DREAMS… AN EGG APPEARED AND WAS SURROUNDED BY AN ISLAND. WITH PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AN ENTIRE WORLD!
“BUT VERILY, IT BE THE NATURE OF DREAMS TO END! WHEN I DOST AWAKEN, KOHOLINT WILL BE GONE… ONLY THE MEMORY OF THIS DREAM LAND WILL EXIST IN THE WAKING WORLD…
“SOMEDAY, THOU MAY RECALL THIS ISLAND… THAT MEMORY MUST BE THE REAL DREAM WORLD…
“COME, Link [3]… LET US AWAKEN TOGETHER!
“PLAY THE EIGHT INSTRUMENTS! PLAY THE SONG OF AWAKENING!”

Link plays the Ballad of the Wind Fish one last time as a montage of the people of Koholint Island fading out of existence plays. Finally the entire island disappears, and Link is blasted by a spray of water, waking to find himself holding on to a small portion of his ship’s mast. The wind fish flies overhead as Link watches with a smile.

And that’s the end. Does Link ever make it back to Hyrule? Does he die alone at sea, clinging to what’s left of his ship and hoping for a rescue that never comes? I would guess we’ll never know, unless Nintendo decides to make another game with this particular Link someday. There is one final bit of closure: If the game’s completed with no deaths, a winged Marin flies over the The End screen, implying somehow she escaped the island as a bird. The DX version is a little more clear: her face appears in the sky while the Ballad of the Wind Fish plays, and then seagulls appear, suggesting that her wish to the Wind Fish was to become a seagull and fly to other places, as she’d told Link during their scene on the beach, and it was granted.

Final Thoughts

So, that’s Link’s Awakening. I ultimately have it behind A Link to the Past, but in some ways it’s better, particularly the story and characters. And who knows, if I’d played this back when it came out, it might have even overtaken the position of my favorite in the series. There are things I find disappointing/annoying/frustrating, but overall it’s a great game, and the fact that something of this scope and quality made it to the Game Boy is absolutely amazing.

[1] That's a capital I, not a lowercase L. I hate this name – it's like the NES Final Fantasy where they had to cram monster and spell names into a small number of characters, except the name doesn't appear in-game anywhere, so why couldn't they just say "Death Eye" or "Death's Eye" or something readable?
[2] “Look, there’s a gerbil. I’m going up and down. 60 Minutes, where are you? Here’s an exposé for you…”
[3] The sudden lowercase letters in the player character’s name are really jarring here [4].
[4] I guess they expected the player character to be called “THIEF” at that point.

Majora's Mask: Snowhead Temple

The main objective for this round is to compete Snowhead Temple, so Link plays the Inverted Song of Time to maximize the amount of time he has to complete the dungeon. Then he soars up to Snowhead, where a wind is blowing from the temple making approach impossible. Tatl sees something in the storm, and suggests Link take a look, and the Lens of Truth reveals the wind’s caused by a giant goron blowing down the path. So Link shifts into goron form and plays the Goron’s Lullaby, which puts the goron to sleep and stops the wind. The goron rolls off the walkway, but I’m sure he’ll be alright, and even if he won’t, he’d have frozen to death anyway. Or died when the moon hit.

Given the name, location, and ambient weather, it’s little surprise that Snowhead Temple is an ice dungeon. Goron form is essential here, pushing heavy blocks, rolling over ramps, smashing down switches too heavy to be bothered by human Link, and in the final puzzle, punching out segments of the central elevator pillar that have it raised so high it’s blocking the entrance to the boss room. Deku Link isn’t so important, but gets to come out and play a few times. New enemies include snowball-tossing eenos and rodents with bombs on their tails that are called real bombchus.

The dungeon’s miniboss is a familiar face that I’m surprised to realize weren’t in Ocarina: wizzrobes. They’ve been reimagined yet again, teleporting between various pads around the room. Fortunately, the dot on the minimap shows where they’re going to be, so it’s just a matter of turning to face them and hitting them with an arrow before they can get their shot off. After the first few shots, the wizzrobe starts adding illusory doubles, but only the real one shows up on the minimap, so it’s really just a minor distraction. There are two of them in the dungeon. One guards the dungeon’s treasure, the fire arrows, which I now understand to be the replacement for the fire rod. The second wizzrobe guards the boss key.

The boss of the dungeon is a masked mechanical monster named Goht, a giant robot bull. (Or maybe goat, but aside from the name, bull seems more appropriate.) It starts the battle frozen in ice, which I would think would present an opportunity – Link could hack away enough of the ice to hit its weak spot for an easy kill – but apparently that wouldn’t be “sporting” or “fair” or “fun” or “worth the man-hours the people at Nintendo put in designing this thing,” so we have to do it the hard way. Link melts the ice with a fire arrow, and Goht takes off running around a track around the room. Link puts on the goron mask and rolls after it. This is a fun fight, having to dodge all the obstacles Goht summons and poke at his legs with the goron ball spikes. One time I caught a ramp and landed on his back and was able to get a few free hits in that way, and I’d guess that’s how it’s supposed to be done. After enough hits, Goht loses control, plows into the central pillar, and is buried in rubble.

Link and Tatl return to the foggy realm where the figures they’re looking to recruit live. Tatl asks what they are, and they reply “guardians.” The stray fairy collection award this time is a doubled magic meter. And, getting there, I was glad to see the giant goron was okay, if a bit confused about what happened to it.

Back down the mountain, the Mountain Village smith’s forge has thawed so he can work on Link’s sword. It costs 100 rupees and is only a temporary improvement, but the smith hints that if he gets gold dust, he can make the sword better permanently. There’s one more thing to do: in the Goron Village, the powder keg shop has thawed as well, so Link can take the test to get certified to use the kegs. That test is to run with a keg down to the Mountain Village and open up the Goron Racetrack. Link does this safely, so he can buy kegs now. He can also run the goron races, and receives gold dust if he wins. That lets him get the second sword upgrade.

While waiting for that to finish, I started farming the takkuri again, which is so much easier, quicker, and safer with the fire arrows. This maxed out Link’s bank account at 5,000 rupees and earned another piece of heart. So from now on I’ll be removing more rupees from the bank than I put in, which will let me use the Clock Town shops to restock on ammunition items. Anyway, I’m pretty sure those powder kegs will blow up the boulder leading to Romani Ranch, so it’s time to find out what the deal is there.

Next: First, last, and only line of defense.

Link’s Awakening: Turtle Rock

Turtle Rock

At the far edge of the map lies the entrance to Turtle Rock. There’s no key nor quake medallion to open the way forward, so Link has to do what’s been hinted: play the song to make the turtle come to life. The turtle turns hostile, so it’s a miniboss fight to get into the dungeon. Not a particularly tough one, though, so the way opens fairly easily. In addition to having a turtle head creature petrified on top of the entrance, the dungeon’s floorplan resembles a turtle, too.

This is the final real dungeon, so it pulls out all the stops. Five of the old dungeons’ minibosses return here, the exceptions being Master Stalfos, whom Link had to fight four times; the gohmas; and the Grim Creeper, who was also sort of the dungeon’s end boss. Vires show up for the first time since the first game, and they’re considerably more dangerous now, hiding along the edges of the screen and spitting fire at Link. The dodongo snakes are particularly memorable, because to get the chest they drop, Link has to exit and re-enter the dungeon – grabbing the last heart piece along the way – coming back on an elevated walkway, and has to defeat the snakes by throwing bombs at them from above.

The dungeon’s actual miniboss is Blaino, a boxer whose gloves also provide a strong defense against Link’s sword attacks. He’s got a wind-up punch that will send Link flying back to the start of the dungeon if it hits, but if it misses it leaves him vulnerable for a second. Also, his defense doesn’t protect against spin attacks, so that’s the best way to get rid of him. Once Blaino is defeated, a passage opens to the dungeon’s treasure, the magic rod, which since it comes with the magic book capability from the start, also resembles A Link to the Past’s fire rod. This is quite useful against some enemies, such as the vires. It’s also needed to destroy some icy blocks in the side-scrolling areas that block passage to the Nightmare.

The dungeon also has a unique type of puzzle: moving platforms that give some kind of reward if they can be manipulated to cover the entire open area in the room. This finally led to me having a breakdown when my thumb was killing me and the damned D-pad wasn’t responding properly to my commands trying to get the platform to turn. The controller I had been using has been a loyal friend for 13 years, but my poor thumb finally said enough.

The dungeon’s Nightmare is Hot Head, a fireball that hops around the lava pit and throws fire at Link. Counterintuitively, his weakness is the magic rod’s fireballs, which stop him moving for a second, which means if Link can keep a steady stream of fireballs thrown at him, it’s going to be a short and ridiculous fight. Hot Head asks Link why he had to come disrupt the Nightmares’ plan and force everything to change, before falling into the same “you too are in the dream” routine the previous two Nightmares had used.

Finally, Link claims the Thunder Drum, the final Instrument, and the voice tells him it’s time to visit the egg on the mountain.

The Wind Fish’s Egg

Before he can do that, however, Link has to visit Mabe Village’s library. There’s a book there that can only be read with the magnifying glass, which explains the route Link needs to take inside the Egg’s maze. Also, coming down from the mountain, there’s one final owl statue.

“MUSIC, THE FISH STIRS IN THE EGG YOU ARE THERE…”

At last, it’s time to awaken the sleeper. As Link approaches the egg, the owl returns one more time, reminding Link everything we already know; this scene was probably meant for if Link went to the egg before he was ready to open it. Link approaches the egg and plays the Ballad of the Wind Fish on the ocarina, and is soon joined by the eight Instruments for a larger serenade. Instead of waking the Wind Fish, it merely cracks a hole in the egg. With encouragement from the owl, Link enters the egg.

The inside of the egg looks like a dungeon, but Link falls to the lower floor, which is a bunch of identical rooms with passages in all four cardinal directions. If Link follows the directions from the book in the library, he comes to another pit and jumps down to confront the final boss.

Next: Verily, it be the nature of dreams to end.

Majora's Mask: Frozen Gorons

Before heading up the mountain to meet the gorons, Link needs to gather some bombs and arrows. Losing all consumables is probably my least favorite part of the time loop mechanic, and it feels like a waste of precious time having to go out into Termina Field and hack away at bushes until they’re restocked. Also, on a hunch, I also went through the title deed trading sequence as far as it’s gone. The pass up to the mountain is blocked by a huge block of ice, which Link needs to break by knocking some stalactites free with arrows. Further up are some huge snowballs that need to be blown up.

The Mountain Village isn’t really much of a village. There’s a smithy, but its ability to smith is limited by the forge being frozen by all the cold. They say something about using hot spring water to thaw the forge, but Link doesn’t have any way to help with that right now, and I’ll wait for spring’s thaw before using their services. Outside, there’s a goron who’s stranded and starving, but Link doesn’t have anything for him just yet, either. There’s an owl statue here for quick travel, and then it’s time to head to the larger goron village. Getting there means crossing over a series of islands connected by rope bridges. Tingle’s flying over the center island, but it turns out I already have all his maps, so I don’t need to shoot him down and listen to him introduce himself right now. I did, so I could make sure I didn’t need any of his maps, but… I didn’t need to.

The gorons all seem to be huddling inside their homes for warmth, so there’s just one guy standing guard over the goron shrine. This is yet another case of can’t do anything just yet, so Link makes his way through the village and finds the owl. The owl leads Link over a series of invisible platforms to a cave. Hidden in the cave is the item that will make the return trip much easier, the Lens of Truth. There’s a chance to use the Lens in the cave to kill a skulltula and get a couple chests, then it’s back out and over the platforms, where Link finds a goron ghost waiting for him.

The ghost leads Link back down to the mountain village, then across the river to a wall with a network of hidden ladders. There are many wrong turns and dead ends on the ladder network; once at the top, Link follows the ghost into the Goron Graveyard. The ghost properly introduces himself as Darmani, a goron hero, and he tried heading to Snowhead Temple to try to break the wintry curse that’s killing his people. The winds claimed him, and so he asks Link to bring him back from the dead. That’s beyond Link’s power, so he simply plays the Song of Healing to ease Darmani’s pain. Darmani passes on the duty of saving the gorons on to Link, leaving a mask behind that will let Link assume his form.

Wearing Darmani’s mask, Link investigates the goron shrine. With Darmani dead, the elder has set out to try to fix the situation at Snowhead himself, and his son won’t sleep and his crying is keeping everyone else in the shrine awake and blowing out torches. Link finds the elder just outside the village, not having gotten very far before becoming encased in ice. Link thaws him out and asks him to help with his son. He’s so cold he can only come up with the first six notes of the lullaby he sings, but that’s enough for the son to teach Link the rest. Link puts the baby to sleep with the lullaby and can set out for the temple. The road to the temple requires Link to use the goron rolling ability to jump over gaps. Finally, Link comes to an owl statue in the temple’s shadow, so it’s time to wrap up this cycle.

Before returning to dawn of the first day, there are a few last things Link can do. Back in the goron shrine, if Link lights all the torches now that the baby’s asleep, the chandelier starts spinning. Link can goron roll into it and smash the pots, eventually discovering a rock sirloin that the starving stranded goron will appreciate, giving him a frog mask. Also in the goron village is a business scrub, who’ll sell a goron Link the second bomb capacity upgrade, and trade his deed to the flower to Deku Link. Link can then Dekucopter from the flower to yet another heart piece. And there’s one more heart piece he can get, playing Clock Town’s chest game in goron form. After that, there’s nothing left but to farm rupees and start over with a full day’s time to complete the next dungeon.

Next: Off to the races.

Link's Awakening: Eagle's Tower

The ascent up Mt. Tamaranch starts the same as the journey to the waterfall for Angler’s Tunnel. Link even passes by the same heart piece he saw but couldn’t get earlier. During the ascent, the owl comes back to tell Link that his final two dungeons are in the mountains, and since he’s probably not into misleading Link about critical information about the Wind Fish, we can assume he’s telling the truth here.

Up in the mountains, there’s a man living in a hut who’s thoroughly excited to see a flying rooster. In keeping with the general theme of the game, he resembles Luigi, so I’m going to assume he’s Tarin’s brother. Exploring the caves around the mountain, Link can finally get that heart piece [1] and finds the Bird Key to unlock the next dungeon, Eagle’s Tower.

Eagle’s Tower

Eagle’s Tower is designed around a central puzzle: throwing a heavy ball into four support pillars to bring the fourth floor crashing down to merge with the third floor. This is a really cool puzzle, slightly marred by the fact that controlling the ball can be a pain in the ass sometimes. There’s also several times where Link has to jump down to the floor below to land on ledges, and a sequence of walking on top of switch blocks.

The one failing of the dungeon is that the mirror shield doesn’t feel connected to anything; Link finds it rather early, and it can be useful against the boss, but it’s actually quite possible to complete the dungeon without it [2]. Rather than a separate miniboss and boss, Link goes up against the minions of the Grim Creeper twice. The first time, he summons groups of six bats to attack Link until Link can defeat an entire group. The second, and more memorable fight, takes place on top of the tower. There, the Grim Creeper rides an Evil Eagle and attacks Link. It starts with just making flybys, but after taking three hits, it starts divebombing Link, and hovering above the tower trying to push Link off. Falling causes no damage, but it does reset the fight.

On the other hand, if you realize a secret about the fight, it gets much easier. The eagle switches tactics after taking three hits, not losing a certain percentage of its life. So, if Link has the level 2 sword and hits the Eagle with spin attacks, the Eagle dies in those three hits and the harder phase never starts. As he dies, the Grim Creeper tells Link that he’s part of the dream, too. The seventh instrument Link gains is the Organ of Evening Calm. Link knows where he’s going next, so the voice tells him that the ocarina will be important instead.

Link comes out of Eagle’s Tower to discover his rooster friend is gone. Not to worry, he’s safe with Tarin’s brother, who’s holding onto the rooster’s ankles as it flies around his house. As Link continues on westward, he discovers Marin stranded on a broken bridge. Link pulls a pretty awesome maneuver, hookshotting across the bridge and grabbing Marin along the way, dragging her to safety. After thanking Link, Marin starts trying to stammer something to him, but Tarin shows up looking for her and she decides not to say it after all and leaves with Tarin. She doesn’t bring it up again if Link visits her in Mabe Village before completing the quest, either.

The owl comes back once she’s gone and says that she’d sang the Ballad of the Wind Fish in front of the egg, and that’s why the monsters took her and left her on the bridge. He reiterates that Link’s got to go west for the final instrument, and hints that he’s going to have to play Frog’s Song of Soul for something. Link passes through a cave to the western part of the mountains, and finds yet another home of the Mad Batter. Link continues his quest to annoy the poor creature, and this time is rewarded by having his arrow capacity doubled.

Next: Turtle Rock

[1] Although the cave that it’s in is the one leading to the western part of the mountains, and it won’t give a full heart, so maybe it’s better to wait.
[2] But you won’t get to Turtle Rock without it.

Majora’s Mask: Minigames

In a nice design feature, once the boss of a dungeon is defeated, Link gets the ability to teleport right to that boss from the dungeon entrance on future cycles and kill the boss to open up anything in the wider world that requires that specific dungeon being cleared. But I have a couple days left on this cycle anyway, so let’s take advantage of that to clear as much stuff as I can.

Near the Deku Palace in the swamp, there’s a house whose inhabitant bears a familiar curse. Thankfully, freeing him only requires killing 30 skulltulas, and they’re all in the basement of his house. This is basically a mini-dungeon with one type of enemy, and a lot of the skulltulas aren’t easy to find and/or kill and/or collect tokens from. It would have been much easier with a hookshot, but oh well. Once the skulltulas are cleared, the now uncursed man gives Link the Mask of Truth, which functions more or less the same as in Ocarina of Time.

The tourist center’s photo contest has ended, but Koume, once she’s rescued from the woods again, has a new idea: she’ll put the boat on rails and ride around dangling a target from her broom. If Link can hit the target 20 times before the boat ride ends without hitting Koume too many times, he gets a heart piece. My basic strategy for this boiled down to spray and pray, and I had one run end because I hit Koume too much. Once it’s done successfully without making too many holes in the witch, Link gets a heart piece.

Back in Termina Field, there are holes Link can fall down to find groups of four gossip stones. One of the stones in each group is larger than the others, and the Mask of Truth reveals the larger stone changes color if a song’s played near it. The four groups are linked; changing a stone’s color changes the corresponding stones in the other groups as well. Link only knows one of the songs the stones hint at, so he tracks down all four groups and plays the Sonata of Awakening for them, making them all green and getting a heart piece for his trouble.

On the third day, Link can go back to Romani Ranch and visit the entrance he didn’t the first time. There, a woman has set up a dog racetrack, and invites Link to bet on the dogs. With the Mask of Truth, Link can hear the dogs’ opinion of their chances before betting on them, and I never had one with a good opinion of its chances fail to place at least high enough to get my bet back. Actually winning second or first was a rare event, and Link spent most of the day here trying to pick winners. Once he finally won enough, he got a heart piece as a final reward.

There are more minigames, but one’s like the Deku Scrub Playground that requires winning three days in a row, and the other two are archery games which I’m kind of terrible at, so I’d be all for a new set of days even if this set weren’t close to running out.

Three Days of Learning That I Really, Really Hate Archery Games

The three day minigame is run by Honey and Darling, the equivalent of the dancing couple I found so amusing in Ocarina of Time. They dance in the center of a spinning platform while Link gets to try to hit things on the wall before the song finishes. The first day is bombchu bowling, the second day is bombsketball, and the third day is archery. There’s a – I don’t know if it’s a glitch or intentional, but if Honey and/or Darling gets hit by the weapons, they complain about it, and while the text box is on the screen, the timer doesn’t count down. I only discovered this in the third day when my spray and pray style, plus the way archery focus works meaning they constantly entered the line of fire, meant they sometimes got hit, whereas I’d have had to seriously pancake up to hit them with the explosives. I’m better at the other two games, so that was the one I needed this for anyway. Anyway, the first two days they give Link 50 rupees, and the third day a piece of heart.

Then, because you can never have too many archery minigames, there’s one in town, and one near the swamp. The one in town has Link shooting at octoroks, trying to hit the red ones while avoiding the blue ones. Getting a good enough score on this is fairly easy; getting a perfect score is frustrating. The swamp version has waves of enemies who all need to be shot to get a reward. This wouldn’t be bad, except the wolfos and guays can permanently disappear if Link doesn’t shoot them in time, and the reward tiers here are Perfect and Even More Perfect. For both games, the first reward is a quiver upgrade, and the second reward is a heart piece.

By time I get through all this, the moon’s getting awfully close to doing its thing. So – you know. Rupees in the bank, Song of Time, new cycle.

Next: Winter is coming.

Link's Awakening: Face Shrine

Face Shrine

The Face Shrine comes at a pivotal point in the game: Link has just learned the truth about Koholint Island, but has to continue his quest to save the Wind Fish. And yet it’s perhaps the most disappointing dungeon in the game [1]. I will say, however, it’s easy to see the “face” in the map design.

Wizzrobes show up, because of course they do; these wizzrobes are easiest to kill with bombs. It’s a perfect opportunity to practice the bomb arrow maneuver, or play it safe, whack them with the boomerang to stun them, and drop a bomb on them. Also making a return appearance is the floor tile trap, which is even less of a threat now because they can be blocked by the shield, even the basic shield, so it’s just a matter of sitting there waiting it out [2].

The dungeon introduces a new type of recurring puzzle: flip two horse head statues until they both land rightside up. But whoever designed this puzzle forgot that a key element of a good puzzle is thought. There’s no thought required to flipping the statues, just chance, time, and not getting killed in the meantime. In other words, it’s mildly interesting the first time, when it’s not clear what to do. Every other time could be replaced by a button that has a 25% chance of opening the way forward and a 75% chance of popping up a message “Thank you, Link, but our button operator is in another castle,” and gives you another chance in 5 seconds [3].

The dungeon’s treasure is the level 2 power bracelet, and... yeah, that’s kind of disappointing too. Unlike with the Titan’s Mitt in A Link to the Past, there haven’t been any obstacles Link couldn’t lift with just the level 1 bracelet… although the fact that it was labeled such probably should have been a hint that a more powerful version would be needed later down the line. The level 2 bracelet is useful for fighting back against the miniboss, Smasher, who’s by far the best part of the dungeon. Smasher’s got a big ball, and Link can pick it up and throw it back at him. It’s a fun fight.

The Nightmare, Facade… is a giant face on the ground. He throws floor tiles at Link, then starts opening holes. The weakness, of course, is the face, and Link has to drop bombs to kill it. It’s not as completely uninspired as the Angler Fish was, but still, do better. Facade does have one neat feature: Now that Link knows Koholint Island’s nature, the bosses start trying to make him question if he’s any more real than anything else on the island. Which has a bit of a meta feeling to it: of course he’s only one layer realer than anything else.

Even the dungeon’s Instrument of the Sirens is bizarre: the Coral Triangle. Seriously? A triangle? Don’t get me wrong, I played percussion in school and respect the hell out of those who do, but this is what the Sirens decided they needed to complete their ensemble? Anway, since the only area of the map with a significant number of squares still to uncover are in the mountains to the north [4], that’s where Link has to go for the last phase, and sure enough, that’s where the voice tells him to go.

The Mountains

Before Link can go to the mountains, there’s one more thing he needs to do. A flying rooster is buried under the weathercock in Mabe Village, and now with the upgraded power bracelet, Link can push the weathercock out of the way, find the rooster’s bones, and reanimate it with Frog’s Song of Soul. Now, if Link picks up the rooster, he can fly over long or irregularly-shaped gaps. And, in the most hilariously broken combo in the game, if he also equips the boomerang and throws it before picking up the rooster, the boomerang hovers beneath his feet, killing anything that dares enter its path while Link is invincible above harm.

Next: Eagle’s Tower

[1] The final dungeon is literally just a maze of twisty little passages rooms all alike, and even it’s more memorable.
[2] Also, there are no wallmasters to make continuous movement necessary.
[3] Time and odds of the horse head puzzle are approximate.
[4] Well, and possibly the rapids minigame.

Majora's Mask: Woodfall Temple

I don’t know how long dungeons are in this game, and would rather allow too much time and end up Groundhog Daying back to the first day halfway through Day 2 than end up racing the clock to defeat the boss, so I have Link play the Inverted Song of Time to allow as much time in the dungeon as possible, then warp to Woodfall and use the Sonata of Awakening to open the path to the Woodfall Temple; all it takes is Dekucoptering from across the swamp.

As the great fairy in Clock Town mentioned, each dungeon in this game has a bunch of stray fairies that can be gathered up to give Link access to other great fairies. The fairy mask helps by identifying when a fairy is near and attracting the fairy to Link if it’s not trapped. There are fifteen in all, and it’s generally a fun little diversion rounding them up.

The dungeon’s treasure is the Hero’s Bow, and it’s about goddamn time Link gets a ranged weapon he can use in human form. The addition of masks to Link’s items is wreaking havoc with the nice system I had set up for using the equipped item slots in Ocarina: I had the boomerang/hookshot pinned to one slot, the ocarina to another, with the third usually set to the slingshot/bow but could be set for whatever other item Link needed at the moment. Now any equipped mask needs a slot, and I had it set where the boomerang/hookshot went, which was usually fine except when I needed to ranged attack, I’d instinctively hit that button which would take Link out of Deku scrub form, taking away his one ranged attack.

The turtle-like snappers Link saw on his path through the Woods of Mystery are here in the dungeon, and Deku Link can take them out by diving into a flower and popping up from underneath them. This is a good skill to learn, because one of the dungeon’s minibosses rides a snapper during the second phase of the battle and has to be continually dismounted.

The dungeon’s boss is a masked jungle warrior named Odolwa. I’m pretty sure the idea for this fight is to stun him with the bow and thwack him with the sword while he’s stunned, but after doing that once or twice and then being swarmed by insects I had to fight off, I decided to go with a different tack. Namely, I charged at him, blocked or dodged his attacks, and hacked at his shins till he died. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to work, but screw it, it did.

After Odolwa is defeated, Link is transported to… I’m not sure what it is, actually. It’s misty and cloudy, and there’s a humanoid figure in the distance that starts singing a song that Link repeats on his ocarina that turns out to be called the Oath to Order. The figure says “Call us” before Link returns to the normal world.

With Odolwa gone, the swamps have cleared up, and Link can free the Deku princess to take her home. She’s a little more accommodating than Ruto was, and is able to be transported in Link’s bottle, which I was shocked to learn was empty because I’d had a fairy before resetting time. I guess it’s better than discovering bottle contents don’t carry over between loops by Link not being fairy-rezzed if Odolwa had killed him. Before taking the princess home, Link stops at the nearby fairy fountain to drop off the stray fairies, and the reconstructed great fairy teaches him the spin attack.

When the Deku princess is released in the Deku throne room, she’s rather furious about the treatment of the monkey and jumps up and down on the king (one of the scrubs in the background imitates her, too) and demands the monkey’s release. Out of gratitude to Link, she offers him a reward, which involves entering a cave and then chasing the Deku butler as he runs through. I tried to do this with the Deku mask, but yeesh. It’s much easier, if slightly twitchy, with the bunny hood. The butler apologizes for his competitiveness, saying that Link reminds him of his missing son. The reward turns out to be a pig mask, the Mask of Scents, which can be used to find mushrooms.

All in all, this took just over a (slowed down) day.

Next: Why.

Link's Awakening: The Truth and the Lie

The End of the Trading Sequence

With the hookshot, Link can visit the mermaid statue, which is missing a scale. He uses the scale he got from the actual mermaid, opening a cave. Inside the cave are invisible enemies, but once Link gets the cave’s treasure, a magnifying glass, they show up. The trading sequence itself is now complete, so to recap: Link spent 10 rupees to win a Yoshi doll, which he traded for a ribbon, which he traded for canned food, which he traded for bananas, which he gave to monkeys who left behind a stick, which he gave to Tarin who left behind a honeycomb, which he for a pineapple, which he traded for a hibiscus, which he gave to a demanding goat who further asked him to deliver a letter, which he delivered and was rewarded with a broom, which he traded for a fishing hook, which he gave to a fisherman who caught a mermaid’s necklace, which he traded for one of the mermaid’s scales, which opened a cave where he got a magnifying glass.

But wait! There’s more! The magnifying glass lets Link see a goriya in a cave on the shores. The goriya offers to trade an item for one of Link’s, so Link figures the shovel’s no longer needed and makes the trade and gets the boomerang. And this isn’t the boomerang he’s as he’s used to it, oh, no. This boomerang will actually kill most enemies, often in a single hit. Anti-fairies become fairies. Even the final boss can be killed in a single shot from the boomerang. Only the fact that things like the shield, pegasus boots, power bracelet, and roc’s feather need to be equipped to use keep the boomerang/sword combo from being a near-permanent fixture.

There’s a heart piece in a cave in the northeast corner of Animal Village, and then there’s one more stop before it’s on to the next dungeon. This doesn’t have to be done just yet, and requires 300 rupees rather soon after buying the bow depleted Link’s funds, but as long as Link has 10, he can refill his rupees with the Mabe Village claw game. Southeast of Mabe Village is a bunch of signs arranged in a loose pattern, and if Link follows the direction each sign points in to the next one, a cave will open up and he’ll meet Wart from Super Mario Bros. 2, here known by his Japanese name, Mamu. Mamu appears to be some kind of rock star, complete with an Elvisesque “Thank you… thank you very much.” He teaches Link the third and final song for the ocarina, Frog’s Song of Soul, which apparently has the power to “liven up unliving things.”

Southern Face Shrine

As Link approaches the Face Shrine, the owl reappears, telling Link that there are two shrines, and he should visit the southern one first, where the ruins speak of the Wind Fish and Link will learn something. Before entering the southern shrine’s grounds, Link finds another owl statue.

“THE WIND FISH SLUMBERS LONG… THE HERO’S LIFE GONE…”

I’m not sure what to make of this. A simple statement that Link can’t return to his life outside the island until he wakes the Wind Fish? A warning that if the Wind Fish doesn’t wake soon, Link may not have a life to get back to?

The southern Face Shrine’s grounds are populated by armos. They’re immune to the sword, but can be killed with the bow or boomerang, or simply ignored. Inside the shrine itself, Link fights an armos knight miniboss, completing the set of Light World dungeon bosses from A Link to the Past. After defeating the miniboss, Link finds a relief of the Wind Fish with a message:

“TO THE FINDER…
“THE ISLE OF KOHOLINT, IS BUT AN ILLUSION…
“HUMAN, MONSTER, SEA, SKY…
“A SCENE ON THE LID OF A SLEEPER’S EYE…
“AWAKE THE DREAMER, AND KOHOLINT WILL VANISH MUCH LIKE A BUBBLE ON A NEEDLE…
“CASTAWAY, YOU SHOULD KNOW THE TRUTH!”

So Koholint Island is only real because the Wind Fish is dreaming about it, and when he wakes, it’ll be gone. That explains so much, from the general surreal atmosphere, to the Mario cameos, to why no one except Marin seems able to contemplate a life outside the island.

On Link leaving the shrine, the Owl comes back and lies his ass off. Despite being the one who told Link to come to the shrine, now he says that no one knows for sure if the shrine’s telling the truth. If it’s not telling the truth, what’s the point of sending Link to read it? Of course, despite what he says, the owl knows for sure that the shrine is accurate, but I suppose he senses that Link’s resolve is wavering: Can he really complete the quest, knowing that it’ll mean everyone on the island ceases to exist? So he lies.

Not that that’s really a justification. Fuck you, owl.

Next: Face Shrine

Majora's Mask: Exploring the Swamp

Okay, the vacation’s over, it’s time to get back to work figuring out how to save Clock Town. After grabbing some rupees in case he needs them (there’s a silver rupee in a chest in town that’s pretty easy to get to with the bunny hood), Link and Tatl head south to the swamp. Tatl sees a carving of the Skull Kid with her and Tael on a tree near the swamp entrance, providing a perfect segue to a flashback of how the two of them met the Skull Kid and became his friends. After a few scenes of the three playing together and making the carving, we see the Skull Kid steal Majora’s Mask. The whole thing makes the Skull Kid look a little more sympathetic, like he’s just one more person who needs saving from the mask’s evil power.

On the road into the swamp, there’s a heart piece in a tree for Link to collect, and Tingle’s floating overhead just waiting to be shot down for his chance to sell a couple more maps. His introduction speech is getting really old, and I’d admire Link’s patience with him if it wasn’t apparently supposed to be shared by the player. A little farther into the swamp Link meets Tingle’s father running a tourist center and complaining about his son. Outside the swamp, there’s a Deku scrub wanting to move to greener pastures, and I didn’t start the trading sequence so I’ll have to come back to this in a bit.

The swamp’s water is poisonous, so instead of Link swimming to explore, Deku Link hops between lily pads to go deeper into the swamp. He passes by a potion shop to find a Lost Woods-esque area called the Woods of Mystery. A monkey offers to show Link the way through the woods if he can keep up, and leads Link to an injured witch, Koume. Link doesn’t have anything to give the witch to help her, so he has to double back to the potion shop, where Kotake, Koume’s twin sister works; Kotake gives Link a potion to help Koume. Link brings the potion to Koume, and gets to keep his first bottle as a token of gratitude. Koume returns to her job at the tourist shack; as Link exits the woods, a bunch of monkeys ask him to help another monkey who’s been taken prisoner by the Deku scrubs.

Link returns to the tourist center, where Koume gives him a boat ride deeper into the swamp, and a pictograph box to take a picture to enter in the center’s contest. She drops him off at the Deku Palace, which will only let him in if he’s wearing the Deku mask, and even then only to see the monkey’s humiliation. Apparently the Deku scrubs believe the monkey kidnapped their princess and may have eaten her, but the monkey insists that the princess’ is in trouble and it’s not his fault but someone needs to help her out. Before leaving the throne room, Link uses the camera to take a picture of the Deku King. As Link leaves the throne room, the monkey’s brother comes to him to suggest sneaking into the cage using a magic bean to reach the upper level of the palace. The bean salesman is hiding in a hole under the palace gardens, which Link has to sneak through or the guards will throw him out. Beans work differently in this game because we don’t have seven years to wait for them to grow; spring water will immediately do the trick. Also hidden in the gardens is a heart piece.

Link leaves the palace, goes around the side, and finds a place to plant the bean. Then he sneaks back into the palace and uses flowers to platform over the gardens and work his way into the monkey’s cage. The monkey explains that he and the princess went to the Woodfall Temple to try to cleanse the swamp, but the princess got captured and he escaped, only he can’t convince the Deku scrubs that’s the truth. So he teaches Link the Sonata of Awakening, the song to open the temple, and unfortunately Link’s playing it to confirm he knows it attracts too much attention. Link is thrown out and the scrubs begin to prepare to punish the monkey.

There’s nothing Link can do for the monkey right now, so he heads for the temple. It’s a lot of platforming and enemies who like to knock Link off platforms. Before Link enters Woodfall, an owl (Kaepora Gaebora?) comes to him to teach him the Song of Soaring, which will let Link teleport to any of the owl statues around Termina that he’s activated. It’s a much more useful quick travel system than Ocarina of Time had. In Woodfall, there’s another heart piece just waiting to be claimed, and an owl statue conveniently located by the temple entrance.

I’m going to wait for a fresh cycle before trying to tackle a dungeon, so let’s wrap some stuff up and reset. Link uses the Song of Soaring to zip back to Clock Town, and gets the Moon’s Tear and trades it for the flower title deed. Then he teleports to the swamp tourist center and gives the deed to the scrub, who trades his flower’s deed for it. Link uses the flower to get on top of the center where there’s another heart piece, and goes inside to enter his picture in the contest. The man is impressed by Link managing to get a picture of the Deku King and awards him another heart piece. Then it’s back to Clock Town, put rupees in the bank, and play the Song of Time to start anew.

Next: Save the princess, save the monkey.

Link's Awakening: Catfish's Maw

The Ghost and the Last Seashells

With the flippers, there are few things Link can do before getting far from the water. First, to the west of the dungeon, is a cave with Manbo, child of the Sun Fish. Manbo offers to teach Link a song for his ocarina, and the dancing fish and eye rolls make for an entertaining sequence. (OH!) This is quite a useful song, as playing it will warp Link to Manbo’s Pond, just outside of Crazy Tracy’s, or if in a dungeon, back to the dungeon entrance. To the east of the last dungeon is a cave with a heart piece hidden underwater, and there’s another one in the castle moat.

By time Link finishes rounding up all that stuff, he’s probably being stalked by a ghost. The ghost is rather insistent, demanding every so often to be taken to its home, and making a noise every time the screen changes so Link will remember he’s there. The noise gets old, fast. So Link takes the ghost to its home, where it looks around for a while and becomes even sadder than it was before, asking Link to take it to is grave. The grave is the one that’s apart from the cemetery, and once the ghost is there, it tells Link to look under a jar in its home. Link returns to the home and finds an eighteenth seashell. While in the area, Link gets another seashell, hidden on a small island near the ghost’s house. The Mad Batter makes another appearance in a flooded cave in the area, this time doubling Link’s bomb capacity.

The next stop is Animal Village, where Marin’s still entertaining everyone with her song. Inside one of the houses is a goat who expected Link to bring her a hibiscus, which he now has thanks to Papahl. She takes the flower and asks Link to deliver a letter to Mr. Write near the forest. Write gladly receives the letter and shows Link a picture of his lovely pen pal… Princess Peach. Link is too kind to tell him the truth, and takes a broom as a reward for his service. The broom goes to Mrs. Ulrira in Mabe Village, who gives Link a fishing hook.

While in Mabe Village, now is the time to buy the bow if Link hasn’t already bought or stolen it. He can also wrap up another goal now: on a previously-inaccessible island in the waters leading to Key Cavern, there’s a seashell hiding under a bush. With that last seashell grabbed, Link can go to Seashell Mansion and get the level 2 sword, which doubles his attack strength and can shoot sword beams while he’s at full health [1].

We can’t quite wrap up the trading sequence yet, but it’s getting closer. In the bay around the dungeon, there’s a mermaid who’s lost her swimsuit or necklace, depending on the game version. The official English version is necklace, so we’ll go with that. Anyway, under the bridge the owl statue earlier alluded to, there’s a fisherman, who takes the fishing hook and catches the necklace for Link, which he returns to the mermaid and gets a mermaid scale.

Catfish’s Maw

I don’t know. If this is supposed to be a catfish, it’s a pretty abstract one. Actually, it looks kind of like the anerus from Adventure of Link. Bloopers join the list of Mario characters who make an appearance in the game, attacking Link during the side-scrolling segments.

This dungeon has two minibosses. Link has to fight Master Stalfos four times because he flees the first three before Link can finish him off. He also steals the dungeon’s treasure before Link can get it, so it’s not until the fourth battle – which is annoyingly well-hidden – that Link gets the hookshot. The second miniboss is a pair of gohmas, whose attacks have simplified; they can only shoot beams when their eyes are open, and sometimes they charge instead of shooting beams. Either way, their weakness remains the same: shoot the eye.

The final boss is Slime Eel, which punches a bunch of holes in the room, sticks its tail up through the hole in the floor, and pokes its head out of the ones on the wall. Link has to drag the head out of the wall holes to be able to attack its weak spot. Slime Eel seems almost gleeful upon defeat, taunting Link that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, hinting at some secret about the island. An island secret is further hinted at by the guiding voice when Link picks up the Wind Marimba, pointing him to a shrine.

Next: The truth.

[1] There are six more seashells, which after Link gets the sword upgrade, become rupees instead. So I’ll treat them like the various rupee rewards scattered around the island: I probably got them, but I don’t feel the need to document them.

Majora's Mask: Six Happiness Seals

First Night in Clock Town

There’s a lot to do in the wee hours of the morning/night on the first day. Shortly after midnight, a thief accosts a woman carrying items for her shop; Link can stun him with a bubble and return her items to her, and she rewards him with a Blast Mask which lets him blow stuff up at point-blank range (yes, it hurts), and tells him to stop by the store tomorrow. The Stock Pot Inn’s doors are locked after check-in time, but Link can Dekucopter his way into a second-floor entrance and look around. There’s not much of interest, but there is a hand sticking out of a toilet and desperate for paper. Link can’t help him just yet, but he goes back outside, finds the business scrub selling his flower, and brings the deed back to Mr. Handy. Mr. Handy repays him by bringing out a heart piece that fell in, and Link apparently has no problem using a heart piece that had fallen into a toilet given to him by a hand that just been used to wipe its owner’s bum.

In the little secluded area where Link found the missing piece of the great fairy, there’s the game’s equivalent of the organ player from the Kakariko windmill, still playing the Song of Storms. He tells Link he was once part of an animal troupe, and was jealous of the leader’s Handle Animal skill, and stole his mask; after the confession, he gives the Bremen Mask to Link. North of town, there’s a dancing ghost who teaches Link his dance and gives him a mask in the hopes that the dance will be spread further. Link gets his chance when he finds a pair of twin sister dancers wearing really really short dresses who are trying to figure out new moves for the festival. He puts on the ghost’s mask and teaches the sisters the dance, and they give him a piece of heart out of gratitude.

Falling Down Holes

Link returns to the Astral Observatory and uses the telescope again. He notices the business scrub who bought the Moon's Tear flying over the town and landing in a hole in Termina Field near the observatory. So, it’s time to run out into the field and fall down holes. The scrub’s still in the hole Link saw him fly into, and sells him a heart piece to keep the location a secret to everybody. (He abandons it anyway, just to be on the safe side.) There are two more holes: one near where Link saw the ghost dancer with a pair of dodongos inside, and one near the takkuri’s spawn point with a peahat. Falling in these holes and killing the enemies therein awards Link two more pieces of heart.

Going past the takkuri leads Link to the Milk Road, which will ultimately lead to Romani Ranch, but the way is blocked by a giant boulder. A man is chipping away at the boulder, and tells Link to come back tomorrow and maybe it’ll be gone. There’s not much else here, except Tingle. Shooting Tingle down lets Link buy maps from him… after Tingle goes through his whole introduction speech again. Back in town, Link can buy a bomb bag from the woman whose inventory he saved, and even skip right to having the first bomb capacity upgrade.

Romani Ranch

On the third day, the boulder is gone blocking access to the ranch. The music is the same from Lon Lon Ranch in Ocarina of Time, and as Link wanders the ranch, he discovers that the people here have taken in his horse. But something terrible has happened. There’s a young girl more than a little reminiscent of Malon in the fields with a terrible expression on her face and unable to say much. Her older sister (who resembles the older Malon) in the barn blames herself what happened to her, as well as to their cows, because she didn’t listen. There’s not much Link can do for them except add their names to the notebook and hope that on a later rotation he’s able to get past the boulder in time to prevent whatever happened.

In the cucco house, the man tending the chicks says he’s not too upset about the world ending, but he wishes he could have seen his chicks grow up. Remembering what he was told about the Bremen mask, Link puts it on and starts marching around the area, and the chicks all fall in line behind him. This is a really cute sequence, between the cheerful music Link’s playing and the little lemons lining up. Once they’re all caught, the chicks grow one-by-one into full-grown cuccos, and the man is happy to see it and has no regrets about his impending demise. He gives Link the Bunny Hood, which now allows Link to run faster. After a brief stop to kill the takkuri one last time and drop all the rupees in the bank, it’s finally time to reset the clock and start over.

Next: Monkey business.

Link's Awakening: Angler's Tunnel

Before going to Animal Village, there’s some fun to be had with Marin in Mabe Village. She reacts with horror if Link abuses the cuccos, but sometimes encourages him… probably hoping he gets divebombed. She seems to love watching him dig, but isn’t so graceful following him down the well. The best one is if Link takes her to the claw game, which she wants to play, and it’s well worth the 10 rupees to let her have her fun.
But eventually we run out of things to do, so Marin needs to go wake the walrus. The walrus wakes at her song, then promptly keels over into the water. Then a rabbit comes asking Marin to sing for Animal Village, so she leaves while Link continues his quest. Before heading into the desert, there’s one more thing to get: a seashell west of Animal Village, via south and back north across a bridge, then buried next to an owl statue that hints at a secret under the bridge.

Yarna Desert

The desert is home to yet another Mario crossover character: pokey, the cactus monster. In the southeast corner of the desert, there’s a seashell hidden under rocks. But the reason to come here is in the northwest corner: a lanmola guarding the key for the next dungeon. This lanmola is apparently upset that moldorms have gotten all the attention for resetting boss fights, because it fights in a giant area draining sand toward the middle, and if Link ends up in the center, he falls through to a cave underneath.

After defeating the lanmola, it’s easiest to let Link and the key fall through to the cave, because the northern wall can be bombed, revealing another heart piece. Coming up from the cave, Link finds another one of those owl statues, and this one’s even stranger than usual.

“SEA BEARS FOAM, SLEEP BEARS DREAMS. BOTH END IN THE SAME WAY CRASSSH!”

After I stopped trying to figure out what the pancake sleep bears are, this became probably my favorite quote in the game. It’s a bit of foreshadowing about what we’ll learn about Koholint Island and the game’s ending, and somehow quite evocative. Anyway, Link has the key, so we’re done here, and the owl comes to visit again, confirming that the next destination should be a waterfall.

Tal Tal Heights and Angler’s Tunnel

Unlocking Angler’s Tunnel is pretty easy, but the trip there takes a roundabout route. The journey through Tal Tal Heights is mostly a preview of things to come nearer to the end; for instance, a heart piece Link can’t get to just yet. About the only significant encounter that can be finished on the journey to the waterfall is meeting Papahl, who, true to his word, has gotten lost in the mountains and is starving. Link gives him the pineapple, and he gives Link a hibiscus, which if he talked to everyone in Animal Village, he’d know where that’s going, but that can wait till after the dungeon.

Finally, Link reaches the top of the waterfall, and following the owl’s advice, does a Richard Kimble to reach the dungeon entrance. This is the first dungeon that doesn’t look like anything to me; I can maybe see a castle tower, or a saguaro cactus, or a hand, but none of those relate to the theme of the dungeon. Given the location and the amount of water in the dungeon, I don’t think there can be any doubt what the treasure in this dungeon is going to be, and sure enough, it’s the flippers. There’s a pretty neat puzzle in the dungeon where Link has to step on tiles in one room in a certain order, then remember that order for a different room with the same tile layout.

New enemies include cheep-cheeps, critters wearing protective iron masks that aren’t always easy to hit from behind, and guys who walk around with their arms and legs splayed way the hell out. The miniboss is called Cue Ball, and runs around a track; Link can jump over him and hit him from behind, or thwack him when he corners, or any number of other strategies. He’s pretty easy, but not the easiest boss in the dungeon. That dishonor goes to the giant angler fish who’s the Nightmare this time and… okay, I have no idea what they were going for here, but unless it was “there’s no fscking way you’re losing this fight unless you’re not ready for what lies beyond anyway,” they failed miserably.

The fourth Instrument of the Sirens is the Surf Harp, and the voice informs him that his road leads into the bay next.

Next: Catfish’s Maw

Majora's Mask: Human Again

Link goes back into the clock tower to meet with the mask salesman again. The salesman is happy that Link got his ocarina back and teaches him the Song of Healing. Link plays the song and returns to normal, keeping a Deku scrub mask to allow him to transform back should he wish it. The salesman then asks for the mask the Skull Kid stole.

Well, crap.

The salesman explains that the mask he wants is indeed Majora’s Mask, which is said to have been used in witchcraft and now gives its wearer “an evil and wicked power.” Like, the ability to crash the moon into the world. So, Link intends to honor the original quest and get the mask back. After all, he got the ocarina, and thanks to the Song of Time, he’s got as long as he needs. How much harder can the mask be?

As Link leaves the clock tower again, Tatl says that the four areas Tael mentioned lie to the north, east, south, and west of Clock Town. She has no idea what he meant by “the four who are there,” but we’ll figure that out when we go. She first points Link to the swamp south of town, but Link just got his human form back and is a little freer to explore Clock Town, plus the Song of Time pretty much kills any urgency no matter how close the moon gets, so let’s take a three-day vacation to explore the city and a little of its surrounding environments, and heck, use the inverted Song of Time to make those three days more like… I don’t know, it felt like forever, to be honest. In hindsight, it may have been a bit overkill. On the bright side, Tatl has stopped bugging Link about what to do next.

Link’s lost the deed to the deku flower, so he goes to the astral laboratory, lets the Skull Kid wiggle his butt at him again, and claims another Moon’s Tear. On the way out, the leader of the gang of kids asks how he figured out their code, and figures if he did that he should be in the gang, and formally inducts Link into the Bombers Secret Society of Justice. It turns out the group’s main purpose is to help people with problems, so Link should fit right in. He gets a notebook to help keep track of sidequests people he’s yet to help, with the Bombers themselves the first entry and marked off with a happiness seal.

The Great Fairy offered further help to Link if he ever returned to human form, so that’s the next stop. Except, oops, she’s back to being exploded, so Link needs to round up the stray fairy again, return her to the Great Fairy’s pond to be reassembled. She gives Link a Great Fairy’s Mask, which will help him find other stray fairies. It’s also worth revisiting the Deku Scrub Playground, as it turns out part of my difficulty was that it gets harder each day, so I was jumping right into Hard Mode without having a chance to familiarize myself with Easy Mode. Link gets 50 rupees each time he sets a record, and a piece of heart (and banned from playing further… at least for that cycle) if he does it all three days. And finally for this area, there’s a heart piece in a tree that Link can get now that he’s human again.

With the Inverted Song of Time running, I had a lot of time to kill on this cycle, so Link spent a good deal of time out in Termina Field. Most of that was headed to the entrance of the Milk Road and fighting the takkuri, a big bird that made its home there. The takkuri knocks rupees loose from Link when it hits, but that’s okay because when it dies it drops more rupees than Link can hold (max 99) [1]. So, I’d take these back to the bank and come back for another round. After Link deposits 200 rupees, he gets the Adult’s Wallet, increasing his rupee capacity to 200 – still not more than the takkuri drops. I got the bank account up over 1000 this cycle, which rewarded Link with a measly 5 extra rupees in interest.

In West Clock Town, there are a couple more heart pieces Link can get now. One involves mastery of a Z-targeting swordsmanship game, cutting ten logs in half before they despawn. The second involves talking to the postman, who’s playing a game where he tries to stop at exactly 10 seconds. I used a stopwatch to help me with this, and got it on the third try, which is better luck than I usually have even with a stopwatch. (My cat was not impressed, glaring at me when I shouted in triumph.)

Next: A helping hand.

[1] I've since discovered it can steal Link's sword or a bottle, which is less okay, and I was just lucky the first several times I killed it.

Link's Awakening: Key Cavern

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening – Key Cavern

Key Cavern

Key Cavern is a two-floor dungeon, with each floor shaped like a key. New enemies include bombites, walking bombs, some of which go bouncing off walls when hit until they explode, others try to close in on Link before they explode. There’s also pairodds, bird critters that teleport across the room when Link gets too close. And finally, yet another Mario crossover: thwomps. And the miniboss is a pair of dodongo snakes, which are pretty much exactly what they sound like: snakes with a hard shell who love to eat bombs but they do funny things to their stomach.

The first door offers an item test for Link: He needs the power bracelet to throw a pot at the door and make it open. Then there’s the treasure, the pegasus boots, which largely have the same function they did in A Link to the Past, only now he can combine them with the roc’s feather to make running jumps, an ability needed to get the Nightmare’s Key.

The Nightmare is Slime Eyes, a pair of eye monsters that starts the battle fused into a single creature. They also start hiding in the ceiling, taunting Link that he’ll never find them. The pegasus boots are needed once more, charging into a wall to dislodge them. Then as Link attacks, their connection will strain until it reaches the breaking point and Link can charge straight through to split them. Then it’s just a matter of finishing off both eyes, and Link can claim the Sea Lily’s Bell and hear the voice telling him something’s hidden in the waterfall.

The owl shows up when Link exits the dungeon, once again saying that when Link has all the Instruments and plays them for the Wind Fish, the Wind Fish will wake and Link can leave the island. It tells Link his next destination should be Yarna Desert, which conflicts a bit with the other voice directing him to a waterfall, but the simplest explanation has him going to the desert for a key to the waterfall dungeon, which is exactly the case.

Getting Stuff

As Link returns to Mabe Village, he finds Tarin looking at a honeycomb. Tarin asks Link for the stick the monkeys left behind, and… let’s say Marin probably got her brains from her mother. Yeah, Tarin beats the honeycomb with the stick until it falls out of the tree, but before he can do anything with it a horde of angry bees chases him offscreen. Link takes the honeycomb; if he finds Tarin later, Tarin says he’s lost his taste for honey for now, so Link has successfully completed another trade. Near the tree with the honeycomb is a cave traversable with the pegasus boots, and Link can claim a sixth heart piece.

There are couple seashells that can be knocked out of trees, one near the eastern entrance to Mabe Village, the other down by Tail Cave. Seashell Mansion doesn’t reward 15 seashells with a bonus, so there’s no need to drop everything and head back there.

Mabe Village has a shrine blocked off by rocks. Inside, Link finds a bed and takes a nap, entering a dream cave. There are a bunch of arm-mimics (shyguys without masks) in the cave, and those weird barriers meant to be plowed through with the pegasus boots. Link’s reward for fully exploring the cave is a bunch of rupees and an ocarina – not the easiest-to-find Instrument of the Sirens, but still a useful tool. Link needs to learn three songs for the ocarina, and the first comes from Marin, who’s singing the Ballad of the Wind Fish by the village weathercock. She teaches Link a version of the song, although if he tries to accompany her she says he’s not very good at it.

Marin’s Chance to Shine

South of the Seashell Manor, Link finds a sign pointing toward Animal Village, but the river is just a little too wide to jump across, even with the pegasus boots [1] Fortunately, near the sign is a hidden tunnel that leads under the river, and Animal Village is just a short walk away. Passing through the village, Link finds the way into the desert blocked by a giant sleeping walrus, who seems to be dreaming of Marin. Back in Animal Village, Link finds a bear chef who trades the honeycomb for a pineapple. The bear will then suggest that Link bring Marin to sing for the walrus and wake it up.

Fortunately, there’s teleport squares near both villages, so Link can zap back to Mabe Village quickly. Marin’s left the town to go down to the shores, and Link follows and finds her staring out at the ocean. Unlike everyone else on the island, Marin’s curious about what lies beyond the seas, and knows there has to be something out there because Link had to come from somewhere. She talks about being a seagull and making a wish to the Wind Fish before checking to make sure Link’s listening to her.

Link brings up how he needs to get into the desert and she may be able to wake the walrus to allow him to pass, and Marin agrees to go with him… and Link immediately holds her up over his head in his standard Item Get! pose.

Next: Link’s big chance.

[1] I think. I’ve never been able to do it, at any rate.

Majora's Mask: Ocarina of Time

Clock Town is the town that was shown in the intro, and everybody’s working toward a big celebration on the third day. Deku Link seems to be beneath notice, so he’s free to go about trying to get his ocarina and the salesman’s mask back. Tatl suggests visiting a Great Fairy in town, which is a good idea in theory, but the fairy apparently got careless dealing with the Skull Kid, and got blasted into a bunch of tiny fairies, and one of them’s gone missing. So, of course, it’s up to Link to track down the missing fairy and bring her back to the fountain, where the Great Fairy becomes whole again and rewards Link for his help by giving him the ability to blow bubbles.

The bubbles allow Link to pop a balloon, gaining the attention of the leader of a gang of kids running around town. The leader challenges Link to find them all in a game of hide-and-seek before sunrise. They’re easy to find, but difficult to catch unless Link hits them with more bubbles, which stun them and let Link close the gap. And so, Link wins the game, but the group apparently has a “no scrubs” policy and refuses to let him join. They are fairly sporting, however, and teach him the password to the tunnel to the astral observatory.

After going through the tunnel, Link finds a scarecrow who teaches him further tricks he can do with the Song of Time once he learns it. The astronomer, Professor Shikashi, complains about the Skull Kid’s antics and offers to let Link take a look through his telescope. Link sees the Skull Kid atop the clock tower; the Skull Kid seems to realize he’s being watched because he does something to the moon to make a Moon’s Tear fall, and then taunts Link by waving his butt at him.

Link can take the Moon’s Tear back to Clock Town, where he finds a business scrub willing to sell Link the flower it’s occupying for it. It’s a good trade, that will let Link wait at the door to the clock tower until it opens on the night of the festival. There’s not a lot left to do right now, so here’s some stuff going on in the town:

• I didn’t mention this earlier because it’s irrelevant to the main quest so far, but Link met Tingle selling maps of Clock Town. It was five rupees and marks all the points of interest in town, so it’s a good deal. Tingle is a 35-year-old man who wants to be a fairy, to the point of dressing like one, to his father’s embarrassment. I’m aware he’s not overwhelmingly popular, but I’m trying not to let that color my perception too much.
• Tatl is a lot more demanding than Navi was, even if her alert noise isn’t “Hey!” Navi’s hints were like “Here’s what we should be doing next, in case you’ve gotten so caught up playing music for singing frogs that you’ve forgotten,” while Tatl’s more like, “What are you doing? We have a quest to finish!” I guess it makes sense given the strict time limit.
• There’s a bank in Western Clock Town that records deposits by stamping them on the account holder. This will protect Link in case he has a catastrophe like being sent back in time three days, so I deposited some to test it out at first, then everything before going to confront the Skull Kid at the end.
• I played a couple minigames while waiting for nightfall on the third day. One of these is to find the way through a maze whose walls only pop up as needed to block Link’s path to a treasure chest that contains Deku nuts. This is a pretty pointless game, so I found a better one. In a corner that can only be accessed by Deku flower, a couple business scrubs run a platforming game. The reward is more substantial here (50 rupees), but the game is a giant pain in the nostrils. The first jump is a nightmare, and they don’t get much easier.
• Dawn/dusk of each day having a cutscene that interrupts Link: A good way to mark milestones on the passing of time, but it’s already getting old, and I can only imagine it’s going to get worse.

At dusk on the third day, the way to the top of the clock tower opens, and Link makes his way up, collecting a heart piece along the way. At the top of the tower, Tael hints to Link and Tatl that they need to get “the four who are” in the swamp, mountain, ocean, and canyon. The Skull Kid bops Tael and starts floating out of Link’s reach, but Link stuns him with a bubble, making him drop the ocarina. As Link picks it up, he flashes back to Zelda coming to him as he’s leaving Hyrule and giving him the Ocarina of Time for the journey. She teaches him the Song of Time, saying he can play it to call for help from the Goddess of Time. With the moon about to crash into Clock Town, that’s just what he does, and after a weird sequence, finds himself returned to just after his first meeting with the mask salesman.

Next: The curse lifted.

Link's Awakening: Seashell Simulator

BowWow is sufficiently exercised and fed, so it’s time for him to go home to Madam MeowMeow, who rewards Link with a kiss; the game text calls him lucky. Now it’s over to the shop and time to buy bombs and the shovel, and look at the exorbitant price tag on the bow. Link could steal it, but would be renamed THIEF, and forever unable to set foot in that shop again, so… well, maybe later. It’s not needed just yet, so we’ll just admire it for now and wait.

Before starting the approach to the next dungeon, there’s a few things to get. In the old forest, there’s a piece of heart in a cave that can be accessed now using the power bracelet, and a seashell in a chest protected by a rock. There’s another cave Link can find with the Mad Batter sleeping peacefully until Link sprinkles magic powder on his well. The Mad Batter curses Link to have to carry more stuff, namely twice the capacity for magic powder. Link can get a few more seashells: digging in Madam MeowMeow’s doghouse, in the previously-inaccessible room in Tail Cave, and digging under a bush near the cemetery.

Finally, Link can seek out Crazy Tracy, who’ll sell him her secret medicine, which will revive him at full life if he’s about to die, a combination of a potion and a bottled fairy from A Link to the Past. And now it’s time to start the next dungeon quest.

Richard’s Task (and Seashell Mansion)

Heading south from Mabe Village, Link finds the next dungeon, but it’s locked. Continuing on, he finds a man named Richard who offers to help with the key if Link can recover a golden leaf from the castle, where Richard used to live. No sooner than Link agrees to the deal does Richard change the terms: There are five golden leaves, and he wants them all. Link scoots out before he can change the deal further.

En route to the castle, Link makes a slight detour, discovering a place called Seashell Mansion. He goes in, and the mansion recognizes he’s got 5 seashells, so it rewards him with another.

The castle gate is locked up tight, but by continuing around the walls, Link finds a monkey reminiscent of his old friend Kiki. Kiki wants the bunch of bananas he has, and when Link hands them over, he summons all his monkey friends to build a bridge across the moat. The monkeys leave behind a stick, so the trading sequence isn’t over yet, but Link continues on and finds a hidden passage to the castle grounds.

Two of the golden leaves are dropped by enemies on the castle grounds. The other three more are found inside the castle – one fairly obvious, one by blowing up castle artwork and activating the darknuts, and the last by beating the mini-dungeon’s boss, a flail trooper. With the golden leaves, Link returns to Richard, who gives him access to a field filled with bushes, many of which are covering holes. Once Link successfully navigates the field, he finds an owl statue that tells him to look beneath his feet, and he breaks out the shovel and finds the slime key.

Seashell Addiction? No, I Can Stop Any Time I Want…

Before continuing on to the dungeon, Link can get half the remaining seashells he’ll ultimately need:

• In the tunnel between Richard’s villa to the overgrown hole-y field.
• (At this point, before continuing the seashell collection any further, it’s best to go to the lock to Key Cavern and use the key.)
• Under a stone along the way from Richard’s villa to Seashell Mansion.
• Through a secret cave near the last seashell, where an owl statue says “secrets are nigh.”
• Under a bush across the water from a mermaid statue; area accessed by the same cave system as the last seashell.
• Given by Seashell Mansion for returning with exactly 10 seashells.
• Under bushes near Seashell Mansion.
• Just north of the entrance to Key Cavern, accessed by jumping over pits of deep water.

Next: Key Cavern