Some Majora’s Mask References Were Not Directly Tied to the Remake

With the game finally out, it’s easy to forget how long and arduous the road to Majora’s Mask 3D was for the fans. From the release of Ocarina of Time 3D and the subsequent inception of Operation Moonfall, to the appearance of Majora’s Mask in A Link Between Worlds, fans clamored to find any and all sorts of referencing that might provide a confirmation that the fan-favorite title would indeed be getting the treatment its predecessor (Ocarina of Time) got. Now that we know the game had been in development since the beginning of that fan endeavor, it’s obvious that there were many hints towards the title, albeit kept under the radar at Nintendo, and which Eiji Aonuma struggled to not speak on for quite some time, as indicated in the following exchange with IGN:

How long have you wanted to talk about Zelda: Majora’ Mask 3D? I feel like, as press, we’ve been pestering you for a while about it.

Eiji Aonuma: It has been quite a while that I’ve really wanted to talk about this game, as it turns out. We had tons of questions at Comic-Con about the masks – the little bit of a teaser that was in A Link Between Worlds – and so I knew after that, we needed to get moving quickly.

Those were part of this clue hunt of sorts know that there were many more references than the once mentioned above Interestingly enough, some of these were simply borne out of associated between the titles, rather than direct hints about the existence of the remake:

Were all the teases intentional? The mask, the hand in the toilet bowl in Skyward Sword, the summer-themed wallpaper with Link in a yukata, holding a fan, and wearing Majora’s Mask over his head. Were those all done to that end?

Aonuma: The yukata Link wallpaper was actually something that a person in PR here wanted to put out. It was actually something that thematically fits in well, because people tend to wear yukata at the summer festival in Japan. At the summer festivals, it’s also really common to find people selling masks of various popular characters for kids. So we were actually linking those two together in that particular case, just because it worked thematically, not necessarily because there was a really strong intent to remake Majora’s Mask just yet, at that point. But I was really interested to see the reaction that people had to it, and that certainly helped me in how I was thinking about the matter.

As for the hand that comes out of the toilet in Skyward Sword, that was certainly something that you saw in Majora’s Mask as well, but again, there was no strong intent to link those two together specifically. We mostly viewed that scene as something that would be interesting to happen in the kind of school setting where it did.

Considering the fact that every title references other games in the Zelda series to some extent, it’s not surprising to hear that some of the associations with Majora’s Mask were just that: links to the original title. Still, I can’t blame fans for being as diligent and attentive as they were to every Majora’s Mask-related detail. Now remains the task of finding clues about Zelda U and/or the next possible remake, although Aonuma isn’t going to speak only on those either. Are you ready to begin a new hunt for clues?

Source: IGN