Come on give them some credit, things can exist for more than just one reason, that line just has a lot of meaning both in the game’s world and outside it, our art is inspired by our lives, he used his frustrations as a constructive force, put his real feelings in a way that complimented the game’s themes, and gave us one of the most iconic lines in the series

And it's most iconic image, the moon, came from a trolled and tilted employee.

It was a cry for help

​@@potatoboy6094 How is this taking credit away? You realize that them being overworked is in the real world, right? And that the games world is a result of this crunch? You can't have Majora's Mask without the suffering the devs went through, and it's weird to try and paint pointing that out as "discrediting".

and ironically one of the most well known creepypastas from back in the day

Honestly one of the strongest lines written in a game. A fantastic opener for Majora's Mask, but even deeper considering the previous adventure leading up to it.

the staff put themselves on Link's shoes when the Happy Mask Salesman shakes them very angry.

It sounds a lot better than, "Your boss is an asshole, isn't he?"

It makes the sentence hits even harder, it's incredible that it has this origin.

As it happens, the Taepodong-1 missiles were probably never intended to be used as surface-to-surface weapons, but were a test platform for multi-stage missile tech. Its first use, which started the "crisis" in Japan being referred to, was actually an attempt to launch a satellite into orbit. But evidently the missile malfunctioned, and passed over Japan at an altitude of over 200km before crashing East of Japan in the ocean, with some parts landing only 40km away. This spooked the Japanese people pretty good, but even that was probably not entirely intentional on the part of North Korea

Atari's Missile Command was born out of the cold war fears. The "Game Over" screen originally just said "The End", but was deemed too scary or something like that. The designer of the game actually had nightmares while creating it...

Wouldn't be the first time they feared missiles from North Korea, Kim Jong-un also caused a country wide panic.

@@matthewrease2376 iiii is

Ppl who call things "iconic" seem brain washed or just stupid.

You know what they say: write what you know

@@KaminoKatie It's why the villagers actually _feel_ like real people with their dialogue.

Ikr! I hate it when the writers release uncertain statements when the evidence is before you. That's just needlessly transparent of them.

Right, like, why wouldn’t he become an adult again? I just figured they didn’t trouble themselves making a new adult model for a few seconds of the credits sequence

Miyamoto: Stop making cursed, weird Zelda games! Koizumi: You know what? I’m going to start making cursed, weird Zelda games even harder!

@@BenGroff-ik4zj those weir Zelda games are the most beloved by fans

That’s how I operate at work 😂 I can’t get into trouble if I do a good job 😜

What else are you supposed to do while waiting for the clock tower to open?

@@RenSako Then you'll wish you had it.

@@uberculex Play a tune that makes a dog follow you around?

do not diss on my man kamaro and his beautiful dance moves

I love parading around leading the chickens.

I don't think they really knew what would work and what wouldn't, they just tried the best they could. When you're given such a short deadline, there isn't any time to go back and rework more engraned aspects of the game, because of this they likely had to roll with what they had at many points when they would have preferred to rework or entirely remove them. What that results in is a product that almost goes against the instincts of the people making it, but when the people making it are literally the biggest geniuses of the industry (Yoshiaki Koizumi especially) you get an experimental masterpiece like Majora's Mask.

"Yo check his hair, someone get a reference picture!"

A true hero of (our) time.

Fun? In what world is having to hide your creative work from your boss "fun"? The risk was that if Miyamoto saw it, he'd make them change it. Idk, sound extremely nerve racking to me, not fun in any way.

"Hey! Koizumi, I saw you trying to get into my-- wait, who put a whole-ass fishing game in here?!" I'm glad passionate devs who knew better found ways to override some of Miyamoto's stupid decisions.

If they didn't then we've probably could've gotten two almost finished Great Fairy cutscenes.

@@Othillde Maybe. I don't know if the code to personalize star patterns is big enough to almost replace two cutscenes.

@@Othillde They already had some of those cutscenes though. They were cut to free up space.

Mario Odyssey quite a bit of that weirdness. The finale even takes place on the moon. Bowser's Fury as well. But yeah, I'd like to see him on Zelda as well.

I just want Miyamoto to retire, and for Nintendo's workers to unionize lol.

Nah, the series has taken an irreversible course towards botW, an open world inhabited by one line characters that don't matter at all

Yeah. Miyamoto's games are good, but feel kind of "samey." Koizumi always seemed more willing to take risks.

@@Sordatos If you're problem with botw was an open world where the characters deliver the same dialogue they always have then you arnet even equipped for an argument. The sheikh retcon was significantly more detrimental to the series than an open world with npcs.

@@Othillde I certainly can't disagree. Sometimes people need help, and they shouldn't be prevented from getting the help they need.

So that's why so many Anime and Japanese games have the characters say "It can't be helped". They say it so much it's almost a catchphrase at this point.

Also because it seems that Anju can't cook very well, unless grandma is just being mean to her. There's something she has that Cremia doesn't, and Kafei saw it. If I was a dude, I would go with a farm girl.

Anju is also spoken for. Cremia is just a nice farm girl

Would also explain why Japan has such a high suicide rate. Pretty sad their society essentially has a "tough it out" mentality.

If you do what you love for a living, you never have to work a day in your life.

Honestly this just sounds like “programmer” culture

As an American I can say I would never do that. Gotta pay me boss

@@RobotacularRoBob we have a different definition of fun

@@RobotacularRoBob except this level of disgusting crunch was only necessary to get the game over the finish line because of the impossibly short timeframe they were given to complete the game. It's not a labour of love, its abusing employees.

Yeah, I hope we get to see him in future directs from time to time again aswell. From these stories it feels like he is a really great anthisesis to Miyamoto with their ideas often going in completely different directions. I'm honestly surprised that the first time I heard this man exists was with the switch's release

@@Cleoli2 Same, I had no idea who he was until the Switch reveal event in 2017.

He’s Miyamoto’s successor and he directed Super Mario Odyssey. He’s pretty valued.

@@Cleoli2 Of course he's the antithesis of Miyamoto. He wants to make Mario games with a story.

@@GabePuratekuta they should give him the reigns on Paper Mario, then. Miyamoto's interference ruined that series and someone who cares about storytelling needs to step in and fix it.

🤝

extremely underrated

Anjus quest was annoying and tedious. Cremia all day.

absolutely, no doubt!

Agreed. But I suspect Cremia is Team Anju, if you know what I mean. 😏

Anju had her grandmother.

@@ninJ0N38 But didn't her grandmother dislike her? Or am I misremembering. I don't think she liked the grandmother.

@@tiacool7978 Yeah, Anju's grandmother was kinda of a dick to her. She feigned dementia to not eat Anju's food and to downgrade her time and time again.

Anju kept hope for her love. Cremia needed to be both parent and a sister to be strong.

Just to clear some misconceptions: Anju still had her mother and grandmother, also she was friends with Cremia. She's by no means alone or lonely, but it doesn't detract from what she's been going through. Imagine your significant other seemingly bailing out on you for no apparent reason just a few days short of your wedding that coincides with an apocalyptic event...

One counter point is that I don't think the banker ever re-stamps Link. Whenever you go to him he always says that he "remembers" you, even when using the various forms.

@@Mastergengar He *does* stamp you again though - he updates your stamp every time your bank balance changes. He doesn't give you an introductory stamp again because you already have one, and him saying "I remember you" to faces he's never seen before only strengthens the interpretation that he doesn't actually recognize you, but is pretending to be familiar while only looking at your stamp.

@Just Plain Mat That can be a valid counterpoint, I've also heard that doesn't apply very well because Bankers of that style usually keep up a friendly front in order to keep business. For the stamping, probably an oversight by the developers

Thank you! I always found it funny how Link was withdrawing money out the bank that technically wasn't his.

@Normal, does he update the stamp? I must have forgotten then, thank you. I'm definitely torn now between which narrative I like more. Having an omniscient banker who knows you across time, or Link being the thief racking up huge amounts of money and robbing him blind during each time cycle. 😂

Thanks Ben :)

And it's shocking on how fantastic it ended up being despite the workload.

@@Gadget-Walkmen It turned out like that directly because of it! Under all this pressure, they tapped into a bizarre creative place of nightmares and aliens. All that shit never would made it in if they had a second to think about it

@@ViewbobTrue don't know entirely about that but i'll just say something good came out of all the madness.

@L don’t know if that’s true as we shouldn’t promote the idea that pressuring staff with super tight deadlines is how you make fantastic games. That’s bad staff treatment right there. Who knows what it could have been like if they had 3 years, probably a whole like better even more hopefully. Not at all lesser in ANY way.

it match's the game

I remember as a kid being disappointed with only 4 main dungeons, but the replay value is better than Ocarina of time imo. No one gets all 20 masks on their first run.

@@tdestroyer4780 I did! Of course I used a guide for one of the side quests but other than that I figured it out all on my own. Some of those are damn obscure I tell you.

@@tdestroyer4780 I remember as a kid farming rupees to the bank, resetting, and never getting entrance to the second dungeon.

THE absolute best one

​@@tdestroyer4780 I actually quite enjoy only having 4 main dungeons. Ocarina of time can just feel like a dungeon checklist at times and I think the masks really helped make the dunegons unique and fun. Plus, I don't think I can take the stress of another 4 time-limited dungeons.

lmfao

It's the Crash Twinsanity of the Zelda series

@@KaminoKatie or the fawwout new vegas.

I'm starting to feel the same way about a lot of anime studios I've loved. The work is brutal.

Nearly started crying xD didn't even belongs to my childhood

Present day Miyamoto is more or less like this, several interviews mention how stressful it is to tip toe around his very strict restrictions, especially when dealing with Mario. One of the most recent victims of this kerfuffle was the Paper Mario series, and only until very recently have they seemed to have reigned in some control without angering their main senior.

@@josefarias5216 shiggy word is law in nintendo HQ... and i like it. 😁

When you first learn that the Happy Mask Salesman is Shigeru Miyamoto: Mind = Blown

Because that's pretty much whatt everyone says about him. Dude used to take smoke breaks in the one room where they shoved the two English speaking employees like some kind of sitcom character

@@josefarias5216 He had no involvement with PaperMario!!!! Stop with the lies!!

The best Zelda games are the ones where Koizumi are involved (in my opinion). They are the most story-driven & dark.

@@BenGroff-ik4zj kinad like Miyamoto was never really in touch with the series past the NES days and Aonuma.. is hard to read, rly I think he does what he gets told rather from Miyamoto himself, which holds back his own ideals. Unless BotW was his own ideal then please get us back Koizumi for the franchise that has lost it's way after Skyward Sword D:

@@Evilriku13 I love BOTW, but it’s isn’t my favorite in the series. I don’t think it lost it’s “way”, I just prefer the Koizumi-influenced stuff.

@@Evilriku13 Looks like Koizumi is the better story teller and Aonuma the better level/Dungeon/world designer.

To bad that the series is now basically in charge of Fujibashi, who honestly is taking the series in a very different direction

I saw it more as just a hug, the developers didn't have to add pervy referenced dialogue, at least it's not canon since you don't have to do the quest more than once after getting the mask when doing it.

... That's what it is. His face going into her chest was an error, and they joked about how young boys would be happy to be in that position. It was never at any point intended to be adult in anyway. Simply a hug of gratitude.

ya thats how link prob would have took it too. bein a pure heart n all. but our world is pervy so... tibbies give the fuzzies. 😆😁

well, technically the only game Link is pure of heart in is Skyward Sword, but i get your point!

@@SakuraAvalon Did you hear what they said? What the interviewer said? That it was any boy's dream? You'd have to be playing naive to pretend not to understand what they meant. I'll grant that the dialogue in-game itself could be interpreted in a non-sexual way, but in reality it's just a sort of 90s video game moment of a formerly common variety, even in Nintendo games

How I imagine it went: 1: "We should show Kafei is no longer cursed in the credits" 2: "Dude, I can't make a new model for that, the game is shipping in a week."

@@Minty_Meeo Yeah I don't think it should be considered a mystery, it's pretty obvious he changed back. If they had more time to work on the game I'm sure they would've made an adult Kafei model, or maybe they wanted to keep his true appearance a mystery for whatever reason.

@@domesticus2958 They had sketched an adult design for him during developement, they probably never had time to make a model and animate it, so making the wedding scene in his POV (in which shows he's adult as he's taller than Anju) was a clever way to do that.

I felt that it would've been a GameCube launch title if that happened

@@RenSako thanks for the essay. to each their own. I still think they should've

@@RenSako i disagree heavily on the whole not needing anymore twilight princesses lmfao. Easily a top 3 zelda game imo. I do wish they’d do more zelda games similar to minish cap tho

@@RenSako I had no idea that MM 3DS had any changes to it other than graphics when i first picked it up. I hadent played MM since like 2004 so it had been a good 15 years. I kept thinking things felt off and wrong until finally relaizing that major changes had occured, and it was just such a bummer. They took what was the most unique zelda game and just fucked with it to streamline it. Why does every boss need an eye to hit? Just why? How come deku links movement was butchered? Zora link cant even swim right! Its the only zelda purchase ive ever made that ive wanted to return.

MM3D took three times as long to make as MM64 and ended up much worse.

I respect and appreciate all the hard work put in, but honestly that 1 year deadline is pardon my french: fokin ridicolously abusive

@@islandboy9381 I have the impression Miyamoto made that on purpose. He knew the devs couldn't complete a new zelda game in 1 year. He originally gave that deadline because Eiji Aonuma didn't wanted to work in URA Zelda, and Miyamoto said that if Aonuma managed to pull a new Zelda game in 1 year, he wouldn't need to work on URA Zelda. Prolly he expected people to give up completely and ask to change projects eventually. I guess in one of the parallel timelines of the multiverse, there's one where we don't have Majora's Mask.

@@Adaruvideos I mean yea he was expecting it not happening, but once that wasn't the case and most of the team left URA for Majora you would atleast expect him to delay and thus give a little bit more breathing room for the devs cause by then its becoming a full Zelda product that can't just fail, it's a miracle the the game didn't come out in a really buggy or something like that. It also makes me think of another timeline where Majora had potentially even more content added to it if it got delayed to a normal development time.

@@islandboy9381 The game did come with a good handful of bugs and glitches, some of them even left over from the original OOT code, like the bomb hover glitch, infinite sword glitch, bottle glitch, and the new 4th day glitch (this last one was patched in later versions of the game, I believe.). MM is a really good game but just like Pokémon's 1st generation, it can be argued its almost held together by glue, spit and a little bit of praying.

Same. I never thought about it that way until this video

What about Saria?

It was both at the same time.

I prefer not sexualising that scene. Though the devs were having fun, it’s a little gross I think. The idea that it’s the only time Link gets affection (and not in a lascivious way) is extremely bittersweet. I don’t like making that scene so shallow by making it suggestive.

Yall are so full of crap it isn't even funny.

What really helped them out what reusing models from OOT, especially character models. Even so, it is an absolutely fantastic game for what it managed to accomplish in such a short period of time.

It released only on gold carts, the difference between regular and limited being the lenticular sticker. The grey cart was a demo (not for resale sticker), and I've heard stories of people getting a grey cart replacement when sending theirs to Nintendo for some issue

I’m glad they updated Young Link’s model in MM, he looks better there with the added side hair, strap belt over the shoulder, more hair textures, and soles under his boots

I don't think even Mat assumed his interpretation was the exact concept the game's makers had in their minds. And the devs didn't really debunk it either merely by saying that wasn't their deliberate intent. Only a certain form of criticism is satisfied solely with authorial intent: 'Death of the Author' is a far more engaging means of interpreting any piece of art, especially considering that art exists in the interaction between the viewer and the viewed, not simply in the viewed itself

@@chompythebeast Maybe at first, but MatPat gets REALLY defensive whenever people seriously critique his theories (despite, or perhaps because, he plays them off like they’re just silly harmless fan-theorising).

The game opens with you getting lost in the woods, knocked out, and then falling down a rabbit hole with a bunch of abstract colors and images like Alice in Wonderland, before sending you over bottomless pits and into a dreamlike space where the door shuts behind you and you emerge... in the middle of a city. Was everything or much of what came before that just underground, beneath Clock Town? Speaking of Clock Town, it and all of Termina is a place inexplicably populated by the same character models from the previous game in some sort of upside-down world. Somehow, that fact never comes up at all, not even regarding apparently obvious connections such as between Malon and Cremia/Romani. I don't know if Link has to be _dead_ (that might kinda contradict his shade's presence in Twilight Princess), but the game is definitely not just in the next kingdom over from Hyrule. The player gets the feeling the entire game that somehow only Termina will be destroyed by the moon, yet apparently just leaving the place isn't an option for most of the people we see. Why can't they escape? For that matter, how did Link even get there to begin with? There's definitely something going on in Termina

@@chompythebeast The dreamlike comparisons are valid, but I don't know how intentional they are. From a Doylist perspective the reused character models were purely economical for development, but I believe in-universe Termina is supposed to represent a parallel dimension/alternate universe. The hole in the forest is probably some kind of wormhole between dimensions, which is why it isn't just a kingdom adjacent to Hyrule. There's more reason to assume Termina represents an alternate world instead of just an asset flip, because there's certain characters like Darmani whose model was created entirely new, though he's clearly supposed to be some alternate version of Darunia, or Toto who's like a counterpart to King Zora. This might just be my crackpot theory, but I think Kafei himself is supposed to be Link's counterpart. His similarities may partly be due to him having to share a rig with Link (as he is playable briefly), but I think it's mighty suspicious that not only is his sidequest arguably the most significant in MM, but that he also had a forced child-adult transformation, something in common with Link in OoT (though in Kafei's case, the other way around). In this respect Kafei is similar to the purple-haired Ravio from A Link Between Worlds, who is Link's Lorulean counterpart.

You're mixing two theories, the "Link is Dead" one is MatPat being dumb, the "stages of grief" one is Link grieving the loss of Navi. And yes, Termina is not an underground land, but another dimension, as stated in a lot of official media.

@@domesticus2958 Interesting interpretation about Kafei. Of course I agree with your assessment regarding the reuse of assets in a 1 year dev cycle and how it is justified with the alternate dimension angle, that's always been essentially my understanding as well. But Kafei as Link's parallel is a cool idea, again, even if the creators didn't really intend it. But just like the strong Alice in Wonderland opening, perhaps indeed that thought _did_ cross their minds. In both cases, this kinda points out how authorial intent is not the end-all of literary analysis. Really, I think the reason the "Is Link Dead?" theory gets so much discussion is because it was a lot of people's introduction to "Death of the Author" type of analysis, which most people usually balk at at first. It was also probably helped along by people watching the vid who hadn't played the game in several years going "oh wow that's right!" without remembering all the counter-evidence the game also provides, but that's sorta beside the present point

@@Mari_Izu actually thought Termina is just another country close to Hyrule that Link traveled to accidently.

He’s the best

It actually goes more in depth than that- it teleports Link to a different area suuuper high up with smaller Twinmolds who share HP with the bigger two. This is why using the mask anywhere else crashes the game, there's no ground that high up anywhere else, and nothing else is changed to fit 2x Link, and the game is also probably frantically searching for Twinmold upon use of it.

Skorns are littles worms!

@@jongameaddict That's so cool. This game is trickier than I thought!

@@jesselindsey9760 I learned a lot about OoT and MM from the Randomizers, I just get this info secondhand from others though. Usually the discord servers but also Zfg

And is was the Crash Twinsanity of the Zelda series

He also made Tingle. Which kind of detracts from everything else he's ever done.

👀 same

me when my bomber code was 54312 and I couldn't guess it by brute force

Clearly the stars were not in position for you

It's like Weirdshot glitches in OoT randomizers, you got a rare star pattern that caused progress to be impossible

Yeah it caught me offguard. Nice to hear someone I sub to finally.

Majora's Mask is the Crash Twinsanity of the Zelda series

The things that make us feel the most intense emotions are the things that stick with us the longest. That's great art.

DYKG has a hate boner for him though unfortunately. He really is a great guy. I don't know what he did to piss off DYKG though, but they've been making sure to include at least one negative thing to say about him every nintendo video. It's really annoying tbh. The internet sure loves to jump on silly hate bandwagons sometimes. Also please consider at the time that mario galaxy released lots of games had gone for that "it's for kids but it's dark" theme. Think like Shadow the Hedgehog. Can you really blame miyamoto trying to do anything that he could to prevent that happening to mario? Ofc that backstory isn't all that dark but it makes sense he'd be wary given how koizumi also worked on some pretty dark stuff in the past.

@@DanielA-yg3un Nah, I think you might just be one of those people who reckons the guy can do no wrong. Frankly, I think your love boner is much more on display than DYKG's alleged hate boner. I'm glad they don't do like lesser channels and just lionize Miyamoto like some sort of sage whose every idea is great, even the terrible ones. That kind of 'Big Man' narrative is the stuff of biographers with an ego to stoke, not of anyone fancying themselves a journalist or historian

Surprise surprise miyamoto is a HUMAN BEING with character flaws and weaknesses, not king midas with a golden touch for all his art, the man has talent of course, and his methods clearly work, but there’s always more than one way to make something great, and his subjective view of what does and doesn’t make a good story should not be viewed as untouchable gospel, it’s just one good way to do it, luckily the world has enough space for more than one genius, and when two great minds butt heads or work together despite not always seeing eye to eye, they can hide each other’s weaknesses and create some of the best art

@@chompythebeast Nah, you should be careful, your Miyamoto hate boner is showing you loser.

@@DanielA-yg3un agreed

Even in the description of the moment, I could feel his pain.

Like a director's cut of MM would've been amazing