My piece for Vice on Majora’s Mask
I wanted the moon in Majora’s Mask to be bigger.
That’s what I remember thinking when I first saw the game being played at a friend’s place back in 2000. I wanted the moon to fill the sky, looming massive and terrifying over everything, an inescapable presence inching ever closer as the seconds flew away.
It was because of this print ad I’d seen in GamePro, my favourite print ad ever for a video game, depicting our moon dwarfing Manhattan. I couldn’t get that image out of my head. I couldn’t stop seeing the moon descending on New York, grinding all its buildings into dust. When I heard that an updated release for the 3DS was on the way, I immediately flashed back to that image and my heart broke a little, the presence of the Twin Towers making the game’s constant threat of cataclysmic destruction even more haunting.
And when I did first see the moon fall on Clock Town, and witnessed the shockwave radiate outwards, unstoppable and unendurable like the shockwaves in those old films of early nuclear bomb tests, I knew that it’s not the size of the moon that matters. It’s what you do with it. And with its setting and structure and premise and that moon sinking in the sky, Majora’s Mask does so much.
—
You can read the rest of In the Mouth of the Moon, my piece on Majora’s Mask, right here.
I still keep thinking about the game, and the way it uses time. How so much of it is about being in the right place at the right time. How it’s the clock tower that the moon collides with and destroys, taking the world with it. Because time is all we have, and because without time, we are nothing.
Anyway, I snuck a reference to this song into the piece.
Don’t give up ‘cause you have friends
Don’t give up you’re not the only one
Don’t give up no reason to be ashamed
Don’t give up you still have us
Don’t give up now we’re proud of who you are
Don’t give up you know it’s never been easy
Don’t give up 'cause I believe there’s a place
There’s a place
Where we belong

(detail of a panel in a Night in the Woods Kickstarter backer comic)
Notes
danzorx liked this
elfhoh liked this jmindigo liked this
cheese-fiend liked this
caterjillar reblogged this from pressxtobitch
caterjillar liked this
discourseonthedisco liked this
videodante reblogged this from pressxtobitch feitclub liked this
apostrophesomewhere liked this
pressxtobitch reblogged this from carolynpetit
loseranthems liked this carolynpetit posted this