We all have certain games, I’m sure, that while we officially consider them “beaten” in our personal experience, we mentally apply an asterisk to the category for one reason or another.
Maybe we used cheat codes to get to the end. Maybe we’ve never made it through without a warp pipe or two. Maybe we played it as a kid and had to get an older sibling to play through a tough spot, or maybe we just watched someone else beat it and never actually struck the final blow ourselves.
I’ve done this a time or two myself. I used my college roommate’s file in Final Fantasy X to skip a boss fight rather than grind enough to beat it just so I could reach the end of an underwhelming journey. I did a similar thing in Final Fantasy VII when the thought of descending into the crater, and the requisite leveling up I’d need to do, depressed me and I decided to just use a similar shortcut to skip right to Sephiroth so I could just watch the ending. (Neither are among my favorite Final Fantasy games.)
Final Fantasy Tactics I never actually touched the controller for, just watched my brother push through it and enjoyed the ride. Clearly, I’ve cheesed my way through quite a few of the games in this particular franchise; I really did beat VI and IX, though, promise.
There are games I’ve just watched YouTube playthroughs on because I don’t have the console to play them or the game is hard to come by now. I sat through 10 hours of watching someone else beat Bloodborne because it was exactly the sort of game I would love to play if I had a PlayStation 4, but I do not.
Sometimes there are circumstances that really force our hand, like my experience with The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.
I bought Majora’s Mask as soon as it came out, but I quickly found that it did not captivate me in the way Ocarina of Time effortlessly had.
The game’s emphasis on subquests and small tasks failed to grab me as the epic dungeon-crawling of its predecessors had. I found the constantly ticking clock to be anxiety-inducing and felt like I was constantly under pressure. Which, to be sure, was part of the game’s purpose and doom-laden atmosphere, but it made it hard to sit down and relax while playing a game. It felt, really, like work.
But it was still Zelda and I enjoyed delving into the handful of dungeons the game had. I enjoyed the storyline and characters. I loved earning better swords in the game, even if I still feel the temporary Razor Sword is much cooler than any of the other options in the title. And I never really got tired of the creepy mask animations.
Nevertheless, I had put the game down for a while when I got stuck on a certain part of the fourth and final dungeon and let my brother play it a bit. When a friend of his asked to borrow it, I happily agreed, having other things to play through.
And then my brother came to me one day to say someone had stolen the game out of his locker. My Majora’s Mask game was gone.
I was understandably upset, though not as devastated as if it had been Ocarina of Time. Still, I’d had the gold cartridge with the holographic foil cover and losing it was quite painful, especially as I’d planned to finish it one of these days.
Eventually, I borrowed a copy of Majora’s Mask from a friend to try and finish the game, only to face a dilemma. This was on the Nintendo 64, when game files were saved on the cartridge, which I clearly did not have. My hard-earned progress was not safely stored on the console to access with a new copy. I would have to start over from the beginning and go through all the worry and anxiety of reaching my old stopping point.
Or, I could just jump into my buddy’s file and go face the Skull Kid right then and there. I was almost there already. Sure, I’d miss out on beating the fourth dungeon, but I’d been frustrated by it anyway.
So that’s what I did. I went right to the endgame and fought Majora using my friend’s progress. It was much easier than if I’d done it myself even on my old file, as he was the sort of completionist who did everything, so I had access to the Fierce Deity Mask, something I’d never have earned on my own in a game I only liked rather than loved.
Was I cheating myself of the true experience of beating Majora’s Mask? Was my accomplishment hollow? I don’t know. I was just glad to see the ending and begin the wait for the next Zelda game, in the form of The Wind Waker, which I greatly preferred.
Eventually, whoever stole my old Majora’s Mask copy returned it to my brother, anonymously, of course, but my old file was gone, so it was a moot issue. By then I’d turned over my entire Nintendo 64 and library to my brother anyway, so it was his to worry about.
I’d faced my own loss, and borrowed triumph, in Termina. My time there was done.
Be sure to check out the rest of our articles from Majora’s Month, our month-long celebration of Majora’s Mask’s 20th anniversary!
