In today's completely insane edition of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter MSumm rages over the difficulty of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and then begs to be hit harder.
Dear Nintendo,
So I just got Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask on Virtual Console through the club.nintendo.com elite prize. I have to say that it is, already without having played more than size hours of it, maybe one of the top three hardest games I've ever played and I've played every Zelda excluding this one and the Oracle games.
HOLY CRAP, like I think I'm going to burst an artery this game is so frustratingly annoying, and stupid me, I spent the past two days playing a dungeon gathering items, masks etc., only to have ran out of time and had all of my progress destroyed because I didn't look at the clock and the moon fell (whoever made the Deku shrine race maze deserves a special place in hell).
I don't know who to talk to but I'm having a panic attack, and I must know what tricksy soul out there made this game so goddamned hard. I need someone to console me or just agree with me that this is a travesty. I really wanted to play through this game this summer, but the hurt of just doing all of that for naught, I don't think I can play this game for weeks, if not months. I feel sick at the thought of what just happened, and to top it all off that fucking HAPPY MASK SALESMAN is so freaking creepy and rubs it in my face at how much of a dumb-ass I am for not saving!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm not asking for a refund (I also didn't pay for it), or for help in the game itself. I just need to be in contact with one of the original designers, and I need them to know just how incredible, brain-melting, ridiculously cruel, difficult, amazing, horrible, horrendous, sickening, livening, satanic and conflicting the effects of this game are having on me. I simultaneously want to rip the skin off of my face and attach rocket boosters to my back and launch myself into the sun. I want to attach clothes pins all over my body. I want to scream until my lungs pop. I need to run naked through the streets during a thunderstorm yelling out lines from Back to the Future. I can't understand life anymore and I'm having an existential crisis like no other, more severe than when dealing with the divorce of my parents, the mental sickness afflicting my brother and the issues with dealing with high school, college, and a girlfriend.
I feel so bad right now that I'm writing this letter, and I know that it will make it to Miyamoto or Aonuma. The thing is that as horrible as I am trying to make the situation of a full on video game rage, I do not hate this game. In fact I think I love it beyond belief. I think that this may have been the worst rage I have ever had, more so than Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 (which besides the fact that they are fabulous, certain levels are so insane that they border on fucking bullshit level design above all else), and more so than Halo 3 or Halo Reach (I would go so far as to curse at other players and make them feel horrible, a truly sad thing of me to do, yet these rages all in reality had to do with myself including my skill and occasional lack thereof, my competitiveness, and playing with others online).
The thing about this rage is that I put so much heart and soul and thought and care into the beginning of Majora's Mask and it is all gone. The part about it being all gone is my fault. But the fact that it is causing me such tremendous blood red and insane rage, really means that this game is incredible. I have not gotten so flustered at a Zelda game since the first time I played one, and it was not this bad. This means that Majora's Mask is a true challenge. This game is amazing and every Zelda game since then, no matter how charming, how clever the level design is, how inspiring the music is, how beautiful the story is, how good the graphics are…, they have all been TOOOOOOOO EEEASSSSSYYYYYYYYYYY.
Really there is no point anymore in trying to please the casual gamer when it comes to Zelda. We need more Zeldas like Majora's Mask. The same people are still going to buy it and maybe they won't finish it, hell, people still cannot finish Skyward Sword, or even freaking Phantom Hourglass (super fun but difficulty was pure rubbish). But they do buy it and they do enjoy the part they do play but those games leave people like me thirsty.
I love Zelda. It is my favorite game franchise. Ocarina of Time Master Quest was a joke. This is harder. Yes Zelda I and II were maybe the hardest but that was when the games tested skill and dexterity rather than thought process and planning and solving and taking into account the moon is going to blow the fuck up out of the world in three days.
WE NEED THE NEXT ZELDA TO BE HARDER THAN MAJORAS MASK.
I am so fully enraged and that makes me happy that this game exists because when I beat it. When I conquer this fucking game, I will experience such bliss, such ecstasy from knowing that I completed Majora's Mask (without a guide, screw those, I promise I will not use one on this game).
I need a new Zelda that will give me that satisfaction. Very few games at all in history do that to you like Zelda. I felt like a king when I beat Zelda and Zelda II. I felt amazing after Link to the Past, Minish Cap. The others made me feel good, but not incredibly awesome like those. Majora's Mask will make me feel like Jesus and Zeus did a fuhh shunnn haaaaa and DBZ combined into JeZuestanks or some shit. I really don't know where I'm going anymore.
But I need Miyamoto, I need Aonuma, I need Tezuka, and whoever else to not waste their potential on the next Zelda title. Skyward Sword was amazing, but suffered from its ease and the lack of an over world was sad, and the sky didn't feel very good when it was the same everywhere, just a thick sheet of tan clouds. This letter is incoherent, but I hope somewhere the point I'm trying to make can be heard.
I'M SICK OF EASY ZELDAS, MAKE THEM FUCKING HARD AND UNNECESSARILY FRUSTRATING AGAIN.
Maybe throw in some cool innovative gameplay designs, but make the fucking game hard.
Love and Kisses from a true Zelda fan, Nintendo Fan, and Video Gamer,
Maxbe95
p.s. I played every Metroid except Metroid II and Prime Echoes, and I want a new one, and whoever made Samus such a pussy in Other M is purely stupid.
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