The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask – Soundtrack Review
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (2000)
Console: Nintendo 64
“You … what makes you happy?” For me, it’s rediscovering old soundtracks like this gem. There’s something deeply unsettling about the Majora’s Mask soundtrack – it doesn’t coddle you with heroism or give you delusions of grandeur. No, this game tosses you into a twilight purgatory; a swirling mass of dread, fleeting joy and existential despair wrapped in Koji Kondo’s deceptively simple compositions. This isn’t your older sibling’s Zelda soundtrack – this is something far stranger.
Welcome to Clock Town
It all starts innocently enough. The Clock Town Theme seems cheerful, almost pedestrian, with a lighthearted bounce that says, “Hey, don’t worry. Everything’s fine!” But the magic is in its evolution. As the in-game days tick by and the moon looms closer, the music shifts. It loses its carefree demeanor, growing darker and faster … like a nervous heartbeat that knows something is deeply, irreversibly wrong. By the third day, it’s manic – paranoid, even. This isn’t just a town theme anymore; it’s almost a death march.
The “Song of Healing” may be the most haunting track in this game. Look, Kondo could have made this a simple melody, but instead he injected it with layers of melancholy; layers of hope. It plays whenever you soothe a tormented soul, but the irony is like a clay slab – healing here doesn’t mean happiness; it means acceptance.
Dungeons of the Damned & Your Final Hours
The dungeon themes crawl under your skin and stay there. The Woodfall Temple Theme is eerie and primal, full of dissonant echoes and faint tribal drums that seem to whisper, “You shouldn’t be here.” Meanwhile, the Stone Tower Temple Theme feels almost normal – like a shoot off of the original themes of the old games.
What sets Majora’s Mask apart is how it revels in its weirdness. For all the different tones on this soundtrack, Song of Time is the one constant – the glue holding this fractured timeline together. It’s not a heroic anthem … it’s a reminder of the futility of your efforts. Time resets, but the problems don’t go away.
If Majora’s Mask is a game about inevitable endings, Final Hours is the soundtrack’s crown jewel – a slow, mournful melody that plays as the world teeters on the brink of annihilation. There’s no urgency here, just an aching sense of loss. It’s the sound of resignation, a musical “this is it” moment that’s somehow both beautiful and terrifying.
Kondo’s choice to strip the track down to its bare essentials – soft piano chords, haunting strings, and long silences – shows his genius. He doesn’t need bombast to make you feel the weight of the moon crashing down.
A Masterful, Uneasy Soundtrack
Majora’s Mask doesn’t have a soundtrack you casually throw on in the background. It’s not an album; it’s a living counterpart to the game that compliments the experiences the player is going through. This is the way game soundtracks should be. Kondo didn’t just write music for a game – he created a psychological tapestry that drags you into the heart of Termina and refuses to let you leave unscathed.
This is a soundtrack for the end of the world, and it knows it.
Would highly recommend.
