Henrik Carlsson's Blog

All things me.

Linn är utsocknes hela helgen, Iris sover och det är ordning och reda i huset. Nu ska jag äntligen ge mig på Twilight Princess, efter att det legat på hyllan alldeles för länge.

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(Also on Instagram.)

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I did it! (Majora’s Mask)

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Two days ago (on Monday) I did as planned, played Majora’s Mask and actually finished the game.

I tried to help Kafei retrieve the Sun’s Mask but I failed. I did not feel like retrying the whole thing so I headed straight for the Skull Kid and Majora.

The final boss battle was weird, like so many parts of the game has been weird. And I mean weird in a good way. I really like Majora’s Mask, and I think I’d place it among my favorite Zelda games.1 I do however think part of the reason I enjoyed is as much is because it’s different from previous Zelda games, and because I’ve played so many of those. I wouldn’t recommend Majora’s Mask to someone who’s looking to play his/her first Zelda game.

Incidentally, my brother bought a Nintendo 3DS for himself for christmas. He also bought Ocarina of Time 3D, Majora’s Mask 3D, The Spirit Tracks (a DS title) and A Link Between Worlds. My advice to him was to start with A Link Between Worlds. I think that it’s a great ”beginners Zelda game” while still being a really fun one for the experienced player.

As a side-note, I really couldn’t bring myself to just try the Anju/Kafei side quest and then do the final boss, I also had to help Romani and Cremia. I just love those character’s so much and the battle against the ”question marks”/”aliens” with Romani is so much quirky fun.

Also, I bought Tri Force Heroes for myself.


  1. My absolute favorite is probably Ocarina of Time and I think the second place would have to go to A Link To the Past

Turning play into work

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I think that by blogging about every step of my progress on ”Majora’s Mask and even more so committing to the idea of creating the perfect day in the game, I accidentally turned play into work because I haven’t played the game since conceiving that idea.

That’s a shame since I was so into the game a while ago and I really felt connected to the game world. So this needs to end.

The idea of the perfect day is dead, at least for now. Next time I’ll have an hour for leisure time I’ll play the game again and focus on reuniting Anju and Kafei. After I attempt that, whether I succeed or not, I’ll go for The Skull Kid.

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Playing through *Majora’s Mask 3D*, third three-day cycle

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This is not to be considered a walkthrough of Majora’s Mask 3D. There are plenty of other great resources for that online. Instead it’s a ”journal” of sort for me while I play through the game. I wanted to document it for myself and figured, ”why not put it on the blog? It helps keep the lights on here”.

This was a pure ”collection run”. I didn’t make any attempt at anything that furthered my main objective in the game. Instead I started by going to the Swamp Shooting Gallery and winning first price; a Big Quiver.

I then spent my time searching for some pieces of hearts. I found one on top of a tree just outside the Swamp Shooting Gallery area. I then headed north of Clocktown and found a hole in the ground. Inside it I faced two Dodongos and after beating them I was rewarded with another (my seventh) heart-piece.

Once night fell I found Kamaro, the ghost dancer north of Clocktown and had him teach me his dance and giving me his mask. I then used the mask to teach the Rosa Sisters from the Gorman Troupe his dance and was rewarded with yet another piece of heart.

During the first night I also headed to North Clocktown and helped the old lady who sells bombs to fend off a thief. This resulted in me acquiring the Blast Mask.

Later I once again went to the Astral Observatory and found a Moon Tear that I traded with the Deku Scrub infront of the clocktower for a Land title deed which I then used during the second night inside the Stock Pot Inn. I mysterious hand reaches out of the bottom of the bathroom asking for paper. I handed it the Title deed and was given yet another piece of heart in return.

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During the second night I also listened to Guru-Guru’s confession at the Laundry Pool and was rewarded with the Bremen Mask. During the last day of this run I then headed to Romani Ranch and used the Bremen Mask to help Grog’s cuccoos grow. For this he gave me the Bunny Hood Mask which I’ve used a lot since then as it enables me to run faster.

Lastly I headed back to Woodfall Temple and killed the boss again so so I could retry following the butler in the Deku Shrine. With the help of the Bunny Hood Mask, this was no problem at all. Once I came to the finish line he gave me the Mask of Scent.

Finally I went to the Tourist Center to enter my pictograph of the Deku King in the contest but was told the competition was over, once again. The boat hag offered me another competition instead; target-shooting. I won that competition and was given a Bottle as a reward.

Playing through Majora’s Mask 3D, second three-day cycle

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This is not to be considered a walkthrough of Majora’s Mask 3D. There are plenty of other great resources for that online. Instead it’s a ”journal” of sort for me while I play through the game. I wanted to document it for myself and figured, ”why not put it on the blog? It helps keep the lights on here”.

I almost completely dedicated this three-day cycle to the Southern Swamp/Deku Palace/Woodfall Temple. I started by once again acquiring the Moon Tear and trading it with the Deku Scrub infront of the Clocktower. I also used the telescope in the Astral Observatory to find which hole in Termina fields is the Scrubs secret stash. Once I got down the hole the Scrub sold me a piece of heart (my second) in exchange for not telling people his secret.

Then I headed to the Southern Swamp. Once there I traded the Land title deed for Clocktown with the Scrub next to the Tourist Center. Using his Deku Flower i launched myself to the rooftop of the Center and collected my thirds piece of heart. I also activated the Owl Statue in the Swamp and got the Pictograph. Koume, the magic hag that runs the boating tours of the swamp is missing so I headed toward the Woods of Mystery where she was supposed to be heading. There a monkey helped me find her. She was injured out because the Skull Kid had assaulted her. So I headed back out to her sister Kotake’s potion shop and got a red potion that gave her back her strength.

With Koume back at her place in the Tourist Center I took the boat ride to Deku Palace. There I spoke to the monkey outside and learned about the fate of his friend. Then I entered the palace, found my fourth piece of heart in the palace garden and made my was into the captured monkeys cage. He taught me the Sonata of Awakening and urged me to head to the Woodfall Temple and help the Deku Princess.

In Woodfall I activated a new Owl Statue, found my fifth piece of heart on a platform, talked to the remains of a fairy that asked me to find the Stray Fairies inside the temple and then I used my Deku Pipes and the Sonata of Awakening to gain access to the temple. I made my way through the temple, found the fairies and beat two mini-bosses and finally the boss Odolwa. When I fought boss I realized one thing that I think is different in the 3DS-version of the game, compared to the N64 original. In the 3DS version, when I fly in my Deku Scrub guise I can press a button and change camera-perspective to see what’s going on beneath me and also see a kind of ”bomb sight” that helps me land or drop Deku Seeds with better precision. It makes certain aspects of the game easier in a very positive way-

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When I encountered the mini-boss Gekko I remembered how hard I had found it to be the first time I faced it on N64. Now I know that I can just throw bombs at it when it rides the turtle. Back then I had no idea what to do and I also didn’t have any bombs left once I entered that room.

After defeating Odolwa I met with the princess, put her in my bottle and returned to the Deku Palace. After reuniting her with her father I got sent to the Deku Shrine to receive a gift for helping her. I was unable to keep up with the Deku Butler and was running out of time so I warped back to the Tourist Center and tried to submit my pictograph of the Deku King to the contents but was informed that it had ended. I thought that was because I was at the very end of the final day, so I’ll have to come back to that in another cycle.

Finally I warped back to Clocktown, stashed my rupees in the bank and played Song of Time to return to the dawn of the first day.

Playing through Majora’s Mask 3D, first three-day cycle

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This is not to be considered a walkthrough of Majora’s Mask 3D. There are plenty of other great resources for that online. Instead it’s a ”journal” of sort for me while I play through the game. I wanted to document it for myself and figured, ”why not put it on the blog? It helps keep the lights on here”.

In the first three-day cycle of Majora’s Mask there’s really not that much you can do. I’m stuck as a Deku Scrub, so therefore I’m stuck inside Clock Town. I found the one Stray Fairy that was missing from the fairy in Clock Town. It was located down by the water in southeast of Town. She gave me magic powers.

I also collected some rupees, bought a map for Clock Town and completed the search for the ”Bomber boys” so I could join the ”Bomber’s Secret Society”.

Finally I went to the Observatory, found a Moon tear that I traded with the Deku Scrub infront of the Clocktower in order to get his Deku Flower. Then, once I where in possession of the flower I just waited for the final night when the door in the Clocktower would open.

When the door opened I used the flower to fly up to it. There I collected a piece of heart and entered the roof where I faced Skull Kid. I took back the Ocarina of Time from him, player Song of Time and returned to the dawn of the first day.

First impressions of ”Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D”

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Last week Nintendo released ”The Legend of Zelda – Majora’s Mask 3D”, a remake of the Nintendo 64-game ”Majora’s Mask” for the Nintendo 3DS. Some time ago1 I bought the N64-version and I still haven’t played it through to the end. It seems my current lifestyle just doesn’t allow me to occupy the tv for hours on end. It does however allow me to play short bursts of handheld games here and there. So when I heard about the 3DS-remake I went giddy with anticipation.

I’ve now played Majora’s Mask 3D for a couple of hours and I’ve got some early opinions about it. If you’ve never played it, neither for the N64 nor the 3DS, you can still read most of this post without having anything important spoiled.

The look and feel

The story and gameplay of these old N64 Zelda games remain very engaging to this day, but the look of them does not transcend time as well as one would want. The 3DS version fixes most of this. Where a lot of details in the original (rocks, patches of grass etc.) looks like a single boxy polygon, the 3DS version really gives you a whole lot more depth to the experience. Details are sharp and the world seems a whole lot more realistic and believable, without losing any of its wonderful fantasy setting.

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Playing the game

Majora’s Mask is a great game! Wether you play it on an N64 or the 3DS it is a really fun experience. The story is compelling, the puzzles just hard enough to make you slightly frustrated at times, the characters are well known to you if you, like me, has spent way too much time playing The Ocarina of Time.

Everything about the controls that was good about the original is equally good on the 3DS and some things feel better.

Important changes

The concept of time is very important in Majora’s Mask. This is just as true in the 3DS version. The way time is used in the game led to a very odd and confusing saving mechanism in the original version. This has been smoothed out a lot in the 3DS remake. This does not make the 3DS-version ”dumbed down”, it just makes it less confusing.

Want to know more? See the following footnotes for details that might contain spoilers.2

Do I think you should by it?

Of course that depends on so many things about you that I know nothing about. But if you are like me, a grown-up geek with a well-paying job and disposable income, a love of Zelda-games and some time to kill, the answer is YES GOD DAMNIT, YES!!!!!

But I don’t own a 3DS

I bought my 3DS for The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. Even if that had been the only game I played on it, it would totally have been worth its price. I’m sure the same is true for Majora’s Mask3.

So how far have I’ve come

I’ve just finished the first real dungeon. On my never-finished run on the N64 I made it through three out of four dungeons, so I have a pretty good idea about what to do next. I’ll likely blog a lot more about the game as I make my way forward.

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  1. Turns out it was quite a long time ago. I thought it was in the recent year but when I looked up the old blog post I realized it was in 2013. More than a year and a half ago! 
  2. In the original version there are two ways to save:
    1. You play the ”Song of Time” and return to the dawn of the first day. You’ll lose you’re inventory and the state of the land will return to the way it was at the beginning of the game. Collected masks and treasures will remain in your possession.
    2. You find an owl status and tell it to save and quit. When you start playing again you will be back at that very place, that very time. However if you quit the game now, everything since the last time you played ”Song of Time” will be discarded, unless you once again quit by talking to an owl statue.

    This is needlessly complicated for something that should just work. In the 3DS version you can still reset the time by playing ”Song of Time”. However when you encounter an owl statue you can save, but without being forced to quit the game. There are also more saving points placed here and there in the game. These are not owl statues so you can’t ”soar” to them, but they are fully functioning save points. 

  3. Again, if you have disposable income. Don’t buy things you can’t really afford! 

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Igår kom posten med ”Ocarina of Time 3D” och ”Majora’s Mask 3D”…

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Igår kom posten med ”Ocarina of Time 3D” och ”Majora’s Mask 3D”. Förhoppningen är att det ska vara lättare att spela igenom MM genom att spela fem minuter här, fem minuter där, snarare än att försöka sitta flera timmar framför tvn. Fast idag började jag med några minuter OoT. #Zelda #OcarinaofTime #MajorasMask #3DS #Nintendo
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Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask remake announced for Nintendo 3DS.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/11/legend-of-zelda-majoras-mask-remake-announced-for-nintendo-3ds/

Zelda – Majora’s Mask

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I love video games, old video games. Specifically I love the games and games series I played when I was a kid. More to the point, I love Nintendo branded video games, especially from the Zelda Franchise.

A couple of days ago I finished playing Zelda – Ocarina of Time. It’s a game that I’ve owned for a long time, probably since it was first released in 1998. I’ve played it countless hours but I’ve never played it to the end before. I did however make it all the way to the final dungeon, Ganon’s Castle, back in the nineties. This, combined with the fact that Ocarina of Time has, until very recently, been the newest Zelda game I’ve owned, has meant that I haven’t really encountered anything new in the world of Zelda in the last ten to fifteen years. Sure, I’ve found new artifacts and hidden secrets in the games that I’ve played since then1, but nothing has been truly new. Until now.

Earlier this year I bought a used copy of Zelda: Majora’s Mask and on July third I started playing it.2 So far I love it! In many ways it really is a sequel to Ocarina of Time, more so than any Zelda game that I’ve played before. The game engine seems to be the same and a lot of characters appear or seems to appear in both games.3 Also the control schemes and a lot of the usable items are the same. In other ways it is a big departure from the previous games. (I’ll try not to spoil it for those of you who haven’t yet player it.)

The games in the Zelda franchise has a lot of things in common when it comes to game mechanics. (The game that stands out as the most different among the once I’ve played before is Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.)4 New items and plot devices are introduced in each new game but the overall mechanics of the game are the same. In Ocarina of Time it was the Ocarina itself, the songs you played on it and the concept of Time that was the big new things introduced. The passing of time changed things in the game world and you as a player needed to do the correct things in the correct point in time. Without spoiling too much of Majora’s Mask, let’s just say that these two concepts gets magnified a lot in this game which makes for a different experience compared to the other games in the series. It also means I need to approach playing it in a new way. Especially the first six to eight hours of playing, before I knew what I was doing, felt very awkward but in a good way.

Now, after something like fifteen hours of game play, I’m far into the first real dungeon and I just love playing this game. I don’t know if it’s just the fact that it is the first time in a long time that I play a game that I don’t already know most things about, but it feels like this is the Zelda game so far that has the hardest puzzles to solve. The combat elements are similar to Ocarina of Time, which to me means they require my concentration but I will not fail at the game because of my lack of combat skills. (Well, Links combat skills surely affect the outcome but the fact that I’m not a very good gamer when it comes to combat will not.)5

If you like Zelda or Zelda-esque games and you haven’t yet played Majora’s Mask I highly recommend you do. Buy a used Nintendo 64 and a used copy of the game or get it as a download in your Wii or Wii U’s virtual console store6.


  1. I own:

    The once I’ve played a lot in recent years is A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time

  2. The reason I didn’t start playing it earlier was that I really, really wanted to finish Ocarina of Time first. 
  3. Sometimes characters in the two games looks identical but are actually different people. 
  4. The Adventure of Link was actually the first Zelda game I owned and the first I played all the way to the end. 
  5. The hardest Zelda game in terms of combat is in my opinion The Adventure of Link
  6. I’m just guessing that they are available there. I don’t own either a Wii or a Wii U. 

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