WhileThe Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Maskwas initially released for the Nintendo 64 back in 2000, it seems that the game still has a secret or two hiding within it. One such discovery has recently been unveiled by a programmer, who discovered that the stars in the sky aren’t the same for everyone who plays it.
Like many other RPGs,Zelda: Majora’s Masklets players enter a name for their save and playable character, allowing them to use it instead of the name ‘Link.’ While most probably thought this was only used in cutscenes and to differentiate each save file from one another, it turns out that it had a bigger role to play in making the sky special for each player.
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A programmer, @zel640, was poring over the code forMajora’s Maskwhen they made the interesting discovery, and subsequently shared it with Twitter. The skybox, which displays the stars in the sky, is actually uniquely generated based on what the player sets as their save file name. While themenacing moon in the skymight be the biggest attention-grabber, those who study the sky will find that the stars are in different positions from one save to the next, so long as the file names are different.
It’s an interesting development, and rather unique among games even to this day. While skyboxes have come a long way over the last two decades, improvements have been primarily focused on making skies look more realistic and visually appealing. Creating a unique series of constellations for each player doesn’t seem to play much of a role in the game itself, so it’s unclear if this was part ofMajora’s Mask’s scrapped content, a canceled quest line, or was just a quirky experiment Nintendo snuck into the title.
Unfortunately, this oddity is only true of the N64 version ofZelda: Majora’s Mask. The portable Nintendo 3DS remake of the game doesn’t continue the trend, with every player’s skybox looking the same. There were several notabledifferences in theMajora’s Maskremake, however, so it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that this didn’t carry over either.
Over the years,Ocarina of TimeandMajora’s Maskhave been found to have a great deal of cut, scrapped, or otherwise modified content hidden within their files. While it’s been decades since their releases,Zelda: Ocarina of Timewas fully decompiled by a team of programmers just recently, and theNintendo Gigaleakhas revealed beta data for the games. Only time will tell if even more secrets are discovered in the future.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Maskis available for the N64, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo GameCube.
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