The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

What if a game told you right at the start that the world would end in three days – and there was nothing you could do about it until you learned to reset time? The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is the darkest, strangest and boldest offshoot of the entire series, a game that took a well-known formula and turned it upside down.

It came together remarkably quickly by recycling the Ocarina of Time engine, and yet it turned that economy into a virtue. Instead of copying its famous predecessor, it struck out in a radically different direction. Above the land of Termina hangs a moon with a terrifying face, drawing relentlessly toward the earth, and you have just three days before it strikes. With the ocarina you send time back to the beginning – losing your accumulated progress along the way, except for key items and the knowledge you have gained.

This three-day cycle is ingenious and cruel at once. The people of Termina have their schedules, worries and fates, which play out again and again within those three days. You learn their lives by heart, intervene at just the right moment, and gradually assemble the mosaic of their stories. From this springs a deep melancholy rare in the gaming medium – a sense of transience and futility that lends the game an unexpected emotional weight.

With masks you transform into different beings and gain new abilities, opening up puzzles and a whole new approach to the world. This shifting of identity chimes with the game's overall mood, which is not afraid to be unsettling, dreamlike and at times downright oppressive. This is no fairy-tale adventure – it is a meditation on time, loss and repetition.

Nintendo EAD's work here showed that even within an established series there is room for an experiment that divides players into those who love it and those put off by its strangeness. That is precisely why Majora's Mask remains a cult item to this day – bold, different and unforgettable.

Why play it: For players who want a darker, experimental Zelda with an ingenious three-day cycle and a melancholic atmosphere unlike anything else in the series.