Tales From The Backlog

Question. How do you terrify an eight year old into being afraid to touch a video game? If you are my older brother, just start up Banjo Kazooie. For me, it was the opening to Majora’s Mask. At the time, and maybe still to this day, this was one of the scariest openings that I had encountered, and I had gotten to the baby stage in Zombies Ate My Neighbors so I knew fear by then. After watching your brother play hours of Ocarina of Time you wouldn’t expect the next game to be a horror film; because it is!

So what’s so terrifying about it? You see Link in this new town and everything seems lovely. You have this festive song playing in the background and you get to see around Clock Town. A similar feel to Ocarina’s opening where you saw Hyrule Field and knew this was where you would be sending your time. Clock Town is a huge location even big than Hyrule Court and Kakariko Village combined, so seeing each district is nice. Again, everything is hunky dokey, until the music starts to shift into a minor key; and we all know minor key equals not happy. You then see our main antagonist, Skull Kid, standing on top of the giant clock. At this point you see him and ask yourself who is this funny looking kid and why is he less menacing than Ganon? Then, you see the true menacing force, the moon. You see the moon, he smiles back, the music is doing that weird suspense moment between two notes, and then the title fades in.

At eight years old, there have only been two things that had made me jump behind the couch to hide from what I had just saw. The first was Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and the second was Return of Jafar (yeah I don’t get it either). Never has a game made me feel completely uncomfortable, even before the game had started. That is why this game’s opening is so perfect and I love and hate it now. The set up is perfect for the tone of the game and it never lets up the entire time. To this day I can only sit back and watch my brother play this game over and over because everything feels too stressful to me and I like playing games like Dark Souls. Zelda is suppose to be fun and lightheaded and not Red Light, Green Light with the freaking moon!

An excellent opening to a fantastic game. The 3DS remake makes the moon look silly so it loses the effect to me. Still not playing that version either.

Tune in tomorrow for Day 21!

Danamesx