Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang were once the hosts of Nintendo Minute, which was a series that would receive new episodes every Friday on Nintendo’s YouTube channel. However, the series ended in December. That said, you’ve likely heard about their new podcast that they have started together.
In episode 5, they were asked by a Patreon user what their least favorite Mario and Zelda games are. Kit said his least favorite are Twilight Princess and Super Mario Sunshine. Krysta’s is New Super Mario Bros. 2 and Majora’s Mask. You can see a highlight video they uploaded from the episode where they discussed the matter down below.
I can understand not liking Sunshine, NSMB2 and possibly Twilight Princess to an extent.
But Majora’s Mask? It’s literally one of the best games in the entire series, and my personal favourite.
To each their own I suppose.
Majora’s Mask being unpopular isn’t actually that surprising. I’m pretty sure when it was originally released, a lot of people didn’t like it. Especially fans coming directly from Ocarina of Time, who considered it the best game ever made at that time.
It’s just that over time, as is often the case with games that are kinda unique, appreciation for the game drastically increased for a lot of people. 15 to 20 years ago, I’ve literally never seen anyone name Majora’s Mask as their favorite Zelda game, but nowadays, it’s not too uncommon of a take.
In any case, I can definitely see certain types of Zelda fans not enjoying Majora’s Mask all that much, just on account of it being so very different. For a lot of people, that’s exactly what makes its appeal, but for others, it’s just something that alienates them.
As much as I love Majora’s Mask, its design isn’t as intuitive as most other Zelda games, so I can understand it when people say they didn’t like it. I actually had to have a huge discussion with a friend before I realized why they dropped MM, and one of the reasons was because they simply had no idea where to go. Sure the game does lend a guiding hand, but it’s still not always clear which direction it expects you to go next.
I know MM like the back of my hand, so I have no problems with direction in the game, but there are some people who do not pick up on the signals like others do
“one of the reasons was because they simply had no idea where to go. Sure the game does lend a guiding hand, but it’s still not always clear which direction it expects you to go next.”
As far as I’m concerned, this means they aren’t a fan of Zelda games. Being slapped in the middle of a giant world to explore with nothing but the clothes on your back and a broad, vague goal was the defining element of the original Zelda gameplay loop. That many of the modern Zelda games have eliminated this entirely and instead force a player down the path, grabbing them by the head and shoving their face to where “secrets” are “hidden” is precisely why so many fans have dropped off and fewer and fewer hold Aonuma Zelda games in high regard. Its precisely why Breath of Wild did exactly the opposite to critical and commercial success, and exactly why Elden Ring is currently sporting 4X the the sales numbers they projected.
I won’t disagree about modern Zeldas hand holding too much (especially SS), but that’s not really what I meant. Every game has an invisible helping hand that points towards the intended path, but not everyone can develop that helping hand to be intuitive to a broad audience. Everyone thinks differently, and some might think one path is correct.
Zelda 1 definitely thrusted you out into the world and said “go” without any guidance, but even back to ALttP there was a silent helping hand. You can’t progress through the overworld everywhere unless you have a specific item, but when you see a blockade it’ll make you curious to use a new item later. I think OoT had the benefit of more in-depth cutscenes where they would bring up important locations that you could go to, but not necessarily need to visit right away. That helped with a sense of exploration, and they also verbatim would tell you to seek out either a Sage or Zelda.
So, I don’t think that the older games didn’t have a helping hand, but they were invisible enough that they made you believe that you were going that way purely out of your own volition. And that’s great- that’s how a helping hand should function. I think the fact that you never noticed it with the classic games is a show of how well they were designed.
Just to bring this back around to MM, the only fault I can really give MM’s invisible hand is that it wasn’t as broad reaching as previous games. I don’t think that the overcorrection introduced in MM3D was entirely the right way to go about it, but I now find it to be very true that MM didn’t make sense to many players simply because of its design. I think myself lucky to be one of those who did find the game intuitive, but I cannot speak for everyone
Oh yeah and I do wanna mention that for BotW I feel that its invisible hand came from decades of game development knowledge. I feel like if they tried to make BotW with the same level of knowledge they had back during the N64 era or even the GCN era, they wouldn’t have been able to pull it off. BotW is such a massive world that it’s easy to get lost, but they made getting lost fun in that game. That’s a huge triumph. Can’t really speak for Elden Ring because I’ve been avoiding it until I can play it myself, but from all the praise I’ve seen from it I can assume that it’s got a lot of great intuitive design invisible to the player
I got a cousin who doesn’t like it, either, due mostly to the time mechanic.
Well those are some garbage takes…
I get Sunshine and (definitely) NSMB2, but Majora’s Mask? Thats one of the best memorable Zelda games ever, and despite its fair share of flaws I liked Twilight Princess as well (and I’m not even that much of a Zelda fan).
Oh well if thats how those two feel then its their choices.
If you were asking me… the original Super Mario Bros and Zelda 2
this is why they got fired.
Actually my uncle who works at Nintendo told me that the real reason they got fired was because Kit wouldn’t stop wearing that DK costume from the Funky Kong speedrun video around NOA headquarters. Apparently it hadn’t been washed in months and people were starting to complain. He said the final straw was when Kit started demanding people around the office refer to him only as “the main monkey.” When Bill Trinen refused, Kit threw a barrel at his head and he just hasn’t been the same since
Lol
this makes me even happier they lost their jobs at Nintendo.
Twilight Princess is my least favorite 3D Zelda, but my overall least favorite would def go to Zelda 2. I still have yet to beat it.
Tri force heroes exists and TP and MM are their most disliked? Ok
Interesting enough
I’m guessing they liked Wand of Gamelon and Hotel Mario more than these games.
Super Mario Sunshine & Majora’s Mask!? I can’t decide on which “How dare you!” to use a clip of: Rocko’s Modern Life or Greta Thunberg. cries