The Blue Dog from Majora’s Mask, a True Underdog, Finally Wins Race
Posted on January 25 2025 by Leslie Jacobson
Most fans of Majora’s Mask are familiar with the Doggy Racetrack minigame. Located in the back of Romani Ranch, Link can go to Mamamu Yan and bet on the outcome of the dog race. Over the years, fans have noticed that one dog in particular just cannot win the race for whatever reason. I speak, of course, of the blue dog.
Content creator Vidya James wanted to know if it was even possible for the lowly blue dog to win a race. As he explains in his video, the blue dog literally has the odds stacked against it. The developers of Majora’s Mask gave each dog a speed value, and the blue dog has the lowest speed value at 4. The game also randomly assigns conditions to the dogs during each race, and the player can see the conditions if they obtain the Mask of Truth. A dog who says they feel good has a boost to their speed, for example. With all factors considered, since the blue dog starts with such low speed, it’s nearly impossible for it to win the race.
And yet, there is hope! A rare glitch will occasionally register that a dog wins the race prior to crossing the finishing line. Vidja James breaks down the glitch in his video and how it allows a dog to “win” without crossing the finish line first. Vidja James himself tried betting on the blue dog 1300 times for a charity stream, but alas, he could not get it to work. To be fair, he would’ve needed to trigger the rare glitch and hope that the blue dog got the “good” race condition. After breaking down the considerable amount of statistics that goes into figuring out how these conditions could occur, Vidja James calculates that if he could try a new dog race every second, it would take him 34 million years to try all possible combinations.
That’s when a user named falkush contacted Vidja James and said he wanted to give the blue dog a win. Instead of playing the game to test every possibility, falkush wrote a script to run the game on an emulator and look for the distinct “win” condition for the blue dog. The cool thing is that falkush went above and beyond by manipulating the variables to see if the blue dog could win without the glitch. You’ll have to see the video to find out if the dog can win without using a glitch though.
Vidja James creates other video game content as well. You can watch him do “Zelda 64” randomizer races and speedrun over on Twitch. He’s also on X and Bluesky. Give him a follow!
What do you think? Are you excited that the blue dog finally won? Have you ever seen the dog race glitch? Let us know in the comments!
Source: Vidya James
Leslie is a mom, a cosplayer, an educator, and a fervent fan of The Legend of Zelda series. She lives in an area of the United States that reminds her of the Akkala region in the fall and Hebra the other 11 months of the year. She owns The Legend of Zelda t-shirts older than most of her students.
