Time travel and Zelda go together like two peas in a pod. It’s no secret that Zelda games have an affinity for time travel as a gameplay mechanic, and the two games that arguably represent this best are the Nintendo 64 duo Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. Both feature the Ocarina of Time item as a vessel for hopping backwards or forwards in time, but treat the problem of time travel very differently.

Ocarina of Time

In many regards, Ocarina of Time is a direct retread of A Link to the Past, especially by keeping two parallel worlds for the players to jump between. Changing these worlds from the Light/Dark worlds of A Link to the Past to the Child/Adult time traveling in Ocarina of Time made for a different story, but the gameplay systems are remarkably similar. In both games, actions in one world directly effect things in the other, including dungeons, overworld secrets, and more. Whereas A Link to the Past had directly parallel worlds, Ocarina of Time’s worlds were a little more asymmetrical. Because Ocarina of Time specifically deals with time travel, the contrast between the two worlds is greater, spanning seven years of differences. Due to the nature of time travel as a story device, there are plenty of opportunities for inconsistencies and plot holes, but surprisingly, Ocarina of Time manages to mostly dodge these problems, unlike its N64 sibling, which we’ll get to in a bit.

The scale of conflict in Ocarina of Time’s story is the grandest in the Zelda series, which tasks Link with jumping between two timelines to prevent Ganondorf from ruling Hyrule. From Link’s humble beginnings in Kokiri Forest to the climactic battle at Ganon’s Castle, everything about the game feels epic and important. In this context, time travel makes the story seem larger than life, and raises the stakes in an enormous way. The entire first half of the game, collecting spiritual stones, getting the Ocarina of Time and the Master Sword, all build up to the ability to travel in time. It’s only with these many tools that Link can perform such a huge action.

Once Link fast forwards seven years to adulthood, the presence of time travel creates many unique puzzles and situations. The best example of this is in the Spirit Temple, where Young Link must complete half the dungeon to obtain the Silver Gauntlets, which he won’t be able to use until he’s an adult. After going to the Temple of Time and traveling forward seven years, he can now use the Silver Gauntlets to complete the rest of the dungeon as an adult. Also worth noting, because there are two separate timelines in the game, players don’t lose any progress or inventory when jumping between the two. In fact, keeping the same inventory is crucial to the game’s design.

The only real paradox in Ocarina of Time is less of a story-breaking inconsistency and more of a clever little twist with a minor character. As Young Link, the first time players meet the Windmill Man in Kakariko Village, he seems happy and carefree. When returning to the windmill as an adult, the windmill man is furious that he still has a catchy tune stuck in his head after a young kid played it for him seven years earlier. After pulling out the Ocarina of Time in front of him, he teaches Adult Link that catchy tune, the Song of Storms. Later in the game, Young Link has to lower the water in the Kakariko Village well by playing the catchy Song of Storms for the Windmill Man. So, the Windmill Man teaches Adult Link the song that Young Link teaches the Windmill Man. It’s a relatively minor point in the game, so it doesn’t break the immersion into the story as much as it gives players a little laugh about how it turns out. As we all know, the Zelda series timeline famously splits into three sections after Ocarina of Time, so if the most apparent inconsistency is with such a minor character, then it’s obviously doing a lot right.

Majora’s Mask

At face value, Majora’s Mask’s story is hardly more complicated than every other Zelda game: fight the main bad guy and save the world. It’s also common knowledge that Nintendo develops core gameplay ideas before coming up with stories, but the introduction of the three-day time travel mechanic in Majora’s Mask actually leaves a moon-sized gap in logic that makes it the most undramatic story in the series.

For starters, the ability to rewind time by up to 72 hours literally means there’s no pressure to save the world in that given time frame. No matter how close the end of the world gets, Link can always travel back and prevent it. Unlike Ocarina of Time, where the scale of the conflict felt larger than either single timeline of child or adult Link, Majora’s Mask conflict is completely inconsequential by warping back to three days prior. That’s not to mention, the amount of time traveling paradoxes and inconsistencies with Link’s inventory and the world of Termina that this problem creates is solvable with only the most liberal use of multiverse string theory nonsense that would make BioShock Infinite blush. Why can Link keep masks but not bombs and arrows? Does he create a new alternate universe every time he travels back in time? Which is the “real” universe from the beginning of the game, then? If there are an infinite number of universes and Link only stops the moon from falling into Termina in one of them, doesn’t that make the game even more inconsequential?

Similarly, the time travel mechanic nullifies every single side quest in the game. Every repaired relationship and other good deeds are 100% pointless in the context of turning back time. Even the inclusion of the Bombers’ Notebook item, which tracks non-player characters’ daily routines and quest statuses, only helps with the player’s memory and has no real impact on the gameplay. The problems Link solves in Termina are reverted back on the Dawn of the First Day, whether they’re recorded in the Bombers’ Notebook or not. Some people would argue that all of these things makes the game even more tragic and dark, but it simply makes it meaningless and confusing. The most basic difference between video games and other entertainment mediums is the ability for players’ actions to change the game world. In Majora’s Mask, a game that relies heavily on side quests to inflate its total play time, this is completely absent.

Time travel in Majora’s Mask creates more problems than it solves with its unique design. While it does deserve praise for switching things up in the Zelda series, even the developers of the game admit that the 72-hour system was mostly present to basically pad the game length with a “denser” (smaller) world due to the short one-year development cycle for the game. It slows the pace of the game to a crawl, prevents deep exploration with an omnipresent countdown timer, and erases nearly all progress every time the player simply saves the game. For better or for worse, these changes are all part of the charm of Majora’s Mask, and if nothing else, it is a more interesting and challenging game because of them.

The easiest way to explain time travel in any piece of fiction is that it doesn’t yet exist in the real world, so there’s no way to criticize how it works in fantasy. However, this applies better to film or literature than video games because of the gameplay systems and player choice tied to the time traveling mechanic. I’m the first to point out when people read too deeply into video game stories, or even overthink time travel fiction in general, but Ocarina of Time handles the problem considerably better than Majora’s Mask.