Speed run of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask in 18 segments, completed on July 13 2005. Available in 3 versions: low, normal and high quality.

Thanks to the following people:
Radix - for managing such a unique but great archive of speedruns and hosting this run
Nate - for taking the time to capture my run
Dragorn - for just being a cool expert MM player and his 2 major sequence breaks: found out how to scale the Ikana cliff without the Garo's Mask, allowing Epona to be skipped. Also, found out how to enter 2 exit rooms in Pirate's Fortress. I used many other little tricks from his video.
TSA - figuring out the sequence break in Ikana castle, also used little tricks from his video not present in Dragorn's
DLH112 - he helped me with the new overworld route and tested a lot of strategies in various places, also finidng out that the second part of Dragorn's cliff method can be done jsut with a simple backflip
StrangenessDSS - great Snowhead route and Goht methods, also revised the Ikana castle sequence break

Welcome to my first whole game speedrun, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Earlier this year around late March I watched Dragorn's excellent 6-day challenge and that motivated me to play this game again, as I had not done so since it first came out. Coincidentally, Majora's Mask was next on TSA's schedule so I looked forward to it and helped him out quite a bit. Even though TSA's run was "exploratory," I felt that it could have been much better because of small (but not negligible) mistakes throughout his run especially later on. Unfortunately, a lot of new tricks and time savers were found for the run right after TSA had finished it, so he could not incorporate them. I combined strategies from both Dragorn's and TSA's run and used all the new tricks that I knew about in a completely new overworld route to improve the existing run by over 30 minutes.

Route planning is important in any speed run, but it is much more so in Majora's Mask. Certain events can only happen at fixed times, so the route has to be meticulously planned out to encompass all of the necessary events with maximum efficiency. This game also has more sequence breaks than almost every othe Zelda game out there, thanks to the "Goron jump damage boost" that made it possible to get across high fences, especially the Great Bay one. The major route changes from TSA's include a new Great Bay Temple route, Stone Tower before Great Bay to get Light arrows first, a third bottle from Romani after killing the aliens, and the Gilded sword upgrade.

I'll explain this for all who have not played this game before and who don't understand what the aliens in Romani Ranch are all about. There is a fixed time when the aliens disappear, which is around 5:15 AM. I just have to keep them away from the barn until that time. So if it seems a little sloppy how I miss some of them from time to time, understand that it doesn't matter because I just have to wait till 5:15. I went through the "Isn't that your horse?" cutscene because I needed to get in range to shoot the alien that comes from the back of the barn. Also, it gives me access to the crate of extra arrows, which I needed.

Obviously no run is perfect, even in segments, so neither is mine. There were 4 mistakes that really stood out in my opinion. The first occured in getting to Woodfall Temple after Deku Palace; I was too hesitant and many little tiny mistakes that added up. I let that go because I really despise Deku Palace and I don't often get through that without messing up. The second one is that I took too much time to Hookshot to the tree in Ikana without crossing the bridge. The next is during the Twinmold battle, where it could have ended about 20 seconds earlier. I needed one hit left and I missed all my attacks on him. I had to wait till he popped up again. The last one is in Great Bay, after hitting the first red switch I swim into the wall about 5 times. Even though I didn't lose that much time, I think that's the sloppiest looking part. I think that most people will think that my Gyorg battle was very bad getting swallowed up twice. However, I was able to hit him back really quickly after I get swallowed up both times. My total time for the Gyorg battle was actually a few seconds faster than TSA (a few seconds slower than Dragorn's though). I have to admit it's a little embarrassing getting down to half a heart though.

I think the rest of the run was still very good. For the next runner, there is already a new trick found in the Stone Tower Inverted temple. Inside the second room in that corridor with the foot switch, down at the end of it where the dexi hand is, it is possible to roll left as Link down onto a platform with a deku flower, saving approximately 4 minutes going through the temple. That will be in the future. For now, I hope you enjoy my run.

If you have questions or comments, my AIM is pyh189.

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