While many people running around trying to buy their last minute Valentine’s Day gifts, there is another unofficial holiday. Friday the 13th is one of those superstition holidays in which unlucky events seem to happy to the unluckies of people. So it makes sense that one of the most superstitious day gives gamers the re-release of one of gamings darkest game ever made, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D. So why is this game so depressing to play? Why repurchase a game that is almost fifteen years old? First let’s build up the plot of the game.

You play as a young boy named Link. While he journeys through a forest in the land of Hyrule, Link is then ambushed by a kid wearing a mask and his fairy accomplices Tatl and Tael. Link then follows them down a dark cave, where he confronts the the mysterious boy who reveals his name to be Skull Kid.

Skull Kid then curses Link by turning him into a a plant creature called a Deku Scrub. Tatl stops Link from going after the Skull Kid in order to help him make a clean escape. Tatl then notices that Skull Kid moved to quick for her to catch up with them. Realizing she needs Link’s help to find them, Tatl then is forced to make an unequal partnership in order to become reunited with her friends.

Link follows Skull Kid through the cave into the inside of a odd Clock Tower in the land known as Termina. There, he meets the Happy Mask Salesman, who offers to help Link heal his curse, in exchange of which he must retrieve a mask stolen from him called Majora’s Mask. Skull Kid is revealed to be the thief that stolen the mask and has becoming infused with the dark power of the mask.

With the power of the mask, Skull Kid causes the townsfolk pain and despair. The worse of his power was starting an impending apocalypse thanks to the dark powers affecting the moon itself. The moon is now bound to enter Termina’s atmosphere and destroy the world in three days. Can Link save the world from evil with only just three days?

With a plot like that, how does this game count as depressing? Throughout Link’s journey, the player will come into side quests in order to help the townsfolk. The problems they ask Link to help have to do with helping people cope with death and despair. For example, there is one scene on the last day before the moon’s collision, in which Link overhears a conversation between sisters. The little sister is finally happy that she would finally be able to try a “Special” drink so potent that only adults are allowed to drink it. This brings many gamers to assume that this brings real world comparisons to alcohol. The older sister is trying to get her younger sister drunk to have her become blissfully unaware of their impending doom if Link does fail to stop Skull Kid. It is scenes like this that constantly have the gamers feeling deeply depressed knowing that others are just walking around in acceptance that death was near.

So why is this game being re-bought by gamers across the world? Simply put, the dark tones are something that was never really implemented in gaming back in the early days of gaming. This is also the darkest Zelda series ever made even to this day.

Besides the nostalgia factor, there are also tons of unexplained theories that still haven’t been explained by Nintendo. The biggest theory is that when Link entered the cave in the beginning of the game, he had passed away. Termina is a metaphor for purgatory and Link is just going through the five stages of death. Whether the theories are true or not, this game really makes the gamers think deeply about life and the sorrows of dealing with death. With this game available on the original N64, Wii, Wii U, and now the 3DS this is one gaming story people have to experience.