Hello, friends. Well, here we are, now a week into the 30 Day Video Game Challenge, and I’m already struggling to keep posts scheduled ahead of time. To be fair, the reason that I didn’t have time to schedule this one was because yesterday was an exhausting trainwreck of a day, and I actually didn’t get anything done. No workout, no cooking, no cleaning, no work, and no writing. It was just not a good day. And today, my internet has been having a lot of speed issues, and I have been talking to Frontier all morning, who claim there is zero way for them to help me without me spending more money. Ugh.
So, in the interest of keeping these posts going up in a timely manner, this one is going up as soon as I finish it. No time to really polish it up and make it shiny and awesome. Boo.
The Day 7 question is…
Day 7:Â Who or what was the most annoying character?
WARNING: This post contains spoilers for both The Legend of Zelda:Â Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. If you haven’t played these games, and absolutely can not have the plots spoiled for you, then click away now. If you get upset by the spoilers, well, I mean, the games are both nearly 20 years old, so… I think that’s on you, friend.
Keeping with my theme of talking about more retro games, that took over and shaped my childhood, and still hold a very special place in my heart, I would definitely have to say that Skull Kid, from the Legend of Zelda games, is definitely an annoying, little brat… to say the least. While the title of “Skull Kids” were actually given to group of mischievous, childlike creatures in the Legend of Zelda universe, who Navi believes to be children that have gotten lost in the Lost Woods, and exist in three Legend of Zelda games, I’m mostly talking about one Skull Kid in particular. I think you know who.
Link first encounters the Skull Kids in Ocarina of Time, just outside of The Lost Woods. Link befriends the first Skull Kid by teaching him Saria’s Song, and giving him a Skull Mask. You later meet more Skull Kids in this same area, and can play music with them for a heart piece. If you encounter Skull Kids as adult Link, they will attack you, because Skull Kids never grow up, and they strongly dislike adults (think of a more wild version of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan).
In the Majora’s Mask game, one of these sneaky Skulls Kids becomes the main antagonist of the game. In the game’s epilogue, we see the Skull Kid, who is now wearing the evil Majora’s Mask that he stole from the mask salesman, attack Link and Epona in the woods, steal his ocarina, and ride off on Epona. When Link finds and confronts him, the Skull Kid, who is now imbued with powerful, sorcerer magic from the mask, leads you to believe that he has done something terrible to Epona, before turning Link into a Deku Scrub, and trapping him, and leaving him with one of his fairies. Link forms an alliance with the fairy, Tatl, who feels betrayed by the Skull Kid, and you set off after him together.
When you finally find the Skull Kid at the top of the Clock Tower in Clock Town, he shrieks, and uses his magic to pull the moon toward Termina, giving you just three days to find a solution before everyone is destroyed. You play the Song of Time to return to the first day, where you speak to the mask salesman, who urges you to get Majora’s Mask back from the evil Skull Kid, and save Termina. And that is where the game begins.
As if pulling the moon toward Termina to destroy everyone wasn’t evil enough, the Skull Kid also has an entire list of rather naughty crimes that he committed after gaining his new powers from Majora’s Mask. By this point, Skull Kid had already imprisoned the Four Giants, who are the guardians of Termina, within their temples. Without the powers of the Four Giants to protect them, as the guardian giants and their temples temples were now tainted with evil magic, each of the four regions of Termina were thrown into chaos, and dealt disasters. The Skull Kid was also responsible for bringing harm, chaos, and trickery to numerous others across Termina, including the Great Fairy, who he hurt.
Given that I have completed the game numerous times, I know that the Skull Kid was just a sad, lonely kid all along, who thought that his friends had all abandoned and forgotten him. Although he was at the center of so much destruction and pain, it was mostly because of the evil Majora’s Mask, that overtook him with its influence. At the end of the Majora’s Mask game, you even battle the evil mask on its own, after it is knocked off of the Skull Kid. Even though he was the “bad guy” of the game, who made your life (and the game itself) incredibly difficult, it’s hard not to feel bad for him. He is just a kid.
Even if he was the annoying little shit who stole the mask in the first place, and caused everything terrible and awful to happen in Termina.
At the end of the game, when Majora’s Mask has been defeated, and the moon is back in its proper place, the Four Giants, Link, and Skull Kid leave Clock Town to return to their respective homes. As they say their goodbyes, the Skull Kid asks to be your friend.
“Eh-hee-hee… You have the same smell as the fairy kid who taught me that song in the woods…”
Thanks for reading, friends.
You can read the rest of my 30 Days of Video Games posts HERE!
Jan
My Life as Jan 