Day 257 - Majora's Mask: Dawn of the Fourth Day | -24 Hours Remain | All is Lost. How do we move forward from here?
Racing, Puzzle, Fifty ·
Skeeter’s Take:
Sam hinted he had a lot to say about the Goron Race mini-game. I have been able to keep pace with his progress up until this point, but one of my buddies put up a Cobblemon server this weekend and suddenly I’m losing chunks of time only familiar to alien abducts.
Since I have a Gible I need to train up, I will not be catching up with Sam and instead we will be talking about different mini-games of our choice!
Initially, I wanted to talk about the boat ride because I would alway get mad when I was a kid when they didn’t like my picture of the octopus that gets impaled by the boat. To me, that was worth a lot of money! It’s the last known photo of the thing before it met its demise! The gruff man behind the counter never seemed to agree with me.
I also love that it’s implied that Tingle is the man behind the counter’s son. That cracks me up.
The resemblance is uncanny.
I also love the witch’s eyeballs and nose being the only thing visible in the information booth.
But that’s kind of all I had to say about it, and by chance I happened to walk into the mailman’s house during the night.
He was sitting in the middle of his bed doing some sort of weird running or stretching exercise. I wasn’t really sure what I had walked in on, but I felt like I probably shouldn’t be seeing it.
Turns out he was training. This damn mailman is so dedicated to his job and getting people their mail on time, that after his long day running around town, he comes back home and trains his mind by trying to look at the clock at exactly ten seconds. This involves him whipping his head around to the clock behind him every ten seconds, giving a little more explanation to the strange movements he made earlier, but he’s definitely not Bob Ross-ing the whole picture for me.
He then asks me if I’d like to try. He charges me 2 rupees for him to look at the clock. I’m not about to argue with the madman, so I pay up. A timer appears for 2 seconds before fading from sight. I then had to count up manually in my head to exactly ten seconds (10.00 exactly). Anyone who’s played with a stopwatch and attempted this themselves knows how challenging this is even with a visual cue.
Too bad I am a MAILMAN GOD:
I’m just kidding. I pulled out a stopwatch on my phone and even then it still took me around 10-15 tries (I pretty much was hitting 10.31 every damn time). I realize that this hardly counts as a mini-game, however, it still is technically a game. There is skill and/or luck involved and there is a prize. There is even an entrance fee to the game.
I know the fact that the Mailman Counting game doesn’t have its own Wiki-page doesn’t give me a lot of support in this argument (it’s only mentioned briefly in the Mailman’s Wiki-page itself), but it is by all means a mini-mini-game!
On the Mailman’s main Wiki-page, it mentions that by wearing the Bunny Hood it leaves the timer up the entire time. I essentially cheated in the Bunny Hood with my phone timer and this mini-game was still terrible! It feels largely luck based with a little bit of counting skill, it reminds me of elementary school, and there isn’t a Treasure Chest Woman in sight.
However, the Mailman is such a hilarious and tragic character, I feel like I never really gave him the proper appreciation before.
The man spends time running such a tight mail schedule that he can’t even stop to talk with the player. He is so dedicated to this schedule and his work that he comes home after doing that, and whips his head back and forth between the clock and the wall to work on his timing. Hell, his mini-game is just his training routine! That is the joke! The guy lives, sweats, and breathes Mail. He is the epitome of Mailman. He has earned that title. He is the Übermailmansch!
I walked into Mailman’s house on the night of the Third Day. Once again, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, but I felt like I was seeing something that I was not supposed to:
There on the floor, I saw not a Mailman, but a Brokenman.
Here was our former Mailman, once secure in his career and his life. He had everything figured out. Life = Mail. But what happens to your life when there is no mail? How can you be sure if the rumors people are saying about the moon falling are true? Can you leave in good conscience knowing the good people of Clock Town might wake up tomorrow (they won’t) and not have their mail waiting for them? Can you really risk ruining Bomber Kid #5’s Birthday because the letter from his Dad never made it to his hands? Should you run despite this, in hopes that by saving yourself you may be able to one day deliver mail to those in need still? How can you take the risk of taking the time to flee, or even the risk of taking the time to consider your options when the schedule doesn’t leave any room for that?
Poor, poor Mailman. You deserved better.
If only there was a Hero of Time who could stop their internal clock at exactly ten seconds that could help…
Poor, poor Mailman…
Recommend: Mailman funny
Replay Percentage Chance: 30%
Time Played: 154.65 seconds
Swamp Tourist Center images source: https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Swamp_Tourist_Center
Sam’s Take:
The Goron Race is the single worst minigame on the N64 and I’ve played all three Mario Parties. Also I’m better than you are at Mario Party 2. Don’t fight me on this, just accept it. You’re probably good at a lot of things, but I would destroy you ANY FUCKING DAY at Mario Party 2.
I really only have one complaint about the Goron race, but it’s such a huge problem that it really ruins the whole event, and that is the rubber banding. I can’t believe the internet doesn’t talk about this more, but on the N64 version of Majora’s Mask, the first 70 seconds of the 80 second race mean nothing. You can sit at the start for a full 15 seconds and still win, you can have a world record race of your life and still lose. Nothing matters except the last straight away, and it’s fucking tragic. Even at full speed, they are all faster than you at the straightaway, so you have to hope they roll up next to you, hope bumping into them makes the random physics do what you want them to do, and hope it doesn’t randomly break your spike-ball form.
All of this would be annoying but ignorable if I didn’t have to do a completely pointless one minute preamble fake-race before the actual race started, but every time things don’t go your way, you gotta go through the start of the match again, and what’s your prize for winning? It’s honestly pretty lit, it’s gold dust that can give your sword a permanent upgrade! Hell yea! Only problem is the smith needs two days to upgrade your sword, so if you win the race on day 3 after completing the temple like I did, then it’s worthless and you lose it when restarting the timer SO YOU HAVE TO GO BACK AND WIN THE FUCKING RACE AGAIN.
You may notice I used my modded Morrowind screenshots instead of pictures of the actual race, and that’s because I already upgraded my sword and I’m NEVER going back there. Fuck the Goron races, if you want to use rubber banding to make something super easy, sure whatever, I still don’t like it, but at least it won’t get in the way. Making the racers go at an unnaturally fast speed right before the final straightaway so they can knock you out of ball-form 10 seconds before the finish line should be considered a war crime.
Recommend: NOOOOO
Replay Percentage Chance: 0%
Time Played: I don’t want to fucking talk about it
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