It's amazing that secrets can remain hidden in some of the most popular video games of all time, but it does happen – and sometimes for several decades.
Take Zelda: Majora's Mask, for example; it has recently been discovered that the N64 version contains hidden support for the N64's microphone accessory, and that voice commands exist in the game's code.
YouTuber Skawo made the discovery, which could have been intended as a neat callback to the original Famicom Disk System version of the game, which allowed players to bark into the controller's mic. As the NES lacked microphones on its controllers, this feature didn't make it to the West.
While Nintendo decided against moving forward with voice commands in Majora’s Mask, the code still exists within the game. Planned uses included taking pictures with the Pictobox ("Say Cheese") and waking up Deku Scrubs.
The abandoned idea was only ever based on the Japanese version of the game, so you have to utter the commands in Japanese. Still, it's interesting to see that these cool secrets are still popping up years after release.
[source nintendowire.com]
Comments 4
I love when stuff like this is uncovered. Really takes you out of how these games have been appreciated for decades, and the kind of trends and fields of study that fascinated the designers who were building them. There was so much rapidly developing technology at the turn of the millennium, and designers didn't know which of them had real utility. Makes you think about Majora's Mask in an entirely different light.
I’d guess the tight development deadline for Majorca’s Mask kept this from being fully implemented. Or if it’s anything like the Gamecube voice commands, inconsistent response. “Milk. Milk. MILK! MIIIIILK!!!”
@87th Bit of a tangent, but yeah, it's crazy to look back at that time and all of the changes that happened in gaming, and then to realize how short of a time span it was.
Majora's Mask launched at the same time as the PS2, and was pushing the limits of last-gen gaming in some ways, despite immediately being so outdated that Nintendo was bundling it up in a collection just 3 years later!
It's also interesting that games like Pokemon and Animal Crossing both made use of real-time clocks to deliver a realistic sense of time and persistence, while MM was doing similar things on its (very accelerated) time system.
More on topic, hidden content like this is fascinating, and so is The Cutting Room Floor. Prepare to lose hours if you explore it!
@smoreon Just a wild, fascinating time for the industry all around, with all the diverse technology and a rapidly expanding userbase. On the PC, from Quake to Half-Life to Deus Ex, there was a radical new FPS practically every year that shifted the genre on its head again and again. The Game Boy Color was still getting new releases well after the launch of the Xbox.
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