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Might this also problematize the existential implications of eternal recurrence? After all, is Link really faced with the pressure to affirm a life repeated infinitely, which might lose all significance? Nietzsche argues, “The question in each and every thing, ‘Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?’ would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight” (Gay Science, p. 274). With control over the flow of time, this “greatest weight” loses its command. It seems a new existential crisis is in place for Link in Majora’s Mask, one that questions not one’s desire for eternal recurrence, but whether the meanings of experience and self are even identifiable within the interrupted flow of time—whether the fragmentation of time represents an unrecoverable loss.

Can I Keep This Cool Stuff?

In Majora’s Mask, Link doesn’t have to sacrifice all of the goods he’s accumulated when he goes back to the beginning of the First Day. Many of the less significant items, such as Deku Nuts, are lost during the time warp, but Link gets to keep major items such as masks and weapons. Rupees are lost as well, but Link can deposit them in the Clock Town bank and withdraw them after returning to the beginning of the cycle.

True, it would be an incredibly frustrating experience to accumulate all those amazing items only to surrender them an infinite number of times. The implication of this, though, is that each iteration of the three-day cycle is again marked as a non-repetition. As the player gradually accumulates items, the “past” can be recognized as an absence of those materials. For example, when Link didn’t have the Hero Bow (referenced as an earlier state), he would have killed various enemies using alternative means and items. Each iteration of the cycle becomes an effort to gain affordances in the game through items and materials, and at the same time, create a historical account defined in context of the items taken (or given back, as the case may be). The player’s save game file works in coordination, creating a player history that is rewritten as the game is played, with gradually more items completed and more quests fulfilled. The save game is a linear construct, and even though the three-day cycle moves the game events and narrative forward, there is ultimately a return to linear time when the player walks away.

In The Deconstruction of Time, David Wood draws attention to Jacques Derrida’s claim that “there is (and could be) no alternative concept of time, no nonmetaphysical concept of time” (p. x). As metaphysics is concerned with the nature of the world and attempts to define a basic reality, we can consider the possibility of time being abstracted outside of the world, its reality, and our experiences and thinking within the world. Derrida doesn’t think it’s possible, and I would suggest that Majora’s Mask points to a few conditions that lead down the same path.

The presence of material items that Link takes across time cycles suggests that time is marked by materiality in some way; even if we were to conceive of a “pure” repeating time cycle, that cycle still depends on the materials within it. In this case, time cannot be separated from the metaphysics of Termina. To collect things takes time, and time is represented by the objects themselves as a form of Link’s and the player’s investment. Time also depends upon its own representation in the game.

There needs to be some way of marking out time, of keeping track of it, even in the face of an unstable time flow. The clock at the bottom of the screen keeps constant track of time, and the Clock Tower visibly ticks away. Time is also invoked with the messages and warnings given to Link, serving as a reminder of how much time is left before the moon crashes into Termina. Even the choice of days as the unit of the repeating time cycle reveals the necessity of imposing some kind of representation.

The Material Value of Time: Why