Yes, although OoT (Ocarina of Time) had the title, Majora's Mask also features the magic flute. This is because Majora's Mask was made as a sequel to OoT, on the same console (Nintendo 64, for those of you somehow unaquainted with consoles)

However, Majora's Mask boasts a very detailed plot, that takes dedication, a desire to explore, and sometimes hard work to uncover completely.

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WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD! DO NOT READ ON IF YOU WANT TO PLAY MM WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT WILL HAPPEN!

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WARNING 2! THIS PLOT ANALYSIS MAY BE QUITE LONG, DON'T READ ON UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED FOR THE PLOT OF ONE OF THE BIGGEST GAMES SINCE... OoT?

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The game starts with a young elfish boy (Link) riding around the Lost Woods on his horse (Epona). You are informed that Link is the same Link who was known as the Hero of Time in OoT, the younger variant that is. You are also informed that he is looking for an old friend. Based on the end of OoT, i personally believe this "old friend" to be the annoying fairy, Navi. I persoanlly wouldn't be looking for a winged white ball who shouts at me every minute to do something im trying to do anyway, but there you go. Anyway, a strange little imp that Oot players will recognise as Skull Kid will then appear, and knock Link off Epona. Needless to say Link chases after the felon, as he wants his horse back. After falling down a trap hole set by Skull Kid and losing consciousness, he wakes up to find that he is a Deku Scrub! (OoT players will know what I mean, anyone else, if you want a description I suggest you try coming back at a later date, I will probably do races then)

Skull Kid has abandoned one of his two fairies, a little white ball reminiscent of Navi by the name of Tatl, whose purple brother Tael (clever wordplay there, fairies somehow know everything and like nothing better than to show you this), who becomes Link's guide for the rest of the game to get revenge.

Link cant find his way back to the Lost Woods, but he does manage to make his way through a warped tunnel to Clock Town, where a mask-covered man tells him that Skull Kid has been possessed by an evil mask called... Majora's Mask! (bet you never saw that coming!) He rather unfairly sets Link the task of retrieving this mask, as it was his and Skull Kid stole it. Link, being the kind-hearted chap that he is, agrees to this, then goes outside after being told he needs to get the mask back within three days, as after that the Mask-man needs to leave town "on business" (nothing to do with the Moon crashing to Earth then!) Link, being the hero of time, sees no problem in this, until he realises that Skull Kid took his magic Ocarina as well! (don't you just hate thieves?) Link, after three Termina days (about an hour each), makes his way into Clock Town's fabled clock tower, which conveniently opens up to the public every year at midnight on the same date, which even more conveniently is the third day of Link's visit. Unphased by being a wooden puppet and having no Ocarina, Link confronts Skull Kid on top of the tower, which has been well-chosen as a hideout. He gets his Ocarina back but realises that his "spit-bubble" attack isn't going to be much good, and decides to use the magical instrument to travel back to the beginning of the first day. This is something that the player will also have to do on a regular basis, as it is the main method of savingt the game. The Mask-man gets happy that Link got his Ocarina back in about a minute, but then freaks out when Link tells him he doesnt have the mask. He rather helpfully turns Link back into a human using the Ocarina, and gives him the first mask in the game, the Deku mask. Wearing this mask will turn Link back into a Deku Scrub at any time, but now he can take the mask off to return to human (Link) form.

Now that he's human again, the guards will let him wander around the wide world, and Link uses his newfound freedom to go to... The home of the Dekus! He finds his OoT foes, the witch sisters Kotake and Koame, are now running a successful potion shop in Termina's Lost Woods (different to the Lost Woods at the start of the game, which are Hyrule's), but one of them managed to get, rather ironically, lost. He tracks down the missing sister with the help of some observant monkeys, and in thanks gets permission to ride their boat, which is useful as it's the only way to get past the giant Octo guarding the way to the Deku palace. Finding said palace in turmoil, does he take the royal guards' advice and leave? Of course not, he saves the day by killing the evil spirit who resides in the Woodfall Temple, where he uses his Deku abilities to great effect in order to obtain the Hero's Bow, in addition to taking the evil spirit's mask and returning the princess to her Daddy the king at court, which naturally makes the whole Deku population happy.

Tatl tells Link that the evil mask he took from Odalwe (the boss/evil spirit of Woodfall Temple) might have something to do with what Tael said about four guardian spirits when they confronted Skull Kid, and this is verified when they get magically transported to a foggy realm of annoying music, where a giant orange guardian-type thing who speaks one letter at a time sings the annoying song and tells Link to play it on clock tower when all the other three guardians have been freed.

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With some sense now of what he's actually supposed to do, Link goes off up north to the snowy mountain of Snowhead Mountain (imaginative, huh?), where the Gorons live. Using his trusty arrows, he makes his way up to the Goron Village, where everyone's hidden inside because of the cold snow. Naturally only Gorons can enter the Goron Temple where everyone's hiding out, so with the help of OoT's Giant Owl, Link finds the Lens of Truth and uses it to climb up an icy cliff to the Goron Graveyard, where he finds, rather unsurprisingly, the grave of a Goron. But this is not any old Goron, this is a mighty Goron warrior, whose ghost wants to rescue the village elder but can't due to the rather pressing problem of his being dead. Link plays a quick ditty on his Ocarina, and manages to turn the ghost into a mask, which can be used to turn Link into a Goron. Despite the addition of Link's ever-present sock-like green hat, the Gorons back at the village let him into the temple and show him how to open it himself. He then finds that it's not as good in there as some led him to believe, as the Elder's son is crying for his daddy. Link remembers why the ghost let himself become a mask, and goes off to find the dying Elder and fulfill his last wishes. These last wishes are to play a song using the Ocarina to the baby Goron, who not only stops crying but also teaches you the song that will sedate the giant Goron blowing you away from the second Temple.

Goron Link promptly plunders the magical Fire Arrows from the Snowhead Temple, and blows up Goht, the massive evil robot bull who holds the second evil spirit, so that he can free the second guardian and stop the snow in the Goron Village while he's at it.

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Finding that the massive bulk granted by being a living boulder (Goron) lets him use giant bombs, Link decides to take a break and blow up the boulder blocking up the milk road, letting him get into the Romani Ranch. Not only is the Romani ranch home to a pair of Malon (OoT) lookalikes disguised as sisters, the older one delivering milk and the younger looking after... Epona! After retrieving his horse from the ranch and blowing up aliens despite his disbelief in Malon junior's conspiracies, Link uses the fence-jumping prowess that riding a horse gives him to make his way onto the Great Bay beach.

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Rather sadly though, Link finds a dying Zora on the beach, who explains that he is a guitarist in a band, and that consequently he was chosen to be their hero in the pursuit of evil. Okay, so the only evil he's in pursuit of is the Gerudo thieves who have stolen his band's singer's eggs and through them her voice, but still, the greatest hero the Zora race could find was a guitarist in a band? And come to think of it, how does stealing a woman's eggs make her lose her voice? Okay, so that last bit is explained when you return with the eggs by way of the age old "It's a simple fact of Zora biology" excuse. For those of you who didn't play OoT, Zora are fish-people so the egg part is perfectly believable �_�

Anyway, this Zora lets himself be turned into a mask as well, so Link can now become any of the three non-human races in Termina, which is naturally very useful as he's about to need those fishy powers of Zora in order to retrieve the eggs, and get into the Great Bay Temple by playing the eggs' song to the giant turtle who hangs out near the Zora hall. He gets the magical Ice Arrows, kills the giant fish Gyorg who, naturally, hosts the third evil spirit and releases the third guardian spirit out of four. Yay!

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After this, Link decides to use Hookshot he got from the pirates and the Don Garo's mask he got from the milk bandits trying to attack the Romani Ranch when he got Epona, and of course Epona, in order to get into Ikana Canyon. There he reunites the ghost conductor brothers Flat and Sharp (familiar to OoT players once more) and gets the Mirror Shield (yay!). He uses the Mirror Shield to blast all the ghosts and zombies in the Ancient Castle Du Ikana, and gets the Elegy of Emptiness from the Monkey King of the Ghosts there. This very useful song, when played on the Ocarina, will let any Link leave a statue of himself behind in his present position, so Link can now press the many switches needed to climb up the Stone Tower to... the Stone Tower Temple!

After using all his forms and all his skill to complete this the last Temple of the game, Link gets the Light Arrows and use them to... do the Temple again! Only this time it's upside down, so he can go get the Giant's Mask which makes the wearer grow up really big, and use it to defeat Twinrova, the two worms which host the final evil spirit, so he can release the final guardian spirit.

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Quite a lot of players now complete the many sidequests that help him get all 23 masks, as well as upgrades to his abilities and swords. After that, or even without it, Link will then wait until midnight on the final day, and enter the clock tower once more. Playing the song that the guardians taught him lets him summon them, and they stop the moon from crashing into the Earth. Majora's Mask abandons Skull Kid and runs off into the moon, and predictable as always Link follows him.

If he got all 23 masks he will play hide-and-seek with four little kids wearing masks like the four bosses, giving up all but three of his masks in the process. If he does this he will challenge the fifth kid there with nothing but his bare-ish inventory and the 3 transformation masks.

The fifth kid is wearing Majora's Mask, and if Link has only the three masks he will give you the Fierce Deity Mask and challenge Link to a fight, otherwise he will just challenge Link to a fight. The Fierce Deity Mask, known by Japanese importers as the Oni Mask, will transform Link into a big white-clothed warrior with a cool spiral sword. This massive sword will let him defeat Majora's Mask with great ease, whereas without it he will be severely challenged.

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After defeating Majora's Mask, Skull Kid apologises to Link and the four guardians, and goes off to the Lost Woods (of Hyrule) to play with Link, Tatl and Tael. The Mask-man takes Majora's Mask from Link and goes off to sell more masks, or something. The credits then roll over scenes showing all the happy people that Link helped in his quest and the various sidequests.

Link then leaves Termina to go on looking for Navi, some people believe that Links's Awakening (the Gameboy original Legend of Zelda game) happens during this journey, but no-one knows for certain.

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Thankyou to those of you who had the patience to read this, I know I skipped out quite a bit of detail, but I wanted this to be the plot of the game, not a walkthrough.

But if I have left out any major details, made errors or otherwise messed up on this, please inform me via email, i can be contacted through SSF (Shining Sword Forums), either by a PM from a member of SSF, or by email (that can be found in my SSF profile, and may be added to the contacts section of this site)

Thanks again for reading!

-DC