A Classic Zelda Title Is Now On The Virtual Console

The Wii U may have been dogged in sales and had terrible marketing, but one of its highlights was the Virtual Console that allowed it to play older Nintendo titles. Well, one of the classic Legend of Zelda titles just made its way onto the Virtual Console.

Game Informer is reporting that the classic N64 title The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is currently available to purchase for the Wii U through the Virtual Console. The Virtual Console allows gamers to play emulated games from the N64, SNES and NES era on the Wii U. You can also access GameCube games by going into the Wii classic mode and then using a homebrew app called Nintendont to play GameCube titles.

In this case, you won't need anything fancy or special to get your hands on the N64 classic, just a Wii U and $9.99 to lay down on the title. The game features Link having to venture through the land of Hyrule and beyond in order to save the world from the moon smashing into the planet. Link only has a limited amount of time to save the world, and he must do so using a series of masks and some of the time powers from the Ocarina of Time.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask introduced gamers to a number of different gameplay features in the form of masks. Various quests required acquiring different masks in order to complete certain objectives or reach new areas.

The game didn't quite have the same effect as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time did when it first launched on the N64, which really took the gaming world by storm due to being the first Legend of Zelda title that was fully rendered in 3D. Nevertheless, gamers still loved Majora's Mask and it even managed to get a re-release on the Nintendo 3DS.

This news comes as part of the build up toward the big release for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which sees Link exploring a fully open-world environment with physics-based puzzles to solve, all new combat mechanics, and a very large world to explore. Link can also pick up and use practically any object he can get his hands on as a weapon. They have new weapon degradation in the game, so that Link must stay keen on what he has in his inventory and utilize his resources to the best of his abilities.

Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask focused a majority of its gameplay on the puzzles and the different challenges that came with wearing the masks. You didn't have to rely on physics, breakable objects or planning out ways to fight off a group of goblins in the game. It was like a traditional Legend of Zelda game just in 3D.

The release of the title on the Virtual Console is a nice little post-Thanksgiving gift leading up toward the Christmas holiday next month. Beyond that, gamers can look forward to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild dropping sometime in 2017 for both the Wii U and the Nintendo Switch. Unfortunately we don't have a solid release date on the game but it's expected to arrive sometime by the spring.

In preparation for the new Zelda, you can spend some time brushing up on the older games such as Majora's Mask... now that it's on the Virtual Console.