In the fall of 2000, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask was released on N64 in North America. Around that same time, Hey You, Pikachu! was also made available on the console, and it came bundled with a special peripheral called the Voice Recognition Unit. Nintendo barely supported the peripheral during its time on the market, as it only worked with Hey You, Pikachu!, and another game that never released outside Japan. However, it seems there were plans for at least one more game to support it, and that game would have been Majora’s Mask.
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Nearly 25 years after the game’s release, the cut feature was discovered by the YouTuber Skawo, who found evidence for VRU support in the files for the The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. For whatever reason, Nintendo ultimately decided to remove the feature. VRU support might not have gotten too far into development, as the feature was only compatible with the Japanese VRU, and only Japanese voice lines were recognized by the game. However, these files exist in all versions of the game.
According to Skawo, the VRU would have allowed players to substitute some button presses for voice commands. For example, if the player said “say cheese,” the Pictograph Box would take a photo. Players could also say “milk” to get cows to produce milk, and the VRU could be used to wake sleeping Deku Scrubs. There are other examples too, but it doesn’t seem like this was a very big loss.
It’s impossible to say why Nintendo chose to abandon VRU support for Majora’s Mask, but it could have been the fact that the audience for the game was significantly different from the one for Hey You, Pikachu! That particular Pokemon game was largely aimed at younger players, while the Zelda series has traditionally skewed older. It probably wasn’t worth implementing a feature that would have appealed to such a narrow crossover audience. In 2015, Majora’s Mask was given a new version on Nintendo 3DS, which was a system that had a built-in microphone. The company still didn’t bother implementing those voice commands, so clearly this isn’t something that was ever seen as a priority, or worth saving.
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At the end of the day, the removal of VRU support clearly didn’t have much impact on the success of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. Nearly 25 years after the game’s release, it’s widely considered one of the best N64 games, and one of the best titles in the Zelda franchise. VRU support would have been a nice option for any players that happened to own the peripheral, but implementing it would have probably been more trouble than it was worth. Still, it’s great to see what might have been!
Are you disappointed this feature didn’t make it into Majora’s Mask? Did you own the peripheral back in the day? Share your thoughts with me directly on Twitter atย @Marcdachamp, on Bluesky atย @Marcdachamp, or on Instagram atย @Dachampgaming!
[H/T: Nintendo Wire]
