Japanese Majora's Mask

I was bored and timed all the text in Japanese Majora's Mask any% compared to the english text. The results were somewhat surprising. I've attached the .txt files of my timings to this post.

Basically, I timed anything that was not fast scrolling text, since those probably wouldn't be any different between the Japanese and English versions. As it turns out, the Japanese text is about 30 seconds faster throughout the entire any% route.

Not only that, but the Japanese version's power crouch stabs also save time in the any%. Majora's Wrath would be way faster with crouch stabs, essentially cutting the time it takes to kill him in half. In addition, this would allow you to skip killing off the masks, which saves another 15-20 seconds. Even if you get hit by the masks while crouch stabbing Majora to death, you'd still save around 10 seconds on him, meaning that crouch stabs save around 30 seconds on the Majora fight.

Combine that with the Pirate's Fortress shortcut (which saves about 5-10 seconds) and you've basically got Japanese MM being a little over a minute faster for the any% SS run than the english version.

If anyone (specifically darkeye) wants to look over my timings, feel free to do so, as it's entirely possible I was off by a little bit in some of the text timing. I used my 1:49 SS run for the english text (except for on the moon, for which I used jiano's 1:53 to avoid lag interference) and abeshi's TAS for the japanese text (which, it turns out, is the same on both N64/VC and GC).


EDIT: As it turns out, Turtle CS skip (aka FPBS CS Skip) DOES NOT WORK ON JAPANESE VERSION. The lack of a fade to black makes the cutscene start no matter what, so japanese version is actually about the same as US version.

that's an interesting turnaround after OoT's 12+ minutes text difference.

The timings in ing's post look accurate, but he didn't mention some places where the Japanese version loses time. Since you can't hit the Great Bay Owl without Zora Mask in the Japanese version, you have to swim out to sea twice. The lack of Flying Zora also complicates the bomb route, since you have to use explosives to hover to the Great Bay Fairy Fountain. Having to swing your sword to use ISG whenever you enter a new area barely costs time in the short term, but probably adds up to about three or so seconds over the course of the run.

All of these factors, combined with the lack of Turtle CS Skip (which I made a video of, not realizing that ing had done the same), means that the Japanese version is likely to be slightly slower than the US version. The magnitude of difference is not the same as in OoT, though; we're talking somewhere in the realm of seconds, not minutes.

Yeah, I thought about those few time wasters (plus the fact that gyorg is FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE to kill quickly on japanese version) and came to that same conclusion myself. I noticed a few other differences while playing on jap - namely that you have infinite tries at the lullaby skip ISG (it doesn't send you back to the snowhead entrance on jap ever) and any time you hess into the edge of a ledge with ISG on you lose all of your speed, unlike the US version which keeps your 27 speed and lets you keep HESSing when you change directions.

I'm actually wondering if the Japanese GC version would be any faster than the US N64 version. The controls on GC version with an adapter aren't anywhere near as bad as VC's imo (HESS on GC with an adapter is just as easy as on N64) so I'd be fine with running it if it ended up being any faster. It all comes down to whether or not the 30 seconds saved from text will make up for the extra lag on GC (GC loading times are about the same as N64's on average).

I actually started using a Japanese rom for this for my TAS's, If I find anything ill be sure to post

ING-X wrote

plus the fact that gyorg is FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE to kill quickly on japanese version

And I keep hearing this, what makes the Japanese Gyorg so hard? (I haven't decided to go fight him yet on the japanese version >.>)

Gyorg is really hard on Japanese mainly because you can't zora shield unless you're swimming full speed, making the quick strategy damn near impossible to do. In addition, you can't "buffer" zora swims on the Japanese version, making it harder to get away from gyorg's omnomnomnom attack after he releases his big fishes.

Oh that makes sense, and explains why people complain about him so much =o

I was wanting to play J for any% is there a version that is prefered? like 1.0 or 1.1?

No, as long as it's Japanese Virtual Console you're good