You Can Get Milk in Majora’s Mask By Speaking Into a Microphone

I don’t even know where to begin with this post.

Alright, well, let’s try to get through this one together. YouTuber Skawo has discovered hidden code in the game Majora’s Mask which would enable gamers to simply say words into the N64 microphone accessory to do things in-game. For example, by saying “milk” to a cow, you’d be rewarded with…milk. Useful.

You could also take a picture by saying “Say Cheese,” or wake up a Deku Scrub by—you guessed it—screaming “WAKE UP!” at those lazy good-for-nothings.

Unfortunately(?) to get this to work, you’ll need a Japanese version of the N64 microphone, and you’ll need to speak in Japanese (but saying “mi-ru-ku” isn’t that hard). Still, it’s clear that this cut feature wasn’t intended for use outside of Japan (or, at least, Nintendo scrapped the idea before other languages could be implemented).

Majora’s Mask is in my top 5 games, and it never ceases to amaze. Just recently it was discovered that Majora’s Mask is the only N64 game to use “secret” RAM. And just a couple weeks later, we get this new discovery for this magical game. When will it end? In three days?

Here’s the explanation of how this recent discovery works by Skawo:

Hidden in Majora’s Mask’s code is support for the VRS (Nintendo 64’s Voice Recognition System). On boot, the game looks for connected VRSes in any of the controller ports and there are five actions that can be triggered by using voice.

The support for the VRS is left intact in all versions of the game – but they all expect the Japanese version of the unit (NUS-020 JPN), and they all expect Japanese words to trigger the given actions.

Unfortunately, the functionality ultimately ends up being disabled, because the game is looking for 0x801D8E3C (in US 1.0) to be 3 before the voice commands are activated, and it never is set to that value: https://github.com/zeldaret/mm/blob/4…

It was likely meant to be set in a function which has been blanked in the final release: https://github.com/zeldaret/mm/blob/4…

I have noticed this while scrolling through the recently completed Majora’s Mask decomp, but it has apparently originally been discovered and documented by ‪@Zoinkity‬ .

You might recall similar microphone functionality in the original Zelda game for the Famicom. Or maybe you don’t recall that, as it was Japan-exclusive. But I bet you do remember the microphone usage in the Nintendo DS Zelda games, proving Nintendo really wants you to talk to your game consoles.

Nice try, Nintendo. I won’t even talk to my family. I’m not talking to your tech.

What do you think about this new development? Let me know in the comments below.