How does saving work in the Japanese Majora's Mask?

Majora's Mask reached Japan on April 27, 2000, a full six months before North America, the longest wait any 3D Zelda's international release has had. The game Japanese players bought was subtly harder to live with.

Its save system is the difference. The Japanese version has three save files, and its owl statues are warp points only, destinations for the Song of Soaring. They do not save. The only way to save is to play the Song of Time and return to the first day, surrendering the cycle's progress by design.

The international release rebalanced the trade: it added quicksaving at the owl statues, a temporary save that lets a player stop mid cycle, and paid for the extra data by cutting the save files from three to two. Japan later received the same compromise in its Collector's Edition release on GameCube.

The 3DS remake settled the argument by combining both: three save files, as in the Japanese original, with statues that save permanently. A Japanese Nintendo 64 cartridge remains the purist's version of Termina's three days.