After 30,000 Attempts and 25 Years, The Most Unfortunate Dog In Majora's Mask Has Won The Doggy Race Minigame

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Just under 25 years after the initial release of , a player has done the impossible: getting the blue dog to win the race without cheating or using glitches. In this unique title, Link can participate in a series of races via the Doggy Racetrack. The idea is to bet on which dog will win and, while hints are available, the outcome is mostly random. But not all dogs are created equal: infamously, the blue dog is least likely to take first, to the point that it was long considered impossible.

But the naysayers were proven wrong when a speedrunner by the name of falkush finally managed to get the blue dog to win a race without using glitches or cheats this past August. The winning run itself is available via falkush's YouTube channel, but a full recap of the effort to score a blue dog win, as well as the mechanics involved in achieving one, is detailed in a new video by Vidya James.

The mechanics of the Doggy Racetrack mini-game are surprisingly complex, and are detailed extensively in the video above. The basics hold that each dog has a set base speed, which fluctuates randomly throughout the race, and players can read their thoughts using the Mask of Truth to determine which one is most likely to win. But the gold dog's base speed is by far the fastest, while the blue dog's is the slowest. That means the gold dog is most likely to win any given race, the blue dog is least likely, and all the rest are just about tied for second place.

Dogs whose dialogue begins with "" are statistically more likely to place closer to the front.

Speedrunners have long since made it their business to score a blue dog win, and at least one had already achieved it before falkush — but they'd only done so with the help of a rare glitch. This glitch causes the results of the race to be called early, so even if the blue dog is fated to lose, if it happens to be at the front of the pack when the glitch is triggered, it'll still be considered the first-place winner before it crosses the finish