Zelda Gaiden Majora's Mask Beta!
Some Japanese footage from a near complete version
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is a N64 game made by Nintendo. Starting off as the N64-DD The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time URA, it borrows almost all of its graphics from Ocarina of Time, yet is often heralded as the better game.
Early history
Due to technical and time limitations, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was released to the N64 instead of the more powerful, and ultimately failed, N64-DD. 2 whole dungeons were lost, although they remained partly in the game still: the forest temple was originally the wind temple (some text from one of the know-it-all brothers still mentions an 'evil wind' coming from the forest) and the ice dungeon was once a full sized temple. These features and extras, such as improved graphics, were planned to be added in the URA addition of the game.
However, the team didn't want to make the URA game and were told by Miyamoto that they if they could make a full game in one year, they didn't have to make the URA version (someone please site this for me, the page I found it on seems to have been lost when unseen64 changed...). The game was planned to have 7 days, but as the N64-DD was failing, they put the game on the N64 instead and had to cut 4 days and much content from the game.
Very little things are known about the early cut content, as most early footage is from later builds. The biggest changed area is Ikana Canyon, judging by the early images of the area. There are almost no images of the other areas from the N64-DD version.
Miscellaneous Cut stuff
Unlike Ocarina of Time, there seems to be very little early footage from this game, and most of what's been found out was from screenshots.
Zelda Gaiden - Majoras Mask Beta Images
A fair amount of early images. Important ones featured below.
Beta blocks
The long, gray stones you can see in this image were cut from the Stone Temple Tower dungeon, but are still in the games files.
the moon
This strange, early image shows the moon without a face. Although it seems just to be concept art, it does suggest that the nightmare fuel of Termina's moon may have been added later on.
Two New Glitches On 4th Day
The first one is the focus here...
It seems there is no English display for the fourth day...which in itself features some interesting things, including a very small moon (perhaps how big it was meant to be at the beginning of a 7 day cycles) and some strange glitches.
Temporary files? Or what?
A strange, much earlier image, shows a very...colorful area that houses the shadow temple in the final. Perhaps it was meant to be a reference the colorful designs of the day of the dead celebration in Mexico?
As there is little known about the earliest versions of the game, there is a lot of speculation as to some of the unused items. Some, like the different instruments shown assigned to the C buttons, wasn't a major change and either freed up inventory space or was a cosmetic change to the ocarina in different forms. There was once an adult Link mask, which was removed and technically became the Great Deity mask, the original version dubbed unnecessary since young Link could use all the items needed. The forms have little changed in them, aside from Goron Link once using the Megaton Hammer (the final product merely uses the same impact graphic and effects). There are some theories that the Gibdo mask may have been a transformation mask at some stage, but there is no proof of this. As the game is very side-quest heavy, many think it might have more actual major quests that needed the masks, but no one knows if that is true. There was also a fishing minigame, and includes a Hylian loach in a bottle, which is missing from the data of the American version of the game.
Beta64 - Majora's Mask Zelda Gaiden
One of two videos chock-full of early footage and facts
Gaming Mysteries Zelda Gaiden Majora's Mask Beta (N64)
Another video about the game
There is so much that was cut from this game left in the files, most being dug out only recently, that covering it all in this article would be impossible, but the following references cover a LOT that was left out, including: the great fairy cut scenes, early items, leftovers from OoT, other images and the early version of Romani Ranch.
References
(I don't know what else to add since the first link here covers a TON of stuff I can't really be bothered to put into this...feel free to try your hand at this mess.)