Hello duders, so I have never played Majora's Mask and I made it to the first dungeon and time is running out. I am guessing that when it does it is game over. So I turned back the time to see what will happen and it seems like I have to do everything I did up to that point again which seems like the biggest bullshit I have ever witnessed in a game. My question is do I have to do everything up to the dungeon again? If so how do I stop the time because it seems impossible. Thanks for the help!

@bondfish: There's a scarecrow at the bottom of the observatory, who explains to you the Song of Time variants. Make sure you go find him, and commit to memory those variants. Sadly they are not saved in your menu screens. One of them jumps time forward (if you're trying to complete specific sidequests). One of them slows the passage of time down to half of its default speed. I recommend always playing the game with time slowed down, all you have to do is play it at the start of each cycle.

As for dungeons, restarting the cycle generally resets dungeon progress. There is a Majora's Mask-ish stone plate on the ground right inside the entrance to each dungeon. This is a warp point to the boss room. I thought it only activates once you've beaten that boss fight, but I've recently learned if you just reach the boss once then it also activates. If you think you're running short on time, you could try to sprint to the boss to activate that checkpoint, then reset time if you're not going to have time to finish the fight.

But more importantly, if you want to be safe you could always just go and tackle dungeons at the very beginning of a cycle. It will often take like 2 days of the cycle if you're really thoroughly doing the whole dungeon and finding the fairies hidden within.

Awesome thank you very much! If anyone else has any tips much are appreciated

The dungeons reset when you play the Song of Time. You keep songs and items when you reset time though, so you can just go straight to the dungeon and play The Sonata of Awakening, and if you already got the Bow while you were in the dungeon then you don't need to worry about getting that again, so there are portions of the dungeon you can bypass.

Luckily this isn't something that should happen to you if you prepare. Whenever you reset time the first thing you should do is play The Inverted Song of Time which will slow everything down significantly so you're on a less harsh timer. If you first get to a dungeon and you're most of the way through your three days then you should probably reset time before you begin it. But yeah if you go into the dungeon on the first day with time slowed, then you will have way more than enough time to finish any of the dungeons.

When you reset time you keep any major items, warp points and learned songs. The best way to tackle a dungeon is to reset and slow down time and then take on the dungeon from the very beginning of that cycle.You generally get access to a dungeon by completing a quest and learning a song. You just need to do this quest once and when you reset time you can just warp to the dungeon and play the song.

@bisonhero: In the 3D version, they actually do save on your song list screen

This doesn't really apply to your current situation, but I found that the Shieka stone (I think it's called?) inside the base of the clock tower is a FANTASTIC help for a lot of the game. It's so nice to not have to look for a walkthrough.

Rather than a whole lot of dungeons each has 2 phases. The first is unlocking the dungeon and the second is doing it. So you should do everything to unlock a dungeon in one (usually up to when you learn the song, as each one needs a unique ocarina tune). Once you've done that maybe see if you can make it in to the dungeon so you can get there quickly when you make your proper run, but then play the song of time, and then slow time so you can have the most time. You don't need to do all the lead up to the dungeon ever again once you have the song.