It's a very recent thing, from players liking to go against the grain for the sake of it. No one would have assumed that in the 64 era. In fact Majora was pretty unloved, which lead to the "for those who knows" phenomena about it.
This seems pretty revisionist. I loved Majora to bits as a child, and I don't recall this being a contrarian opinion whatsoever on the Zelda Universe forums at the time.
Maybe there's a difference between critical and popular reception at play here?
This is definitely not the case. If anything the opposite is true, when MM was released those who played through it found it to be a better game and only with time have people (myself included) come to think of it as worse than OOT.
