Secret of Mana

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聖剣伝説2 Secret of Mana

Basic Info Console(s) SNES, Publisher(s) Squaresoft Developer Squaresoft

People Info Producer(s) Director(s) Koichi Ishii Programmer(s) Nasir Gebelli Artist(s) Shinichi Kameoka Yasuhiko Kamata Writer(s) Hiromichi Tanaka

Release Info Japan August 06, 1993 N. America October 03, 1993 Europe November 24, 1994

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Secret of Mana is the second entry in the eponymous franchise., originally released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1993. The game is a profound leap forward in terms of quality for the series, enhancing the concepts found in the original title while adding new features and offering a more realized and deeper story.

Beyond being an important title within its own series, Secret of Mana is important to the history of Squaresoft as it's tumultuous development cycle lead to the creation of one of the company's most beloved games and influenced their relationship with one of the largest players in the video game industry.

Blurb

Official packaging

GOOD AND EVIL BATTLE FOR A YOUNG WARRIOR'S HEART

There is one force in the universe that keeps good and evil in perfect balance. It is called the Tree of Mana. But a magic sword has tricked a young warrior into upsetting this balance, spreading evil throughout the land.

Thus, the warrior must undertake a dangerous journey to find the seeds of the Mana tree which have been hidden for centuries. Only then can perfect harmony be restored.

In this incredible adventure, things are not as they seem. Magic swords release evil as well as fight it. Treasure chests hold booby traps. Monsters are friends and friends are enemies. Potions give power, black magic takes it away. Dragons fly, weapons change.

It's a world turned upside down that you must help the warrior make right. And the only way to succeed is to solve the Secret of Mana.

Story

Long ago...

Using the power of Mana, civilization had grown strong...

In time,Mana was used to create the ultimate weapon: the Manna Fortress...

But this angered the gods, and they sent their beasts to destroy the fortress...

A violent war betweent he beasts and the fortress plunged the world into chaos, and Mana seemed to all but disappear...

Before all was lost, a hero wielding the Mana Sword smashed the fortress...

Though civilization was destroyed, the world was peaceful again.

But time flows like a river, and history repeats...

Cast

• Randi: The main protagonist and the first one of the group whom the player controls. Randi was raised by the elder of Potos village and as such was never accepted by the other children as one of them, giving him a timid disposition. After falling down a waterfall while attempting to play with his peers, he pulls the Mana Sword from its stone pedestal at the behest of a mysterious voice. Because the folklore of the village states that the sword is protecting the settlement from monsters, removing it from the pedestal is the greatest taboo and Randi is expelled form the village.

• Primm: The second protagonist to join the party, after rescuing Randi from being the main dish of a goblin feast. She is brash, bossy, and overbearing, but means well and supports her friends earnestly. The daughter of a nobleman from the Kingdom of Pandora, Primm lost her mother at a young age. Her magic focuses on healing and support, such as charging a weapon with an elemental power.

• Popoi: The final protagonist to join the party, who is found alongside dwarves living in Gaia's Navel. He is a Sprite, washed away from his kin in the Sprite Forest by an immense flood, and has lost nearly all of his memories from the trauma. He is the dedicated spell caster of the group, with the Mana Spirits imbuing him with powerful offensive magic.

Gameplay

Secret of Mana is an action RPG with a bird's eye view camera that blends exploration and combat into a single screen for fluid and dynamic action. The famous ring menu system was first implemented in this game, keeping the player from having to cycle through several pages of text to just select an item, weapon, or spell. Options are rotated through a list of easily identifiable icons, with additional option sets being brought up at the press of a button instead of shuffling through the up and down buttons on a D-pad. The game is also multiplayer, with two friends able to control a character each with the default SNES hardware, and a third being able to participate if the SNES multitap peripheral is attached. For later released, only additional controllers are required.

The player(s) progress through the game by finding the Mana Spirits and empowering the fabled Mana Sword with the spirit's energies. Each location the cast visits contains a story that ties into the overarching narrative of Mana exploitation

Development history

Work on the game began in 1991. Secret of Mana did not begin it's development cycle as a Mana title, but was in fact first proposed as the fourth Final Fantasy game for the recently released Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Director Koichi Ishii envisioned that the then-new 16-bit hardware would allow for a much more dynamic play style, where transitions between battles and exploration were handled seamlessly instead of requiring separate screens as seen in turn-based RPGs. Though this proposal was effectively describing an 16-bit rendition of Final Fantasy Adventure on superior hardware, it did not occur to Ishii to connect the project with his handheld title during the early phases of development. Instead, he saw the project as a sequel to Final Fantasy III in the beginning and maintained that mindset until the leaders of Square denied the proposal. As Final Fantasy III was the second million-seller in Squaresoft's history, management did not want to risk losing the audience that the third fantasy acquired by shifting the focus of the fourth game into an action RPG--the criticism of the system changes between the first and second Final Fantasy games were only three years old at the time and still fresh in the minds of players and gaming press alike.

Development was not shelved, however, and Squaresoft repurposed the proposed systems for the upcoming SNES-CD platform announced in June of 1991. The game was given the project title of "Maru Island", and was set to take full advantage of the CD-ROM medium as possible. A massive island with intricate environments, time travel as both a plot point and gameplay feature, and multiple endings chosen by the player's actions were all conceptualized and ready for implementation when the specs of the SNES-CD were announced. To further the appeal of the game to the Japanese market, famous manga artist Akira Toriyama was hired to design the characters and main illustrations for the game. This was a deliberate action on Squaresoft's part, seeing the incredible success that the Dragon Quest series had achieved with his help.

Unfortunately, relations between Nintendo and Sony soured over the SNES-CD add on, and the peripheral was quietly cancelled by 1992. Not wanting to waste the time and resources put into the Maru Island project, development shifted to the regular SNES hardware and several cuts were made to accommodate the tremendous difference in storage capacity. Time travel, the multiple endings, and approximately 40% of the story were cut from the game to meet this hardware restriction. The cut content and illustration deal was shelved for the time being, and would be utilized for a landmark title later on. Though the development team was initially distraught over much of their work being invalidated and rendered useless, Ishii rallied the team together and gathered the remaining assets and story content to turn the game into a fully-fledged sequel to Final Fantasy Adventure.

For the game's setting, scenario writer Hiromichi Tanaka reviewed the feedback Squaresoft had received for Final Fantasy Adventure and worked with Ishii to refine the concept of "Mana" for the title. Tanaka had felt that too much emphasis was placed on the Mana tree itself in the previous game, leading some players to assume that the timber itself was the source of all mana and not just one physical avatar of the substance. With this in mind, the Mana sword was implemented to further convey the omniscient quality of mana that can appear in several forms, and also to add an element that separates the Mana tree from the "Mother Earth" cliche that had since become popular in the 1970's.

The core principal the development team adhered to was to create a sense of realism through the game's system. Because battles and exploration would take place on the same screens, careful considerations were given to the way the characters interact withe enemies--merely touching or bumping into an enemy deals no damage, short-ranged attacks will have no effect if the character is standing out of the monster's reach, and the player cannot perform full-powered attacks at their leisure in the same way that a boxer cannot throw haymakers without fatigue setting in. This last aspect was of particular importance, as the waiting time between characters performing attacks was a deliberate inclusion on behalf of less skilled players who are unaccustomed to action RPGs and only had previous experience with turn-based games. By enforcing a cool down period for both characters and monsters, the tempo of battle could be kept at a reasonable pace and allow for rookie players to build up their own abilities.

Gallery

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  Doll versions of the main cast

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  Alternate photo

External links

Official Square Enix site

Main titles Final Fantasy Adventure Secret of Mana Trials of Mana Dawn of Mana Collection of Mana Side stories Secret of Evermore Legend of Mana Children of Mana Heroes of Mana Rise of Mana Remakes Sword of Mana Adventures of Mana Secret of Mana HD Trials of Mana HD