Secret of Mana
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Basic Info
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People Info
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Release Info
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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
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
Cast
Gameplay
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. 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.
Development was not shelved, however, and Squaresoft repurposed the proposed systems for the upcoming SNES-CD platofrom 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.
Gallery
Doll versions of the main cast
Alternate photo
