Difference between revisions of "Secret of Mana"

'''Secret of Mana''' is the second entry in the [[Mana (series)|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.

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

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

*'''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.

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.

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.  

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 [[Chrono trigger|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.  

File:Secret of Mana toy cast1.png|Doll versions of the main cast

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