Secret of Mana was built for a machine that never existed. Square planned it for the CD-ROM drive that Nintendo and Sony were developing for the Super Famicom, the project that became Sony’s PlayStation, and when that add-on was abandoned the game was squeezed back onto a 16-megabit cartridge. Its translator admitted that players could “get a sense of areas where it seems that something might be missing”. Even so, Edge judged it “better than Zelda on the SNES”, and it did something few console role-playing games had tried: three people could play it at once, each controlling one of the heroes.
Fast facts
- Developer: Square. Directed by Koichi Ishii, produced by Hiromichi Tanaka, programmed by Nasir Gebelli, music by Hiroki Kikuta.
- Japanese title: Seiken Densetsu 2 (“Legend of the Holy Sword 2”), the sequel to the Game Boy’s Seiken Densetsu, sold in America as Final Fantasy Adventure.
- Released: Japan, August 1993; United States, late 1993; Britain, autumn 1994, published by Nintendo at £49.99.
- Cartridge: 16 megabits with battery-backed saves.
- Players: one to three at once, the second and third through a Multitap adaptor.
- Reviews: Edge nine out of ten; Super Play 94%.
A CD game on a cartridge
Square had meant Seiken Densetsu 2 to be bigger. Ted Woolsey, who translated it for Square’s American arm, told Super Play in 1994 that it “was originally scheduled as a CD game for the Sony CD-ROM SNES add-on that never appeared. So it probably would have been much longer”. The team “turned it back into a cartridge game”. Retro Gamer later reported that the first thing to go was a plan for several routes through the adventure, leading to different endings.
In Japan it sold out in its first days, Edge reported. Woolsey remembered expectations differently: the game had started “with no momentum” against the sixth Final Fantasy, “so no one was expecting the runaway hit that it’s turned out to be”. He had been given 30 days to translate it, and had flown to Japan with his family for the month to do it. One thing changed on the way: Edge noted that the Japanese release had a bug that stopped the game being finished unless the player killed a certain monster, and that it was fixed for America.
Fighting in real time
The game starts with a boy who finds a rusty old sword near his village. It turns out to be part of a magical seal that protected the village, and by taking it he has broken the seal. Banished by the elders, he sets out to find the Mana Seeds. On the way he is joined by a girl, whom Super Play called a “wise and wilful spell-caster with a neat line in karate moves”, and a sprite, “a more aggressive and impetuous magic-user”.
The fighting happens on the map, in real time, as in The Legend of Zelda. Super Play’s review of the British release explained it: the “action-based combat system (‘motion battle’, as those Square folk call it) is similar to that of Zelda, allowing you to charge up your weapon – be it sword, bow, boomerang or other – by holding down a button and then releasing it at your opponent.” There are eight kinds of weapon. Each grows stronger as it is used and reforged, and each new level adds to how far an attack can be charged, at the cost of a longer wait. Hit points and experience were still there underneath, but Super Play found it possible to play the whole game without worrying about them, which made it “far more accessible than the turn-based, menu-driven combat of RPGs like Final Fantasy”. The world opened up as the game went on: early on a cannon fires the party between continents, and later they ride a flying dragon, Flammie, drawn with the Super Nintendo’s Mode 7 scaling.
The menus were the other idea people remembered. Instead of a list, a ring of icons appears around the character, and the player turns it to pick an item, weapon or spell while the action waits. Nintendo Power called the rings “an improvement over the pull-down standard”, quick to use and easy to read. Edge praised a “superbly designed player interface”: “Selection rings rotate around the player and don’t obscure the action onscreen, while the ability to select something and then give it to one of your companions is simplicity itself.”
Three players at once
Played alone, the other two characters follow the hero under the computer’s control, and the player can switch to either of them. With a Multitap in the second controller port, two friends can take them over. The Multitap was new: Hudson Soft’s adaptor came in the box with Super Bomberman in 1993, and Nintendo Power told readers it would also work with “future games like Square’s Secret of Mana”. Edge called the three-player option “the most innovative thing about The Secret Of Mana”. Super Play’s Zy Nicholson warned that it took “about five to seven hours for all three characters to meet up”, but found boss fights “much easier with more than one”.
Reviews
Edge reviewed the American release in January 1994, when an imported cartridge cost £60, and gave it nine out of ten. “It’s better than Ys I & II on the PC Engine. Better than Zelda on the SNES. And yes, better than Landstalker on the Mega Drive.” It reckoned the average player would need about 70 hours to finish it, and called it “an unmissable experience”.
Super Play gave the same import 94% that month. Nicholson called its combat system “possibly the best I’ve ever come across”. When Nintendo released a British version in the autumn, the magazine stood by its verdict: “If you want the experience of taking part in a real fantasy novel, nothing yet comes closer than Secret of Mana.” Its one complaint was an abrupt ending. It also singled out Hiroki Kikuta’s “incredible 8-channel stereo soundtrack” of more than 40 pieces, released in Japan on CD alongside an orchestral arrangement, Mana Plus.
Retro Gamer later wrote that in Europe the game “was responsible for introducing many console owners to the joys of the JRPG”, in the absence of local releases of Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest.
The Mana series
Seiken Densetsu on the Game Boy (1991), released in America as Final Fantasy Adventure and in Britain as Mystic Quest, had begun the series. The Super Famicom sequel, Seiken Densetsu 3 (1995), cut the number of players to two and stayed in Japan until Square Enix released it in English as Trials of Mana on the Switch in 2019. Legend of Mana followed on the PlayStation, with Ishii still directing.
Secret of Mana itself has been re-released several times. It came to the Switch in Japan in June 2017 in a collection with the first and third games, and Square Enix remade it with 3D graphics, voice acting and rearranged music for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and PC in February 2018.
Sources
- Edge issue 3, December 1993, pp. 22–23: prescreen (sold out in Japan, the US release in November, the bug fixed for the US, the Super Multitap and “the most innovative thing”, Mode 7 and the cannon, the credits: Nasir, H Kikuta, K Ishii, H Tanaka).
- Edge issue 4, January 1994, pp. 64–65: review of the US version (£60 import, 16 Mbit + BB, the comparison with Ys, Zelda and Landstalker, the selection rings, 70 hours, nine out of ten).
- Super Play issue 15, January 1994, pp. 45–47, Zy Nicholson: import review (one to three players, 16 Mbit + BB, the characters, eight weapons, the combat, the Multitap, 94%).
- Super Play issue 23, September 1994, pp. 14–17, Neil West, interview with Ted Woolsey: the Sony CD-ROM add-on, the cut-down cartridge, sales in Japan, the 30-day translation.
- Super Play issue 25, November 1994, p. 14: UK release (Nintendo, £49.99, release 28 October, Mode 7 and Flammie, “motion battle”, the ending, Kikuta’s soundtrack and Mana Plus).
- Nintendo Power issue 53, October 1993, p. 26: the Hudson Multi-tap with Super Bomberman and Secret of Mana. Issue 54, November 1993, from p. 8: player’s guide (the ring menus, cannon travel, Flammie).
- Retro Gamer Collection volume 6, 2012, pp. 172–177, “The Secrets of Mana”: Seiken Densetsu, the SNES CD-ROM origins and the cut branching routes, the power gauge and weapon levels, the multiplayer, the game’s place in Europe, Seiken Densetsu 3, Legend of Mana and Koichi Ishii. Retro Gamer’s Videogames Hardware Handbook, 2009, p. 167: Secret of Mana as a CD title with branching storylines.
- Wireframe issue 36, April 2020: Trials of Mana, renamed and released in the West on the Switch in 2019.
- Rafael Antonio Pineda, “Secret of Mana Game Gets Remake for PS4, PS Vita, Steam in February 2018”, Anime News Network, 25 August 2017 (web, secondary): the 2018 remake and the Switch collection of 1 June 2017. https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2017-08-25/secret-of-mana-game-gets-remake-for-ps4-ps-vita-steam-in-february-2018/.120541
- “Secret of Mana”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): Japanese release on 6 August 1993. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_of_Mana