Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 113: Final Fantasy Adventure & Secret of Mana

Episode Date: August 21, 2017

Jeremy, Bob, and Chris hunker down to discuss the entirety of Square Enix's Mana series but only make it through the first two games: Final Fantasy Adventure for Game Boy and Secret of Mana for SNES. (Whoops, we accidentally went extremely in-depth.)

This week in Retronauts, time goes like a river and history repeats. of Retronauts, I'm Jeremy Parrish, and this week, cool people are going to talk with me about cool games. Oh, but that's every week. Thank you, Jeremy. Specifically, this week, the cool people are... Well, the cool games are every week. Oh, come on.

We're all very cool. Our moms think so. Who's that opinionated person? Why, that would be Chris Kohler, features editor at Kotaku. And also... I'm Bob Mackie, and I'm feeling Randy, like the main character in Secret of Mott. Oh, God, no. I'm sorry.

Hey, apparently it is, and I don't know how. I think it's in the instruction book. I think it's in the Japanese. In Japanese, yeah. So there you go, folks. Your first fact of the day. Yes, this is not a four-person episode because it's about Secret of Mana and that we only have a, you know, three people. If this were true, Chris and I would be stuck in the doorway and like just running back and forth.

If we were the AI characters in Secret of Mata. So you're the boy, tag yourself. I'm the girl. You're the Sprite. You're not the Sprite. Okay. Why would I be the Sprite? I would be the Sprite if I had thought to, if I had thought to divide this up before you did.

I thought I'd be the girl because I have the longest hair. Oh. Well, I'm wearing a women's t-shirt if that comes up or anything. But they don't make the style in men's. Well, you're pulling it off. Thanks. I've got a jacket on over it so no one can tell. That's the secret. Anyway.

I would say putting two blown-up balloons in the shirt was a bad idea. It just doesn't look. It just makes me, you know, look a little pregnant. Anyway, yes. So this week, sort of in celebration of the Saken Dinsets collection, which launches in Japan momentarily, and here, maybe never, we don't know. For the Nintendo Switch. For the Nintendo Switch, yes. We wanted to revisit the Sake and Dinsets series, mostly the first two games, because I haven't spent that much time playing the third one.

And I feel like some of the later games could support an episode on their own. and definitely the first two can. I mean, I could, we're going to find out soon that I can talk for a long time about how much I like Secret of Mano. Oh, me too. Me three. I'm a big Mona fan.

So we're going to talk about Final Fantasy Adventure, aka Seekin Insets, and then Secret of Mana, aka 2. Well, Sagan Insets too. That could have been confusing. Anyway, so we're going to talk about these games, and it's going to be great. And maybe, just maybe,

if this episode touches your heart, you can reach out to Square Enix and say, freaking bring that collection to America, you morons? You know, okay, all right. We'll talk about it. No, let's talk about this now. Let's just get it off our chest. So, I would really like to see.

I think this is a golden opportunity because I don't think that Saken Densatzu 3, which was the proper sequel to Secret of Mana, which was one of Squares' most popular video games in America, but that's not how they made decisions back in the day. I would love to see this finally get translated. I don't think, I think it's the first time this game has ever appeared since the Super Nintendo. Like it wasn't on Japanese virtual console. Oh, really? Wow.

No, I believe it was not. Yeah, there was speculation back when Heroes of Mata was announced that this game was going, the Sikintensets 3 was going to be included on Heroes of Mata for, for D.S. It was like the tactical RPG that was a prequel to Sinkendenset 3. And there was that connection. Like, because of that connection, there were some magazines that printed screens of Saken Dinsets 3. And in such a way that made it seem like this was, it was going to be a bonus included with Heroes and Mana. But that never happened.

So that was opportunity one for Square Nix to have brought the game over to the U.S. But it didn't work out because it didn't actually happen. Because it was made up. This is it. Yeah, if they are ever going to translate this game into English, it's going to be on this collection because all the factors are there. One, the collection is coming out in Japan. Right. Two, it is for the Nintendo Switch, a platform that is very, very popular right now for which many, many buyers are acquiring it and saying, I need some games.

Well, here are some games. Two of them are already localized into English. you just need to do that third one and you're good to go. I understand why Saken Densets 3 could not come to America the first time around. It's because it was a very complex game with a lot of text and there just wasn't space on the ROM for it. It would have been prohibitively expensive. It would have cost $100 and $120. There was heavy, heavy compression of the text in the Japanese version, which is why it took so long to fan translate.

And Japanese written text is a lot more efficient storage-wise than English text. So, yeah. Yeah, like the game just couldn't come here due to technical limitations. That no longer exists on the Nintendo Switch. That is no longer, so you don't have to worry about that anymore. Let me get real with our listeners. It's never coming out here. Just emulated.

Oh, no. There's been a fan translation for 17 years. I swear to God, I want to have hope, but I never see this coming out here. And I want to be wrong, but I just don't see it happening. You know, you know, well, I mean, these are mobile games also, but like, you know, that might make it better. No, no, no, I mean, I'm sorry. That's the, that's the introductory clause of a sentence that I'm saying. Gotcha.

These are mobile games, but Romancing Saga 2, which has a mobile and a Vita version, they're actually bringing that out in the West. I think they're even doing Romancing Saga 3, and they may have said, like, oh, we'll get to that as well. Yeah, someone has actually tweeted to Akitoshi Kawazu and said, where's the English version of this? And he said, oh, we're working on it, which is not what someone at Square Nix says if they don't have concrete plans. It is what an executive at Square Nix says when one of his pet projects he wants to bring over to the West. So then the question is, are there people at Square Annex who care so much about the

Mona series that they are willing to say, we must bring this to the foreign lands? And my guess is no, because Saga is, that is, Akitoshi Kuazu's baby. Akitoshi Kuwazu has been at Square and Square Enix maybe longer than anyone at this point. He was, you know, like from the original Famicam era. He worked on Final Fantasy one or two, two. No, he must have worked on one also. I, you know, I actually don't. If he was like the design, like the lead designer director for two, he must have, he must have been, like he was there already.

That is a very good question. Yeah, he was probably there already. Maybe. But like, honestly, in those days, it was also slapdash and like that's even hiring a brand new guy. But still, that's 1980. So that's 30 years of experience. So if Kawazu wants to, say, turn his franchise in. into a board game that makes no sense

and release that on PlayStation 2 in America? He gets to. He gets to do that. That's right. So I think he squandered a lot of his capital on Unlimited Saga, but maybe he's earned back enough at this point that he can say, yes, let's get romancing saga two and three over in America on PlayStation Vita. Yeah.

What a weird place. In 2017. Or 18. Or 18. But, okay. But because they have a mobile component, there's more. It's like we're not just doing this work to. release it on Vita. Vita is the bonus here.

Mobile is money. Plus the real point is they have an executive cheerleader for that series. Do they have that for Mata? I think no. Because the creator, like the original designer of Mata, Koichi Ishii, now works at Grezo, where he is making his own game. That's very,

very similar to Secret of Mata called Ever Oasis. And that's coming out like in two months. Yeah. And I mean 3DS in America. The aughts were a very messy end for the Mata series. This is for our part two, But I feel like that franchise got maybe too many chances, and they disappointed us too many times. I mean, not all of those games are bad, but the PS4 game definitely is bad.

The RTS is bad. Legend of Mana is not great. RTS isn't bad. It's bad. I'm going to say it's bad. And some would argue, I wouldn't argue this, but some would argue that part three is not great. Some people say Secret of Mana is where the series is just at its best and it will never get better. You know, honestly, there is no such thing as a perfect mana.

game. This series is really kind of strange in the sense that there is no one game you can point to you and be like, that's the game that totally nailed it. Like, even if you love Secret of Mana, you understand that it has like bad flaws. They're all different and they're all sloppy. And I think the RTS, to be fair, Jeremy, it was on a platform. It should have never been on. D.S. was not ready for that.

I played it. I think the problem with that game is that it was redundant because we already had Revenant wings on D.S. Oh. And that was the same game. I didn't like that either. I'm sorry. Except Revenant wings had like the final.

Fantasy 12 thing going for it, which made me love it. Yeah. At least tolerated. Nice redesign to the characters. So I will tell you this. No more weird abs. Hey, they fixed the abs in HD, so we're good. I'm importing Saken Densetsu collection for the Switch. It comes out on June 1st.

I've got it from Amazon, Japan. I've got to tell you guys, if you want to import games, Amazon, Japan, probably your way to go right now because basically the shipping is a little hot-ish, but if we're ordering from PlayAsia before, it's about the same. But I'll tell you, if you, I mean, it's Amazon, so they're like aggressively price competing on these games instead of jacking up the price for foreigners.

So like I pretty much this game is selling for 5,000 yen or about 50 bucks, which yeah, it's a lot for three ROMs, but it's better than not getting them. And we know that Square likes it's Square Annex tax. But I got it for about 4,000 yen from Amazon Japan because they, because they discounted it so much. Do we know the quality of the emulation, the quality of the emulation, are they, Well, what we do know is that M2 is doing the world. Okay, well, then we're good. So it's going to be fine. There are some screenshots up now on gamatsuatsu.com that screenshots of every game.

And, I mean, there's nice. There's nice borders with the Game Boy game, Final Fantasy Adventure. You can resize it. You can have it sort of pixel perfect but smaller on the screen or blow it up. You can have it in sepia tone or green or black and white. You know, so it seems like they did a pretty good job. That's good. I trust M2 with everything.

M2 doesn't do bad work. So the Secret of Mana or the Sagan Tetsu collection is really understood in the context. For some reason, Japanese game developers got it in their heads. I don't know if this was a push from Nintendo or what, but what they should do for the Nintendo Switch, because the Switch essentially has two controllers that are like Super Nintendo controllers, everybody decided let's take our Super Nintendo games and put them on the Switch because it's... Our multiplayer Super Nintendo games. Bringing back local multiplayer.

Yeah, exactly, as a thing. Because the Switch is the first console since the, I think, since the Super Famicom to ship with two controllers out of the box. So everybody is doing Ultra Street Fighter 2, Super Bomber Man, which is not like a port or anything. No, but it's Super Bomber Man was Super NES. Correct. And now Sagan Denzatzu Collection is Square's first original, you know, quote unquote original. Right. And maybe this, this, you know, kind of niche will dry up and vanish if Nintendo ever does anything with virtual console, which they will.

But in the meantime, like, this seems to be kind of an opportunity for these publishers to say, let's make some quick money. The existence of the Saken Densetsu collection is it raises more questions than it answers about virtual console on Switch. I was thinking of the exact same thing, yeah. Because with virtual console, it was like, oh, Nintendo, we make. the emulator, you just give us the rights, you know, give us the code and we'll publish your game on our emulator. With this it's like, okay, if Square

NX is going to M2 and saying code us a custom emulator for these, for two different systems, for Game Boy and SNS, for these mona games, it's like, what's up with virtual console? What does that mean for virtual console? And the answer is we just don't know at this point. It gives me some hope to know that M2 could be behind

the emulation of whatever comes in the future. I mean, if they build these things, I don't think they would only work with these three games, I feel like they could have more functionality. Yeah, I mean, doing Game Boy and Super Nintendo and maybe other Nintendo system emulation on Switch would be better than Wii U for sure. Very good. Yeah, I mean, they've certainly done their share of virtual console rappers before,

but it's mostly been for Genesis stuff. Correct, correct. I think they did Game Boy Advance also. Yep. But then, you know, like DS was nerd, and that was the NES classic also. So I think everyone assumed, you know, if Nintendo does virtual, console on Switch, it's going to be nerd doing it. Yep.

But, I like saying that. Wait, who is nerd? To give us some context? Nintendo, European research, and developed. Okay, got it. But they've done really solid work, too. Maybe not quite as good as M2. There's not, like, the same level of just true love oozing from it that you see

with M2 stuff, but still solid. Competent and not like Nintendo's NES simulation on Wii U. Like, Hineki Kami is not going to be tweeting angrily about nerds work. Okay, good. I mean, I can't read his tweets anyways. Thanks a lot. why did he blocked me for telling an innocent joke of course he did yes do you want me to tweet him and say can you please unblock my friend bob he really is a big fan of yours

he didn't mean to offend you someone actually tweeted at a platinum employee can you unblock bob macky he loves kamia and the response are just like ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha like no he will never unblock you so i'm still going to buy your games dude but guess what uh you've disappointed me we just need to set up an interview between the two of you has to be like a fight i would lose if you debate him. Oh, that's my new thing. So anyway, now that we've set up the context for this episode. Yes. Let's talk about this episode.

Yeah. So the Mata series has been around for a long time. As we said, it was kind of, it kind of had a rough time in the aughts and has been basically dead in the teens. And I, you know, I kind of blame that on polymorphic content, content, content, the whole World of Mana thing. I got so excited, you guys. I remember when World of Mana, I remember when that little tiny JPEG of the trademark for World of Mata got leaked online. And I got so pumped because I'm like, what's World of Mata? I don't know, Chris, tell us what it is.

Turns out World of Mata is like four shitty Mata games, none of which, not a single one of which is a straight up action role-playing game. You got your dungeon crawlers. What about Children of Mana? Oh, Children of Mata was good. I liked it. I think that predates World of Mata. I think it was before the initiative. No, Children of Mata was part.

Okay. Was it? Was it? It was part of the World of Mata fame. Okay. Yeah. Well, I remember you guys did another Mata episode. Maybe in 2007, it could be 10 years ago.

And you talked about meeting Yishi and how he was just a very sad man, a sad, defeated man. Yeah, he was on his way out the door at that point. Oh, okay. Yeah. Like pre-Grezzo, Grezo? Yeah, he, yeah, actually, okay, yeah. Because in researching this episode, no, actually researching an interview for Ever Oasis. I read a little bit about his history with Grezo, and Grezo was established in 2006, and he joined as president in 2007.

So basically, like, this franchise was sucking away his soul, and he was ready to go, and he was on a tour to promote Heroes of Mana, the RTS. Yes, and he was just, like, totally the most checked-out Japanese developer I've ever interviewed. That episode was tied into the... So then he was gone, and then he took up a job with Grezo doing, you know, ports of India or Nintendo games for Nintendo and collaborating. I think he did, like, line heroes or whatever is called. Oh, line attack heroes. Line attack heroes, yeah, for Wiiware. Interesting.

And now he gets to make his own mana game again. That episode was tied into the PS2 game. What was that called? Dawn of Mana. Daunt of Mana. He is shaken insets for... Total side. It was, it was, and that was a shame.

Total side note, it has an amazing fortist soundtrack. It does not deserve. It is one of my favorite soundtrack. That is, that was Yokoshimuero, right? It could have been, yeah. I don't know. I don't think Yokoshimuor did. Oh, no.

I think it was, I forget. I don't want to say. I listen to it all the time. It's fantastic. It might have been Kenji Ito. Really? It might have been. We can check this out.

Somebody looked this up who's not me, because I'm going to talk, because, Bob, amazing soundtrack that it doesn't deserve is all of the Mata series except the ones that deserve it. Because honestly, like, I love, we're not going to talk about Legend of Mata, but like, Legend of Mana soundtrack is not a good game. It's not. Legend of Mana's soundtrack, just the OST. Like the only Yoko Shumur did an arranged version that came out last year.

But the OST to Legend of Mata is so listenable. It's really good. I've used that in Retronauts episodes so many times. That soundtrack so much. Don of Mata. That's one of my top two. Dada Mana has four composers, one of which is Kenji Ito, but there's three other guys. Okay.

And again, that game stinks. That is crap on toast. I have played that game for like, I really tried to play that game back in the day. It's not a good video game. That was one of those where they were like, physics engine, yay, let's do something. And it's terrible. Okay. But that's not how it started.

No. In the beginning, there was hope once. In the beginning, there was hope. In the beginning, there was a Final Fantasy spinoff for Famicom. Correct. Famicom Disc system, right? It wasn't a Final Fantasy spin. off at the time. It was a Famicom disc

system game that was going to be called Seiken Dentetsu which they got a little bit into development. They put some pictures in Femi 2 and then they canceled it. They were just like mockups, right? Yeah. Yep. I think they started to develop. I think they realized no, no, no, there were like fake screenshots.

Oh, okay. Fake screens. But A, I think their efforts with the Famicom disc system were done. Right. I mean, they basically were just like, oh, they stopped making disc system games. Yeah, like, disc system stuff didn't do that well for them in the first place. They had the whole disc operating group, which was kind of disastrous.

Yeah, yeah. Well, a lot of the disc, yeah, the, was it disc-only group? Disc-only group? Disc-operating group. Yeah, I thought it was disc-operating group. Most of it was outsourced. Most of it was just outsourced other, other. Well, no, the point of dog was that they were going to be a publisher for other people's

creations. Correct. They kind of wanted to be Enix with that. Like, Enix never created their own games. Inix was always just like, hey, you made this neat little game in our competition. You start a studio called Chunsoft and we'll publish you. Right, right, right. So, yeah, so they thought the same thing.

I mean, yeah, Square sat on the Famicom for a long time because they were like, no, we're PC game developers and that's for grownups. And this is a toy and we don't make it. So even though Square had a license and they had a license to develop Famicom games, which was very valuable at the time, they did like Fexter. And then they were just like, we don't want to do anything. And then once they were just like, oh, no, we need to, like, make games. And this thing, they just started pumping out. They basically started following the NX model, which was get it out the door, fast as you can, outsource, all that kind of stuff. Right.

So Saken Densetsu, I think, was going to be internally developed. But essentially, what they did was they canceled it. And then when another game came along, they started doing an action RPG for the Game Boy. They were like, oh, we have this basically trademark called Saken Densetsu. So we'll just use that. Which it should be mentioned since we keep dropping the name is Japanese for Legend of the Holy Sword. Legend of the Holy Sword. Isn't there a Game Boy game called Legend of the Holy Sword?

No. There's sort of hope. Sort of hope. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there is a game called like Legend of something or another. Yeah. Oh, and actually speaking of which the Japanese, the Japanese title for Sword of Mana, the Game Boy remake of Seiken Enthus, who was actually a really clever pun because they called it Shinaku Sekendensetsetsu, which means like,

the newly told story of the Holy Sword. But in Japan, Shinyaku Seisho is the New Testament of the Bible. Oh, that's great. Yeah, it's a cute pun. And to make things even more confusing in Europe, this is called Mystic Quest. So it was another thing where they did Final Fantasy Mystic Quest in the U.S. And then Square had this name Mystic Quest. And literally, if you look at the box art for this game in Japan, they cut out

the Mystic Quest and pasted it without even, without even taking out the background. It looks shoddy, yeah. So it literally, it's Mystic Quest on a black background that's been cut out and pasted, literally cut and pasted onto like the Final Fantasy Adventure box. It looks like, no Photoshop yet, no Photoshop. This is why Europeans hate Nintendo and Nintendo games. They're just like, you guys. The boxer looks like a rancel. some note, just like, send us

$30 or you don't get this game. 30 quid, excuse me. So, yeah, so it had a different name. But the other thing is bringing back to the saga series, right? Kawazu's first games in the saga series were on the Game Boy. They were the only other Game Boy games that Square actually did.

And in the U.S., they were like, oh, let's call these Final Fantasy legend for no reason other than just to sell more copies by attaching it to a famous name that they had. Yeah, I mean, you could argue that there's some spiritual similarity between the Saga, like, mechanics and systems and Final Fantasy 2, but no one in America knew that.

Quite frankly, I wish they would just rename Final Fantasy 2 to Saga Zero, so we don't have to keep talking about it as if it were Final Fantasy game. Somebody had to say it. So, but Final, but Seiken Dent Tatu in Japan was called Seikandetatu Final Fantasy Guidean. So it absolutely was always a Final Fantasy spinoff. So it's being called Final Fantasy Adventure in the U.S. actually makes sense. It's not just a craven way to exploit the franchise. It actually is an appropriate title for that game.

There are legitimate Final Fantasy elements within Final Fantasy Adventure. Mugles. Yeah, okay. Yeah. I was thinking also like, yeah, like spells and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like there's, early on you team up with a Red Wizard. Correct.

Are Mugles in the Gameboy game? I thought they came in later. You can get Muggled in the Gameboy game. So were Mugles invented for this game? No. They showed up in Final Fantasy three first. Oh, three. Okay, sorry, I thought they were in five.

Never mind. Good. They were, yeah. They were invented for five. Five is basically where Mughles were added to the series. They were in Final Fantasy 3 for like two seconds. No wonder I don't remember them, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Five is where they were like a big part of the plot. There was a Rugal village. But yeah, you could get Muggled. Man, I hope I'm right. You can get Mughled in Final Fantasy Adventure. Yeah. I don't know. I replayed a bunch of it for this episode, but only made it like halfway through.

So I actually. find Final Fantasy Adventure is kind of hard to really commit to these days. It's very kind of janky. Like I replayed the the Vita remake

last year. Yeah. And kind of petered out after a while. Yeah, me too. I ended up not doing a scored review of it. Fascinating because they like, it has gorgeous new graphics and music but the actual flow of the gameplay is like, I

identical to the game boy version. Like the maps are identical, the skill systems, everything is second screen from the gameboy game. So literally you walk off the screen and then it scrolls up to the next square screen and like the pathways you could follow are identical. So it's really, it's a really weird-ass game because it looks like a modern day game, but it plays like a black and white game boy game underneath it. Like all the logic is black and white Game Boy logic. I played the Game Boy version for the first time, surprisingly. I don't know how I missed it for this episode. Now I was surprised, like it's barely holding together.

I guess they weren't ready to make an action. game for the Game Boy 91. This was a very ambitious game for its era and just for the platform. But there's an odd disparity. It's like the character animation is smooth for your character, but enemies sort of blip between prescribed tiles on the screen. It's very odd. Yeah, it is weird.

It's like their little chess pieces or something. But like the action RPG at that point was not really an established thing at all. So, I mean, it was very unique at the time. Yeah, I mean, there aren't a lot of games that have precedence Final Fantasy Adventure. East, I think they were up to, I think East 3 came out the same, around the same time as Final Fantasy Adventure. And I wonder, I mean, I really wonder if this was not very much a thing at Square where they were just like, okay, look, we would like to make Game Boy role-playing games, but like to make a full Final Fantasy on the Black and White Game Boy would be, it's like, well, how are you going to, you know, there's too much text. It's like, what are you going to do? So let's simplify down the RPG to its basic elements, but let's make it an action game instead.

Well, plus they already had a somewhat standard RPG with the saga games. I mean, those have their own weird internal rules and logic and like they're very happy to just like flip you the finger and screw you over. But still, like when you boil it down, they are traditional RPGs with a turn-based combat system and character classes and magic spells and towns that you visit one to the next and so on and so forth. So it probably would have been redundant to put a full Final Fantasy game on Game Boy. So, yeah, going with the Action RPG route makes sense. The only one I could find that I played in is great is of the era, another Action RPG, which actually was released in 91. So they were concurrently developed. Is Radia Senki?

I don't know if you play this. It is very, very, very much like an NES version of Secret of Mana. I mean, it's an Action RPG. It borrows a lot from Zelda. But it's very good. It was fan translated. I recommend it's called Radia Senki. Raymi hen or something

Raii hen Wow I will confess to Not knowing about that I know about it Because Bob wrote about it once Yeah for GameSpite I forgot the name

It was The music was composed by Kiji Yamagishi Who did Nijicaa and Tecmo Bowl That's right Yeah It has a really good soundtrack It does

And Final Fantasy Adventure Has a ass-kicking soundtrack Also Yes That's a nice... All of those Square Game Boy games. Yeah. Just like, oh, yes, my ears are so happy.

Before the Vita version came out, I was really enjoying playing that on the Game Boy and just listening to the music because it is really good. And the arranged album for that, which came out in Japan, was one of the first, like, or it wasn't live orchestra, but it was orchestral arrangements. And it's now all available just on one CD, just like Staken Dead Setsu Sound Collections. And the first seven tracks are the arranged album, which were, they were medleys. It was like Final Fantasy Symphonic Suite where they took the, like, they take like three songs and do it as a medley. Beautiful. Really, really, really, really great CD. And then it immediately launches into the original Game Boy.

It's a very jarring thing where there's a big finale of the orchestra music and then it just starts out like be-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de in the next track. It's a very good opening song. Yeah. But I think it's worth mentioning one other action RPG that does kind of provide precedent. And that would be Crystallus by S&K, which I think was 1990. I think it was also. And is very much kind of cut from the same cloth as Final Fantasy Adventure, but much less janky. There is a bit of grinding involved in Crystallus, and it draws very heavily on the works of Hayao Miyazaki.

Oh, big time. That whole forest scene with a giant bug that you have to kill. That's super duper. Like, oh, yeah, I know where you guys got that from. But the flow of the game, the sword-based combat, the leveling system, kind of the use of occasional NPCs to help you progress. All of that feels very final fantasy adventurerish. It was 90. Yeah, 1990.

It's kind of weird. That's the only time S&K really did an RPG and like where did that game come from? What the hell? It's slightly flawed, but it looks so good. It's got great music. It's just the one in a lifetime thing. I mean, they remade it and it was not that great. Yeah.

Whatever. But the one thing I wanted to remark upon, I'm sure we'll get into a lot of the details about this game is what surprised me. I don't know why I was surprised, but it was like, boy, the localization makes, Final Fantasy 4's translation looked like Hemingway. Just like there are no articles. It's just like tree of mana in trouble or, you know, just like even the opening scroll is supposed to be epic, but it's just like,

wow, this is not good. And the fact that people talk to you as soon as they touch you and their text scrolls so slow, it's just like oh my God, I don't want this. I didn't mean to touch you. Yeah, it's just like I'm trying to avoid touching any of these NPCs. Yeah, I like how Secret of Mana kind of answered to that

by giving you the ability not only to, so you have to, you have to press, you know, the action button in order to initiate a conversation. But also, if an NPC is in your way, you can just shove them physically out of the way, which was the greatest innovation in an RPG. That is great. So like in Chrono Trigger, can you walk away from conversations or you start. Yeah, you can't do that, but you can shove people and just, like, push them out of the way. And have to. Yeah. In this game, people were blocking doorways and entrances. I had to leave the screen and come back because they wouldn't move. I hate that so much. But,

I mean, it was just an old game. They were, they were kind of riding the edge of technology. and what was possible on the Game Boy with this game. It's a big game, and there's complexity to it. You have eight weapons, you know, that all act in different ways and that are all super buggy and weird. Yeah. But that's the Mana series. Yeah. So let's talk about some of the basics. I think the weapon system is really important. That would become much more of a focus and secret of mana.

But it starts here. You have, like you said, eight different weapons, which is cool but also really annoying because you have a very limited inventory. system, so... And you're reaching down to the select and start buttons to switch weapons, and yeah, it's pain of the neck. But the weapons all have different capabilities. Like, you know, you get a chain flail, which has a very, like, sort of limited, like, target. You know, it's a very narrow attack.

It shoots straight ahead, but it has very, like, a very narrow sort of hitbox for enemies, so you have to be very precise. But the flail can also allow you to grab on. to grapple points and leap across chasms, which, you know, which is the legend of Zelda A Link to the Past did the same year. So this game is like kind of, you know, keeping up there in some ways with Zelda, but just in a super janky way. And also, you know, the, like, so there's a, what is it, like the spinning weapon.

I don't even know what the hell is it called. Yeah, sickle or something. Yeah, sickle, okay. So, like, that has the ability to cut down, you know, plants and objects in the environment, but also there's this meter that's constantly filling at the bottom of the screen when you don't attack, and you're like, what is that? Well, as it fills up, your weapons become stronger and gain additional range or additional effects.

So if you let the meter fill up all the way on the chain flail, or not the chain flail, the sickle, like you create this spinning attack that covers most of the screen and hits everything really hard. But you can't abuse that because it takes like 20 seconds for. or the entire meter to fill out. Kind of like in Secret of Mana. I mean, that mechanic is taken straight from Final Fantasy Adventure, but it's... The entire time, so it's slightly better.

Well, Secretamana kind of builds on it by giving you the ability to charge beyond level one. Different levels, yeah. Yeah. But here, like, in Secretamana, basically the level one charge works like a turn meter, like the act of time battle meter. Because if you attack an enemy before you automatically recharge to level one, it's basically a useless attack. You'll like hit for, you know, one hit point instead of 50.

But then you have the ability to charge over and above that. And, yeah, you get the... Which gets really annoying. When you're going up to level 8, it does. But, yeah, you don't have to... You don't have to do that except for certain, you know, certain opportunities that require a charged attack. But this game doesn't really do that.

It's just, like, the longer you go without attacking, the more kind of attack power you charge up. Yes. What else, this game? The thing that always bugged me in this game, I think, as a teen playing it, basically, was that you had to buy keys and you had to buy the Maddick things like you break rocks. And then, of course, you will get stuck in a dungeon without a key or a Maddoch. It happened to me, and I didn't know that.

So I'd go all the way back to the Maddox store. There's a lot of inconvenience in this game. Yes. Like, it's kind of possible. You can save anywhere, which is great. True. But you can save in a situation where you are basically screwed forever. And there's only one save slot.

There are two. I mean, there's only, like, when you save, you can't save to a different save slot, can you? I don't know. I didn't try it. Either way. Now that I say this, I'm like, I just play this. I should know. Yeah.

But it's true. You can save yourself down a deep hole, basically. Yeah, you can't save into a separate slot. Okay. Anyway, yeah. So there's a lot of just like basic design issues with this game. Which at the time, nobody. really was complaining about because it was super fun.

You know, it was a really, really fun adventure. You know, it was, for the Game Boy, it was a very unique type of experience for sure. Yeah, I mean, this game... It predated Links Awakening by how many years? Two years. Two years already. Yeah, right. Yeah, so this game, you know, like, this was a Zelda-esque experience,

Crystallus-esque experience on a Game Boy. And, you know, that whole, like, on the go really sort of healed many wounds back then. I mean, it still does. Like, I don't care that Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild doesn't have the best graphics in the industry because I cannot play near or, you know, bayonetta or whatever on a portable system, whereas I can play Breath of the Wild on a portable system. So, you know, that makes a huge difference for me. So I think, you know, Final Fantasy Adventure definitely benefited from that. Like, no one had done a game like that. An action RPG with so much breadth and such a huge quest.

and, you know, no passwords. You can save anywhere. Game Boy games were not ambitious at that time. No, they weren't. Wow, this isn't a Socobon clone. What the hell is going on? Right. I mean, yeah, I can like push blocks in the dungeon, but that's not all I'm doing.

How exciting. And it really, I mean, it just had that emerging square soft kind of feel to it where it's like you started the game up and the first thing you see is, okay, fight. And then you're attacking this gigantic for the Game Boy monster in a Coliseum. You'd kill him, like, twice, you know, to sort of establish using the rules of gameplay to establish who your character is and start telling, you know, doing environmental storytelling to give you sort of a backstory. And then he was, you know, daring escape, and then you meet the dark lord, and he pushes you off a cliff.

Yeah, it's pretty much in Medius Res. Like, Final Fantasy II also did that, you know, for whatever you want to say about Final Fantasy II, it begins in the middle of the battle. It's a hopeless battle. That's right. can't win. And so right there, you learn a lot about the game. You learn like, wow, there's some really bad dudes out there. And also your friends got, you know, wiped out with you. And one of them's gone. Yeah. Like, it really sets up a lot. This does that same thing. Yeah. You're

absolutely right. Like, you know, it starts off with a death too. There's a death in like the first minute of the game. Your, uh, your friend. He just gives you his dying word. It's like, I just died because I can't fight anymore. Goodbye. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's what encourages you to leave. Yeah. I mean, you're not like a hero. You're a gladiator slave. And you're desperately trying to get away from Emperor Vandal and the Dark Lord.

Yeah. Well, in the remake for GBA, I'm sure you listen to that guy talk for 20 minutes before he dies. So are we talking about that yet or no? No, we'll get there eventually. Sotomana is a little ways ahead. It is. Yeah. Yeah, let's see.

What was I going to say? Oh, yeah. Another thing you can do with this game, another kind of interesting thing about it is that you can specialize when you're you level up, you're given four different stats that you can boost, you know, attack or health or magic power or monopoints. So you can decide, like, do I want to be just a sword fighter, which makes sense at the beginning because you don't really have any spells. But later, like, if you specialize in, you know, magic power and monopoints, you can kind

to be a spellcaster. Like, when you cast the fire spell, you don't have to be aiming at the enemy. No. You, you know, if you're facing whatever direction and you cast the fire spell and it seeks out the enemy. So, you know, if you have enough mana to be able to do that, it becomes really an efficient way to play through the games. So it's not a comparison, but it's not like Dark Souls. It's more like Mario RPG where it's like all of your stats will raise regardless. You're just choosing the one stat you want extra points in.

So there's some specialization there. Yeah, right? Yeah. Yeah, they all raise. The, the specialization you pick or, you know, like the upgrade you choose, I think it kind of, pulls up a certain other element with it. I know all the stats would raise, but the one you choose raises more.

Right. But then it also like kind of levels like if you pick power, then your health will also go up, but your mono points won't go up so much. But then if you if you pick like defense later, like your health won't go up but your model points will come up a little bit. They don't want you to be like

super powerful with the sword and then have zero magic, you know? So yeah. Yeah. So there's a little bit of generalization, but you're allowed to specialize and kind of choose the kind of game you want to play. And another interesting thing about this game is the presence of AI companions. They

show up throughout the game, and they're incredibly stupid, just like the enemy is like there's no AI in this game to speak of. It's just like things wander around. It's like watching Twitch plays Pokemon, watching these guys walk around. They're just like, pick a direction. They're aimless and lost. But

at any point, you can choose to initiate a conversation with them and basically say, use whatever your power. is. So if it's the female character who you name at the beginning along with the hero, she'll cast magic on you, like healing magic. But, you know, if you're with the Red Mage, he'll cast

a fire spell and so on and so forth. So you have kind of like this supplemental what would you call, like an option in some of the game, but it's limited. It's a very linear game, very story-based, so not like the traditional Western concept of RPG, much more the Japanese concept of like, here's our story,

play through it, you know, choose your own path, but only a little bit. Right, right. But, you know, again, like very new, very fresh for a portable system. And really, not something you saw a lot of on consoles for that matter. It's tough to say it's tough to say if it was like a big hit or not a big hit or not. probably, you know, probably sold well-ish enough considering it was released like literally worldwide.

And really, I mean, there's the UK version. There's, there's other versions in other European languages, too. The first time I ever played this game was on an emulator and I launched the game. It's a final fantasy adventure, but I launched it. And immediately, I'm in the combat arena and someone says, Oktung! Oh, I was like, oh, okay, German. I think this happened to me, too. I think that the ROM of this game that initially got out there was like one of the European versions.

Like in the mid-90s sometime? Yeah, yeah, because I distinctly remember that how it was like, oh, I got this on emulator now and I loaded it up, but it's in German. Yeah. But like, final, so here's a trivia question. What was the first actual mainline Final Fantasy series game to come out in Europe? Don't know. Final Fantasy 7? Seven.

Wow. So that whole era, they did not have actual Final Fantasy. Like, so Europe got Mystic Quest. Like Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, like Final Fantasy for Dumbs. Wait, what do they call it in Europe? They called it Mystic Quest. They called it Mystic Quest colon Mystic Quest. No, no.

I would have believed you. It was Mystic Quest Legends. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Just all kinds of just. So this game was tied in Europe by name to Final Fantasy Adventure. Yeah.

Even though in practice, Final Fantasy, USA, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was actually like the sequel to Saga 3, aka Final Fantasy Legend 3. It's like by the same designers, a lot of the same combat systems and everything. But basically, yes, this is, it's Final Fantasy, like Mystic Quest came out, or this game, the second that says it came out as Mystic Quest, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest comes out of Mystic Quest Legends. and, like, those are, like, the two final fantasies, quote, unquote, huge air quotes that, like, that, like, the Europeans even had at that time, yeah. Man. So, anyway, yeah, I think. But that goes to show, sorry, the point was, this had big reach. Like, this game, when it came out, had really, really big worldwide reach for Square Enix, above and beyond, there were other, for Squarespace, excuse me, above and beyond, like, every other game they made.

Mm-hmm. And I think it's been pretty well regarded. And that probably accounts for a lot of why it keeps getting repackaged. Like it's been ported in mobile systems. We talked about the Vita version earlier, which is actually based on a mobile port, an adaptation of the original game. And then, of course, there was sort of mana, which we mentioned. Bob, you seem to have some hate going on there. It was one of those things where I was reading reviews and they were kind of middling.

I'm like, but it looks so good and it's a remake of this mana game. It can't be that bad. And I played it. I was like, oh, they were right. I mean, the play is fine. there are issues with the play as well, but the main issue is like, oh, we grafted on so much

unnecessary story and so many motivations you did not need. They just. That game has such a flimsy framework. Yeah. And I also don't like the, I like the Sprite graphics. I don't like the precious moments style Legend of Mana aesthetic. I like that art style. I'm not a fan.

It looks so good on the Game Boy Advance. Yeah, the actual graphics. Oh, man. The character portraits make me want to barf, but the Sprite graphics are fantastic. It's one of the best-looking games on the GBA as it was dying. It is such a beautiful game. It was 2004. It wasn't even dying.

Well, I mean, it was on the way out because D.S. is 2004. But whatever. Well, anyway. It's true. It was towards the end. But, yeah, God, that game, what a squandered opportunity. Because just, you know, the idea was great. I mean, yeah, it was a remake of the story.

But, like, fundamentally, they changed, like, everything about it. It was, like, you know, it should have been just, like, play in a fun secretive mona style game on Game Boy, Advance. But instead, it was, like, playing a thing. playing a fun Secret of Mono-style game in the Game Boy Advance that was way over... And not only just, like, dialogue, but they added in, like, a really

weird, complicated, like, crafting kind of system, too. That's what everyone loved about Legend of Mono, right? Oh, yeah. All the crafting. To give it some... Unnecessary. For historical context, I think we were coming down from the era of too much story in games. Like, this was just shortly after Xeno

saga and things like that, where it's like, you will save in the middle of the cutscene that will take so long. And I don't think we got out of that until that decade was over, but it was very of its time. It's like, of course, we can make a story. We're going to give you more story than you ever wanted in this game. Yeah, well, also, they tried to make the story... Gray area?

Gray. They have a guy named Dark Lord, but is he really so bad? It's like, didn't you learn from Star Wars prequels? There was no gray area in this black and white morality world. Right. It's time for the Jedi end. Maybe Dark Lord. Maybe Dark Lord isn't so bad after all.

No, his name is Dark Lord. Dark Lord. Not Dirk. Not Dork. Dark. Anyway, that wraps it up for Final Fantasy Adventure. Yes, it does. And caller number nine for one million dollars.

Rita, complete this quote. Life is like a box of... Uh, Rita, you're cutting out. We need your answer. Life is like a box of chocolate. Oh, sorry. That's not what we were looking for. On to caller number 10.

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Okay, so that was all the lead-in and Final Fantasy Adventure. Now let's talk about the good stuff. Well, the good game. The Begertramov. Yeah. Oh, Sigurdamana is so good. It is good. Secretamane is one of my all-time favorites.

I know it's janky. It has problems. But I don't care. Throwing this out here. I could be ignorant. Correct me if I'm wrong. Was this the first time Square was like, let's make a really,

really good looking game. I can't think of anything before this that looks as good. I think they set them down the path of, we are graphics-based spectacles. I'm going to stop here right there. Not true. The roots of Square were in

doing amazing graphics. They're PC games. I mean, when they first started, they absolutely prided themselves on doing best-in-class graphics, for their PC games. They were always all about that. And I've seen these games in action, but I feel like after their gimmick-based games

like Radracer and 3D World Runner, I think their games looked fairly average. Like their RPGs looked fairly average for their time. On consoles, they sort of had to pick and choose where they would put their efforts. And so what they did with the Final Fantasy games was to lavish just love and detail and attention on enemy character sprites. Right. The static enemy sprites that were taken directly from Yoshitaka on a heart. Those things, those look great.

I agree with you. The little chubby, like, fighter dudes, okay, not so great. Their background tiles, pretty simple. But, I mean, there was really nice visual finesse going on, especially in Final Fantasy 4 with a lot of, like, you know, like 3D modeling and, like the classic artistic sense, you know, shadowing and things like that. But it's true. Final Fantasy 4, nah, it looks sort.

It's like a fancy Famicom game with a really great battle sprites. Those five. But, I mean, I feel like this is the first square game. on consoles where everything was at the same level of fidelity. Character animations, enemies, backgrounds, menus. It was beautiful. It was beautiful. Somebody needs to agree with me at some point on this point. I agree. It is a great looking game, just not that, you know, it was the be, it wasn't the first thing. It was not the first time they ever said. I feel like on consoles. The first holistically attractive console game they made. But for consoles, I feel like from

this point on, they were like, they were more focused on graphics. They were, they were more putting more behind graphics than they used to. I think, I think this is the point at which they finally had space in their cartridges to do that. That helps too, yeah. And also this was a CD-ROM game, so they probably had a lot of extra graphics in there. In the beginning, there was going to be a Famicom Disc System

game called Saken Insets. And that didn't happen. And that became a Game Boy game. Years later, there was going to be a super NES CD-ROM game called SakenDINS 2. That didn't happen. But it did come out as a super NES cartridge. There's just this

weird sort of like, we wanted one thing but had to do the other when it came to this series. Do we know what other, if any other planned CD-Rong games became cartridges? I only know of one, and that's Marvelous. Oh, really? Yeah, Marvelous is going to have anime cutscenes. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, so not particularly.

There's not a whole lot out there about, like, what was going to be CD-ROM. But this was, there's, like, conflicting stories about Secret of Mata, Because some of the designers later were like, oh, yeah, you know, the CD-ROM game we were making was a lot different than what Secret of Mon ended up being. And there was even, they even kind of mentioned, like, this was the game where we were going to collaborate with Akira Toriyama. And then, but then he didn't end up collaborating with us on this. And then we did, you know, and then he, you know, we did chrono trigger later. Like, it was, but then Ted Woolsey in an interview, I mean, and he, you know, he went to Japan. He saw the games when they were in development.

he said in an interview at the time, like back in the day, like... Yep, I remember this interview. Yeah. He was like, this was going to be a CD-ROM game, and that's why they had to cut stuff out. And you can see... I believe his quote was something along the lines of, you can see entire sections where things were removed. Right, right, right. Which, I mean, as soon as I read that, I was like, oh, now I get it.

So the, you know, and actually now we know a lot about what the Super Nintendo, quote-unquote, super Nintendo CD-ROM was looking at like at that. time because we actually have the quote-unquote Nintendo PlayStation hardware. Oh, yeah, finally. And now that they've done a tear down of that hardware, that thing is kind of like a Super Nintendo with a CD-ROM drive attached to it. So, like, it wasn't going to be more powerful than the Super Nintendo. It was going to be a Super Nintendo that could load with extra storage.

Kind of like Sega CD then, right? No, Sega CD was more powerful. Oh, I didn't know that. The Sega CD had, like, native hardware, you know, sprite scaling and stuff like that. It could do like Super FX. or not super graphics, but mode 7 style of tax natively. Right. And then much later on

Nintendo in 1993 was talking about oh, we're still going to do a Super Nintendo CD-ROM and now it's going to have a 32-bit co-processor because people expect the CD-ROM unit to actually make the graphics better rather than simply give you more storage. But by that, by the time they were talking about that,

SIG and Nensetsu 2 was already out. So really what we can divine from that is that this game was really designed around the idea that it was going to go on the the initial version that they skipped over, which was literally just the SNS with a CD-R-W-Wed-A. So not better graphics, but more graphics. Yeah, many more graphics.

Yes, so many graphics. Yeah, more places, more storage. Yep, yep, yeah. More boards. Yep, absolutely. This game is also kind of notable for having maybe Square's fastest turnaround in terms of localization to that point. Oh, yeah.

I think Ted Woolsey had like a six-week window in which to localize the game. Like, he just slammed through that. But they wanted, I'm sure they wanted to get it out in time for the holidays, 1993 in the U.S. Yeah. And so that didn't give them a lot of time. And they made it. I played it over Christmas break 1993 and loved it. It was a good ass game.

So this game, Secret of Mana, was really my gateway drug into square fandom. I played Final Fantasy 1, but I'm like, I don't like this. And then Final Fantasy 2 came out and I'm like, oh, this is the sequel to the game I don't like. And I don't have a lot of money, so I'm not going to buy it. But then I did play Act Razor, which was great. But then Secret of Mana found out of... That wasn't... That wasn't...

That was Enix. It was NX. Sorry. But, I mean, I was getting into, like, you know, RPG-ish-type stuff. But Secret of Mata was a friend had it. And because it was three-player, we all played it. And it was just like, oh, my God. It's like a three-player Zelda.

That was kind of how I felt about it at the time. It was like, it was Zelda, but you can have three people on it. And I was like, we need this. we've got to get this game. But Chris, how do you play a three-player game on the Super NES that only has two control reports? You need to buy the Super Multi-Tap, which was developed initially for Bomberman and sold here by Hudson.

And that was how you had to do it. That's really weird, actually. They would build a game that required the use of another publisher's periphery. Well, no, I think in... It didn't require, but... Well, in, oh, yeah, well, was it Hudson? Well, the thing is, so Nintendo, I think, did not, for whatever reason, Nintendo did not feel like doing its own multi-tap for the Super NES. I guess they just figured, whatever, we'll just let other people deal with it.

Because the four score for NES was by Nintendo, right? The four score, which was by NES, the satellite for the NES was by Nintendo. So they did two, whether you wanted it infrared or not. For some reason, on the Super Nintendo, they were just like, you know what, we're not going to handle this. We're just going to let you guys make your own stuff. So there were multiples, and there was one Bulletproof Software released one in the U.S. I don't know if they released it in Japan or if it was just licensed or whatever. But, yeah, like, they just let third parties do it.

And then everybody made four-player, there are a lot of companies made four-player games, and they were just like just buy your own adapter. Didn't it come Superbopper Man? I remember seeing a gigantic box. In the U.S. When I rented it, I got like the thing with the game, like the giant, what was it called again? Super Bomberman party pack with a super multi-tap. Super multi-tap, yeah.

Yeah. Yep. But, yeah. But it doesn't have to be a three-player game. It can be a single-player game. I never played multi-player game. It can be. So, I mean, I'm guessing a lot of people played it in two-player mode.

Yeah, that's how I played it for the first time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I came home from school over Christmas holiday. It was my exciting freshman year in college. And that was, when I went up to college, I was like, no more video games, I'm done. And I came back, and I was hanging out with a friend who, who I had always hung out and played NES games with. And we were like, well, we should play some video games.

Hey, this new game just came out. Oh, it's multiplayer. And I had borrowed Final Fantasy from him and finished Final Fantasy. He had talked up Final Fantasy too. So I ended up playing that on his recommendation. So, yeah, we hung out and I think I stayed over at his place and we just played Secret Nomano for a long time. And I had been the one who paid for the rental.

So I took it home with me. And then I just kept renting it through the entire Christmas holiday. Oh, my goodness. Probably spent, well, oh, wait, I had a ton of, like, free rental coupons for some reason from Blockbuster. So I probably spent, like, $10 to rent it for basically the entire Christmas holiday. Wow. And I ended up beating the game over that rental and, like, playing all the way through it. Like, I kept inviting him, hey, let's hang out and, you know, play some more secretive mona.

But he was like, no, I got to go toke up with my friends or whatever the hell he was doing. So he didn't want to hang out and play it anymore But I just kept going and by God I loved that game I never turned my back on video games Jeremy But I was into this game The second I saw preview coverage I love Final Fantasy 2 slash 4 That's what really got me into RPGs

And this game looks like in terms of looks It was like one of the best looking games I'd ever seen in my life Just based on screenshots alone And I think I got it in Spring of 94 I just didn't see it in stores Until like one random day at software etc. had a copy And I was like I have to buy this now Or my parents have to buy it for me

because I'm 11. Yeah, I didn't own it until years later when it was on clearance. And what that meant for a square game was that it was like $40, as opposed to $80. But I did eventually buy it. I don't recall it being as expensive as Final Fantasy 3 slash 6. That was like $80 for me. It was like $70 at launch, I remember, which is why I rented it rather than buying it.

It was 80 for me very vividly. Yeah, it's a lot of money. Yeah. That was a lot of my parents' money. Yeah. They certainly were. And they were when they were low print run because they were RPGs because they were niche. And then it was like 24 megs.

And it was like, yeah. But, yes. So I got into Secret of Mana. And then from there it was like, okay, you know, time for a second look at Final Fantasy. And it turns out the other Final Fantasy games also excellent. Yeah. I had played me some Final Fantasy before that. But Secret of Mano is where it really clicked.

And I was like, I love this company and everything they make and I will play everything they publish from now on. Because of the games that we didn't get for about a decade or maybe 15 years, I thought Mughals came from Secret of Mata. I thought they originated. I was like, oh, it's a reference to Secret of Mata. They love this series. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, again, when you power this game on for the first time, it is just, you just cry.

It has that whale song. Yeah, the Wail song, the cry of the Mata Beast, right? It sounds like the song of the whale. Yeah. And the title screen comes up with this gorgeous, super dithered, you know, bitmap of the kids in front of the monotry. What's the artist's name? Osono. The music, no.

The artist, the illustrator. Oh. Who did all the paintings. I do not know. I can't remember either, but he passed away a few years ago. That's right. Yeah. He did these like super elaborate like nature paintings.

And it just perfectly, I mean, that's not like something he did specifically. for the mana series, but that is the kind of work he did. Right. But for what, you know, they'd already worked with the Yoshitaka Amano, who had, you know, was an experienced fine artist and graphic illustrator. So I think it was just natural for them to say like, hey, here's a fine artist whose work we like. Let's, you know, let's adopt their style.

And so that sort of verdant green, detailed, elaborate nature look became the defining trait of Secret of Mana. Yeah. The title screen, the way it kind of like. What do you call that? It's like a shutter opening up, and the image just reveals itself. Yeah. Wipe.

But the music starts off with this plinking piano, and then it swells into something much more moving. Then you would start and you hear the This Just In News at 11 music. Right. Yep, yep. Which is a very jarring. So Hi Doki Kikuta's soundtrack was, it doesn't sound like other Super Nintendo soundtracks, which you know, is something you can achieve if you just don't use samples because, I mean, that sound like other Super Nintendo soundtracks, but he was very, his music was, it was so hard to pin down in terms of genres. It was heavily influenced by like Gamelon and percussive compositions. There's like, yeah, a much more, it's, yeah, it's not rock, it's not jazz, it's not classical. It just kind of defines, defies convention. And it's very, it's a very fluid.

soundtrack. There's only like one bogus track on it, that stupid dwarf village music that I guess with the accordion. It's so bad. It's 20 seconds long and it won't stop looping. It keeps going and you have to spend so much time in the dwarf village. I want to upgrade my weapons but I have to go to the dwarf village to do it. Well, that was, you know, I mean sometimes that

happens when you have a track that, you know, maybe you're only intending the player to listen to it a little bit and then somehow in the game design you end up spending way more time there and it gets very annoying. Anyway, that part is bad, but everything else about the soundtrack is so good. Everything from like the very, like, you're setting out on a gentle adventure kind of music at the beginning of the game,

through the crazy percussive battle with the dark litch at the end. It's just like bells and drum. Aside from like this weird kind of sound effect, like everything is percussion. Like no one, no one did that on super any else. What is this crazy music?

The boss music is great. It goes through these different movements where it's just like mayhem and that moves under like a triumphant little like diddy. Yeah, sometimes the boss battles don't last long enough to be able to experience that. Yeah, that's on how much you spam that. But, like, it's there, and it's all so good, and it perfectly complements the music. It has a unique, or the game. It has a unique visual style, a unique musical style, and really kind of quirky, distinctive game design in itself. Yeah.

So it really, like, everything about this game just stands out. It's a special game, even though it's not perfect. The sound design. The sound design is really good, too. I love that wet thwack you hear when you hit things. I've never heard any other game. Oh, yeah. Just like a wet slap.

There's kind of like this, like, ticking sound. It's like you can almost hear your experience. tick up or something. Yep, yeah, yeah, for sure. Everything, yeah, I mean, he was just mentioning that. I can hear it in my head. Yeah, just so unique to that game only. It is, it is.

And I think that's why it kind of stands out in people's memories is because rather than thinking of like retro gaming as a whole, you know, like you really think of secret of mana, it's tough to think of things that felt like that. And, you know, even as I've become more experienced and more aware of games that existed outside of what I had access to at the time, games that didn't were never localized or appeared on platforms I didn't know. There's still nothing quite like

this. I mean, this game, it has direct precedent in Final Fantasy Adventure. It's very much a sequel to Final Fantasy Adventure. For sure. In terms of story and in terms of the fact that everything, like all its mechanics are just refined, evolved versions of what you saw in Final Fantasy

Adventure. But still, like, Final Fantasy Adventure was this kind of like it was literally a black and white sketch of an idea and this is the finished piece. I mean, this is the realized artwork. It feels like a demake in retrospect. Like someone made it after the fact, like, I made it work on the Game Boy too, you know? It's like, good job. Well, I bet a lot of people played it.

I certainly played it in that order. I certainly went back to Final Fantasy Adventure after Secretive. I never knew. I think Nintendo Power mentioned somewhere along the way like this is the sequel to Final Fantasy Adventure. And I said, oh, I need to own that when I eventually buy a Game Boy. Yeah, I believe it was on the back of the box for Secret of Mata 2, I think. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it was sequel to Final Fantasy Adventure. Well, there you go, I think.

The story is right there. Yep. So, yeah, again, this game has kind of a Zelda-ish feel, but with more RPG mechanics. I mean, it's, you know, like Cristolus in a way or East, but it's a much different game than any of those. It carries forward the eight weapons from Final Fantasy Adventure. but this time it really does something with them. It has a really interesting approach to its use of weapons, which is that in the game there are eight weapons. That's it.

There are eight weapons plus the monosword, which is, you know, like the special... Not eight kinds of weapons. No, there are eight weapons. Not three sets of eight weapons for each of your heroes. Eight weapons. Well, I guess technically you upgrade them eight times and it's a different weapon each time, but just a different sprite. You operate your one weapon. It's that one weapon being reforged.

Right. I like how they recolor them or make them different. It's really interesting. Yeah, and they have different effects as they level up. But, yeah, this becomes a central mechanic because you have three characters, you know, after like the opening 30 minutes or so, you have three characters in your party at all times. And they can't all use the same weapon. Your weapons are finite. They are set.

You have eight weapons. And so every character has to use a different weapon. And there's a leveling system where each character is. gaining experience through the use of that weapon. Like, this really carries over that concept from Saga, I think. Like, this game feels like, I've always been shocked that Akitoshi Kobazu did not work on this game because it's janky and has very much the saga style experiment, like experience systems.

So it really feels like the lost Saga game in a lot of ways, like Saga the action RPG. But it's not. It's just similar concepts being explored. But yeah, every character has to use. a different weapon and it behooves you to swap around to gain experience in each weapon. So you're always

kind of changing, like even though you have like, you know, these three characters and just eight weapons, you're always kind of changing your battle formation to take advantage and kind of maximize your time. And you can specialize if you want, but, you know, if you're really mindful about it, you

can get all your characters good in every weapon and each one has its own capability. Like once again, you have an axe that can knock down bushes and plants and things like that to clear paths. You have like a ring, boomerang that you can throw and is kind of a ranged weapon. There's a spear that's also a ranged weapon,

but it's a different kind of weapon than the boomerang. Like, it works differently. And, yeah, it's just, like, they put a lot of thought into how the weapon systems work. I love the fists, the gloves. You do some really cool moves with those. Yeah, you power that up. Yeah.

We talked about earlier. And you get that high enough level and you just like... You're like brusely. Yeah, you like do like 15 seconds. seconds worth of kung fu moves on an enemy. And it's really stupid if you, like, miss and you're just like kung fuing the wall. But if you hit an enemy, like a boss or something, you're just connecting like a combo of attacks just by charging up.

Yeah, it's great. And so it's really, you know, it is very much a role-playing game in that, like, your, like, skill at Twitch action is not what lets you triumph over enemies. It's like you do have to grind. have to level up, you have to increase the power of your weapons and then hit the enemy for make bigger numbers pop out of the enemy. And you have to wait between attacks like a few seconds and just blips and you can do it again.

Like you should never attack less than 100%. There's no reason to ever do that. Right. But there's also like each character is very well defined. You have three characters in your party again and each one is different. Like the boy can only do physical attacks. Right. The Sprite and the girl are less physically powerful, but each of them has their own magic specialty.

The Sprite uses attack spells and enemy debuffs. And the girl, well, okay, so the Sprite's name is Popoi. Yes. And the girl's name is Purim. Apparently the Sprite is a boy, which is something I found out recently. It doesn't really matter. Yeah, it's kind of never really defined. It doesn't matter.

But the girl is, her name is Purim, and she can use a healing spell. and buffs. Right. And there is a little bit of kind of some frustration, I think, that arises from the magic system because you do have to kind of grind up each magic spell individually. Well, if we're at this point, this is like the worst thing about this game. I agree. So what you eventually realize is you have to raise your magic levels.

It's not like optional. You have to do it. which is whenever you find, so you gain the magic levels like you gain weapons. You find them at certain points in the story where you find a new elemental spirit that says, oh, I'm Salamando and now you have fire magic. When you gain the new magic, that elemental magic is that now they all starts at level one. But the max level, the level cap for your magic is how many elementals you have. So if you have three of the elemental magic sets, you can now level up everything to three.

So what you need to do is go to a town that lets you leave the town and immediately find a screen with enemies on it and then walk out, cast all, you level it up by casting the magic. So the most efficient way to play this game, and you basically have to do this is walk out of the town, cast all your magic, go back in, rest at the inn, go out, cast all your magic, go in, and do that to level up everything before you go to the next dungeon. Because you only have a certain amount of magic points. You need your cure spells to be operating at max efficiency. You need your attack spells to be operating at max efficiency. So I spend, and the thing is, I mean, I just, I know to just do it and just spend the time and do it and just find the optimal loop that lets you dump all your magic. And then, and then, like, literally, like, what is the shortest distance between the inn and an enemy?

I did the snow town was it for me. That's what I always do, like the seasons area. Yeah. Yeah. I don't really level grind until that point. And then I go out and I'm like, all right, I'm going to spend half an hour here, just casting spells. Oh, so I just do it whenever I get a new elemental, I just level everything up because you're going to have to do it anyway at some point. And you might as well do it in it gradually throughout the game because then it's going to make the next dungeon easier if ever.

Everything is just max level. Towards the end of the game, though, there are some of those elementals you don't really use that often. It's just like, here's the moon sort. Yeah. Yeah, but then when you need it. Yeah, I guess so, yeah. So, yeah, basically, like, that is, it's one of the, it's, it's, it's, it now it is

understood, I think, among game designers that, like, if the most efficient way to play your game is boring and stupid, then your game is boring and stupid. Yeah. Like, that's where Secret of Mona goes off the rails. The game is good enough that it doesn't break it, though. can't build your magic levels just normally playing the game because you will run out of MP

before you build the magic level. So you just have to grind. Yeah. Well, the system works with weapons because you just attack with weapons. It doesn't work with this because you have to go open the menu, choose a spell, watch it play out, and then do it again. It's like 10 times longer. And you want to conserve your magic for when it's important so you don't use it freely. And also

the use of magic in battle is like when you're up against a boss, boss is when you get fire magic. So what you do is you cast fire magic on the boss and then there is moment where you cast fire, you cast fire magic and then you cast it again and again and again, you can actually stack it. And so you have to do that because, I mean, you don't have to do that, but like, that's the best way of doing things is you cast as many spells as you can before because you can, you can stop

the boss from doing anything else. So basically just, you just stack magic on the boss. It's like, it's all just, like, a lot of things in the game, it's all just busted and you kind of have to like learn, like, what to do. I will say, though, that if you ever play Secret of Mana and think, this magic system couldn't possibly be worse. You're wrong, because with Secret of Evermore, the unofficial sequel, they figured out a way to make it worse. You still have to level up your magic, but you're not using mana points to cast magic. What you are doing is you are finding alchemical reagents by having your dog companions sniff around the environment.

Some of these reagents are extremely limited, and you get very few of them. So you're supposed to burn them to level up your magic spells, but wait, I don't want to use this rare and precious item because I need it for later. But then my magic's going to be weak. What do I do? That sucks. The answer is stop playing Secret of Evermore. Oh, I like Secret of Evermore. But that part is stupid.

They have that CGI bug that kept showing off, right? I mean, I'm sure that's in the game more than once. But, I mean, the ring system was really cool. It was a good way to implement an RPG style menu. elegantly and not just have a pop-up square box with like a little finger pointing at things. Which you can't have in an action

I mean people have done it but like you shouldn't have in an action RPG. So yeah, the way to do essentially integrate the menu of the game into the action so you're never not looking at what's happening.

Right. And also it's much less disorienting. That way if you have three players because if you're constantly like any time a player needs to use an ability going to a submenue or something like off screen, it's just going to be a mess for everyone.

This kind of keeps everyone in the action. Yes, okay, so I understand Sprite. All your good for is casting attack magic. You bring up the ring system and freeze the action. It's fine. But it's not so cumbersome because, you know, it's right there and you're like zipping through it really quickly. And there's, yeah, we should talk about this. Like the action menus in this game, I mean, there is a proper menu system for, you know, changing options and stuff.

But most of the things you need to do, like cast spells or change equipment or use an item, is actually. through a little ring of icons that pops up over the active character's head and you can rotate through that and then you can switch between rings. Like there's an item ring and an equipment ring and a weapon ring and a magic ring. And it's just a really great, fast, efficient, and visually interesting way to use skills. Everything has a visual representation. It's not just a text of an item like magic sword. You actually see the sword in your inventory. Very approachable.

Like, you know, you don't necessarily have to be able to read well or read a specific language to play this game because everything is so visual. It's all presented for you in a nice way. Yeah, true. You can kind of tell like, oh, this is – and in fact, you know, if you do read English and you're playing the Japanese version, I don't know why you would do that, but the little notes on the ring menu are in English. Oh, neat. So let's see. So let's see. And maybe you will play it.

through in Japanese because you're going to buy it on the switch. Yeah, who knows. Good to know. So, yeah, I think that's pretty much the basics of the system. We should talk about the story and also the fact that this game is not entirely linear. I mean, it is, there's a story path, but there are some places where you get the sense that they were trying something different. It kind of reminds me of a chronocross where you can take different routes to get to the same place

and you'll have a different experience, although you ultimately kind of end up in the same place. I wonder if there was a lot more of that when it was planned as a super. I feel like that is probably where they carved out stuff from the CD-ROM because there is this tantalizing glimpse in the opening hours of a game that you can kind of do what you want. And you're eventually going to get the girl and the sprite in your party. But at the beginning, like, there are different ways to go about that. Yeah, the goblin event in the beginning of the game,

there are different ways it plays out. like maybe two or three, like you can get captured or she can get captured or you can find her later in the goblin camp or whatever. There's just an interesting look at what could have been instead of just being a bunch of now go here, now go there and now. Yeah, like you can get her in your party right away or you can go like talk to her when she's in the town and she just is being a snotty kid and like, hey, and everyone and won't talk to you.

But eventually, like you will eventually get her in your party. Yeah, and you'll eventually get the sprite either way. What happens? It's like maybe you get at the goblins. maybe if I like the weird wolves. It's just an hour into the game once you get everybody all together. And then then you're pretty much on the linear path. And then sometimes it's like I don't know where to go.

Like even like if I'm playing like without a fact, like sometimes there's like, wait, where do I go now? And I kind of end up revisiting places until like a cutscene starts. It's usually that like palace. There's like a town and you go south and there's like a palace down there. Whenever I forget where to go, I just go there because there's probably some cut scene that it's going to kick in. It's a weird game. The story is a story. It's a direct sequel to Final Fantasy Adventure.

It takes place years later, I guess. Okay, so in Final Fantasy Adventure, you find out that the girl you name at the beginning is actually like a seed of the monotry. And like the monotry propagates by creating people who then turn into trees or something. I don't quite get it. Disgusting. It's weird. I'm a ginnit. But it's magic.

So whatever. It's about life and vitality. and green. I don't know. But in any case in this game, I guess the female protagonist from Final Fantasy Adventure is Randy, the kid, the boy hero's mother, because Randy's mother

is the Manitri. Oh. So, sure. But then she gets blown up by the Maunafortress. It's kind of dark. Yeah, it's like they take you into the village. And where does Paul Manafort come into all of this? You know, I've already made that joke. He is, yeah.

So there is the monoport, which is an ancient weapon of mass destruction that flies in the sky and nukes things, such as the main character's mother, who is a tree. Who is a tree. Yeah. And eventually you have to summon the luck dragon from the never-ending story to help you destroy the Manafort. I like Flammy. Flammie's great. Flammie's great. Everybody loves Falcour.

Everybody loves him. I love to you summon him by like playing this drum. Right. Right, right. I love the giant flammy screen wipe. It's like, goes across the screen. And then you get into some serious,

some serious mode seven. Yeah, this is like very mode seven. Approaching Final Fantasy 6 mode. And then you're like, where the fuck do I go? Because that, because you're supposed to look at that map

underneath you and like understand how all these places you've been going to fit together. It's like, where do I go? I got to fly somewhere? I don't know. Can I land here?

Can I not land here? Yeah. The sequel actually gives you, you like these little rubbery dudes, like they're little like birds or something, a little yellow rubbery dudes that you step on and they'll fling you into the air. And in Secretamato, those are there and they just like toss you up to higher levels of the screen. But here they actually toss you in Sikintet's 3.

They toss you into the world map. And I was like, what am I supposed to be doing? Like they don't send you anywhere. But it turns out, someone told me, oh, yeah, that's just so you can orient yourself on the map. Right, right, right. So at least you understand in that game how the map works. And Secret of Mata, it's like,

Okay, like, there's snow here. This must be the winter area. This is where I saved Santa Claus. I mean, briefly, you get the canon travel, which you don't use after you get flammy. But it kind of shows you where you are in relation to the rest of the world. But you only see it for like a few seconds. How the hell are you supposed to remember that? By the way, I love getting shot out of a cannon.

It's awesome. I love that little dude who's like the punchy, the Hawaiian punch guy, but also kind of angry. It's like somebody stomped on Tomba. In one of the towns, you talked to one of those. blonde, statuesque women. And she's like, oh, yeah, I'm married to the Canon guy. He's great. He gets around.

That's like a Roger Rabbit kind of situation. Yep. Yeah, but there's just weird stuff like that throughout the game. And it's all great. The enemies are hilarious. Like the Army duck with the giant hats, who throws grenades at you. Just like a lot of silliness, a lot of great animations. And you only, it's, correct me if I'm wrong, I think you only ever find out the names of the enemies if they get stunned.

Right? Mushboom gets whacked. Yeah. Mushroom gets frostyed or Googled. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, every character does have a name, and you do those effects to people no matter what. So you find out every character's name, and you're like, oh, that's great.

Oh, that's cool. It's a mushroom. And then, you know, the one other interesting thing about the story is that it takes place in the ruins of the real world, apparently. Like, there's a sequence that you fight through, and you're, like, fighting through a subway. like at the ruins of a subway train and you're fighting zombies and stuff in there. It's kind of like a genre shift. You fight through that and you

go meet the sage sitting at the top of the mountain and when you get to his room there's like television monitors and if you examine the television monitors you get like broadcasts from what is very clearly like 20th century America and then there's

like broadcasts of oh it's the end of the world the Man of Fortress is closing in and we're all dying and I don't know how much of that was changed from the Japanese version, but it's like maybe some of the pop culture references or something, but it is kind of weird because you've got this like fantasy setting sequel to a previous fantasy game

and oh by the way, yeah, humanity's dead. Yay! Finally. And then And then Secret And then Secret Evermore came out and proved it. Oh, come on. What a bad game.

So, you know, especially because, and, you know, Saken Denset of 3, which we're not talking about today. We don't have time. But, I mean, that was the second game I ever imported, first game being Final Fantasy 5. Thank you. And I was just like, oh, man, I got to play this game. And it's pretty good. It's pretty good. It's not as good as good as secretive mana.

Just feels a little, you know, just a little bit more, like, kind of like, maybe restrictive. Yeah, less free and fun and yeah. But still, I mean, they focused on complexity for that one, giving you like three different party makeups and three different, like actually a lot of different ways to experience the story and get different things kind of like from the side and outside of perspective. You know what? That was the final, that was the payoff of the girl or sprite kind of stuff in the beginning.

They clearly wanted to do something that had a lot of different paths, a lot of different main characters, a lot of different things that could happen to you. It could be a bit too much, though, because I know you really have to look ahead to know it's like, okay, which characters do I choose and then which path do I bring them down? Because I believe each character has a light path and a dark path. They do, yeah.

And it's like, oh, you choose. No, you can, you can, it's, you make two choices for each character, right, or light or dark, which means you can have a light character that goes dark at the end or a dark character that goes light and that determines their class and everything like that. So, yeah. But I believe, I believe that that is something, again, that is like spelled out in the instruction book. Mm, okay. Before you start playing, you can look and you can say, okay, I think this is

where I want to go. Gotcha. I didn't have that context, but I had a fact in front of me, so that helped. So, I did want to talk about the character AI because it is still as dumb as a sack of hammers. Yeah, it's like, you have to go get them. Come on, we'll go up the stairs now. Or like, oh, God, we have to cross

this thing. Who has the whip? All right, give me the whip. And it takes you so long to line up in the whip point. You kind of all just slide into place. But they have this, like, little checkerboard thing that lets you adjust the AI. It does nothing. No, that's not true. It does a lot. I don't see any effects. It makes a difference. Okay, I don't see any effect.

Like, it doesn't make them any smarter. Yeah, that's why I want. No, you can't make them smarter. Slide up the smartness. They're dumb. This is like, this is bad AI. Yes, it is. But you can adjust their aggressiveness and their defensiveness.

Yeah. There's like a grid and there's basically like two axes. Yeah. Is this a Nassir Gabelli production? It says programmed by Nassir. Probably his last thing he did for Square. It is the last thing he did for Square. Oh, really?

I believe it's the last game he ever programmed, actually. I think he retired after this. I don't, I guess he might. Or quit in disgrace. I'm kidding. It's not that bad. He was a hotly sought after game program. He was not employed.

He was an outside guy. So we probably negotiated. I mean, when he first started working for Square, he was, like, famous. Like, the Square guys, like, knew who he was, he was a famous guy. And so, I bet you we negotiated himself some nice royalties. I imagine so, yeah. And I feel like I don't want to slag on the guy, but any problems with the game are really just due to its ambition and due to just that being this guy, one guy. He basically said, like, we want the craziest games possible for Nintendo systems.

You are a good programmer. Please do these impossible things for us. And then they said, you don't have a CD anymore. Okay, bye. Yeah, but I do like the fact that you can adjust the AI because if you're like, why are my dudes constantly dying in combat? You can set them to be very defensive and they will actually like block enemy attacks. And sometimes you just literally just want them to block enemy attacks. So look, I got this.

I'm fine. I need you to stay alive. Listen, I want to charge my fist attack to eight. Please let me have this time that I need. It's going to take five minutes, just stand back. You don't have a block button in this game, though, right? Okay, only they can block. No, sometimes you block also.

It's like an automatic thing. It's like an RPG. Like sometimes you just automatically, you know, randomly block and attack. I'm sure there's like... The enemy rolls of one. There's probably a stat that determines how free... Equally you do that. Mush boom.

Mush broom roll one. Yeah. Yeah. So it does have that. And, you know, like the animation of like Randy, you know, when he's equipped with a whip, like kind of blocking, like holding the whip up to guard against an enemy. Like for some reason that sticks in my head whenever I think about blocking the game. But it does happen.

Like sometimes enemies with their attacks. Sometimes you whiff your attack. Usually when you charge up and you just like, like I said, just kind of have wasted three minutes of charging to attack the air. but that animation is so great the one thing I don't like about the charging really is that to be able to beat the final boss you have to use Randy with the

monosword and you have to cast like saber magic on it or something on a saber and then you have to charge up as an enemy attacks from the background and it's kind of a hassle yeah you got to hit it at just the right moment yeah with the magic cast on the sword yeah but once you beat the game

you're treated to a very very bittersweet ending Yeah, because Sprite dies, thank God. And that legitimately made me so sad. He's called back or she or it's called back to its realm. As a kid, I viewed it as a death. And that's the last image you see on the screen that won't go away until you turn the game off. And I was like, I don't want to turn the game off.

Don't go away, right? Yeah. Oh, I love the, I like the game over screen of this too, where she's just like a piece of text comes up that says, sadly, no trace of them was ever found. Oh, that's right. Yeah, a little brutal. Yeah.

They were ripped, ripped his shreds. And while we're still talking about this game, I love the production puppets that they made. It's like everybody is a puppet, like kind of like Star Fox, but not like taxid-dreaming animals. It's like a puppety. They are. They look a little fuzzy to me. I thought they were puppety. They might have like soft goods on them, but I think they're like, you know, clay sculptures.

Whatever the case, I love when I see that for character art in a game, like actual physical models of things like that and like earthbound and things like that. it doesn't happen enough. Yeah. I really loved the in the Mother 3 handbook that Fan Gamer made. When I was first reading it, I was like, oh, were they, wow, did they like scan all this

official Mother 3 artwork out of something? No. Oh my God, they made all these clay figures. I think that was Reed's wife, wasn't it? Oh, I think. It was a lot of people making it. I think she's like the main modeler. Yeah.

Oh, God, gorgeous. Yeah. Such a wonderful throwback to the era of yes, plasticine. models of figures being used in the game instruction manuals. So we've said a lot of gushing, happy things about Secret of Mana, and it also has a lot of fans, people who have very mixed feelings on the series overall, as one should. From Fletcher Arnett, the Mana franchise is probably the weirdest, most uneven, maybe mostly bad series, Square ever released,

and I say this as a saga fan. If it isn't the remakes that turn older games, into worst titles, looking at you here, Sordamana, is games that would be indie debacles today, like, we made a roguelite children or the awful brawler heroes or there's that stuff they didn't even release in English and thank God for that.

Let's just pretend this franchise ended up legend to never, ever talk about its post-college alcoholic streak. That would have been for the best, I think. Legend, could have been the not-so-great finale. From Alan Uler? Hi, Retronauts, I have a fond memory of going to a friend's house right after they got secret of mana and being very

impressed with the graphics and sound. Then he dropped the hammer. It was multiplayer. We spent the next week or so playing after school, and when I got an S&S, I bought the game and the strategy guide, amazing cover picture attached. I think it's the box art. Oh, yeah, it's the strategy guide art. Yeah. Yes. Then in 2000, I got a

PS1 for cheap from a friend and sought out Legend of Manah. Again, the aesthetics blew me away, and I was all along for the crazy Kawazoo ride. Oh, crazy Kawazoo ride. That's nice. I still bust that game out of my Vita, only to make some small progress and come back a month later. My final memory is of the one-up coverage

of Donna Mana. It says, Oof. We mentioned earlier, yeah. I was there for that. The death of mana. God, terrible. I still have a memory of playing Donna Mana was, yeah, this PS2 one. Playing that at TGS. It's like a three-minute demo. I stood in line for

half an hour, and I just wanted to play, and it was one of those demos where there was like an overly attentive of booth girl, like, hovering over my shoulder, like, trying to tell me, like, use this button to attack. I'm like, just, please, I've just been sick and Densensu floor. Let me look at how beautiful this is. We have this moment.

I want to stop talking to me. Stop hovering, mom. Savor the bad game. Yep. You didn't know yet. We didn't know. I went to that Tokyo game show. I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe this game exists.

And you play it, when you play the demo of that game, it's like, oh, wow, this is wonderful. It ends with, like, all the mana sprays talking. Yeah. The spirit's talking to you. But then you realize, oh, oh, it's not. an RPG and... Oh, and it's all just this demo over and over

again. I know. Yep. But it has havoc. It's got havoc. We talked about havoc in the Breath of the Wild episode. Yeah. When Nintendo, like, took that tech engine and said, let's do something meaningful

with this. Square did more like what everyone else did, which was say, let's just throw it in there and make everything, physics-y, what the hell? Right. It wasn't fun. from Misfit Skater 6 Hey guys 1 through 5 were taken?

I guess. Come on. It's like, you know, Leonard Part 6. If we can collect Misfit Skater 7 and 8, we'll have all of them. Yeah. I think 1 through 5 weren't localized, that's the problem. Always the way. Secretamana is one of my favorite games.

It's the game that got me into what I thought were normal JRPs, and I was disappointed to find out that most JRPGs didn't have real-time combat back then. The story drew me in more than most games at that time. I loved the beautiful pixel art, and that soundtrack is one of the best ever. It set my expectations high enough that other JRP's from that era could just stand up to it.

Oh, it just couldn't stand up to it, at least until KronoTriver came out. Second, it sets three is a long mother three for games that should have been released in the U.S. from the start, but fortunately, that awesome fan translation allowed us to play it. ST3 has its flaws, but had an incredible story with multiple paths, music on par with Secret of Mata,

and even more beautiful artwork. Since then, and being a fan at all, I've picked up most mana games without waiting for reviews and subsequently have been burned, multiple times it's almost like Square didn't know what made Secret of Mata

and SD3 is so great in the first place Should we do another episode here? I think so just so we can be angry for an hour now. Just to throw more dirt on the grave. That's a tough episode, yeah.

And now that the Mata series as a whole is all but dead, it's pretty disheartening to know that we'll never see a game quite like them. Although maybe we'll get that lucky and that re-release for Switch will come west.

Keep Dreaming, Kid. Let's see. All right, from, I'm going to mispronounce this again. and there's little curly things under the seas. Gonzalo Lorenzo? Hi, Jeremy and all of retronauts. My experience with the MANA series pertains only to the Super NES titles.

That's okay. I think I'm writing a somewhat unpopular opinion, but here it goes. Secret of Mata is an average game at best. Get out. While playing it recently, I was shocked by the barrage of technical glitches, such as the lack of variable width font.

Oh, come on. That's the first thing I look for in a video game. Unexplainable collision detection. Okay. And random hard crash. Yeah. Sure. The leveling mechanics of magic spells encourages boring grinding and throws off the

balance of the game, seeing as bosses become trivial with spells at high levels. Finally, the story is a jumbled mess, and the translation only makes it worse. Needless to say, when one of the bosses is literally Santa Claus, that's awesome, not stupid, shut up. Whoa, this guy is, the story falls apart. Sure, this happens if you analyze a game as a checklist or a rubric of different things and then add it all up and determine how good the game is. But, like, this secret of mana is more than the sum of its parts. Yeah, I just realized that the Santa Claus thing ties into the post-apocalyptic real world.

You're right, yeah. He's the last remnant. He was like the spirit of Christmas. Jeremy, we're not talking about the last remnant. Oh, let's please never do that. But it's, it's Kowazoo Day. Wait, did he do? This is not Kowazoo Day.

Let's see. I was not told it was Kowazoo Day. Chris is getting up and leaving now. Yeah, there's, I'm going to read, like, three more. Hello from Southeast Alaska, from Christopher Williams. As a lapsed, reformed, square saw fan, I can say that Sagan 2 hit me right in the video game Formative Years Sweet Spot, about 13 years old. As a young role-playing fan, it was also the first example I'd ever seen of what amounted to a multiplayer RPG. Even when the action turned it into a complete clown show with the multi-tap enabling all three characters, it was still a novel feeling.

I didn't think of it back then, but I suppose it would be the descendant of gauntlet, maybe a couple of generations. it's removed. Regardless, the game still has a soft place in my heart for two reasons. The vibrant and beautiful sprite art and the catchy soundtrack. From Daniel Mato, Secretamatta will always hold a special place in my gaming heart. In 2004 and in my

mid-20s, I moved from Adelaide Australia to the big smoke of Sydney to be with my then-girlfriend. That relationship ended and I bought myself a second-hand in ES, super NES, two controllers and a copy of Secret Amata for 60 bucks. I remember thinking it was a rip-off, but in hindsight it was a steal.

At that time, it was the deepest I'd ever gotten into a game, right game, right time. The funny thing is, I never actually heard the soundtrack. For some reason, whenever I played, I had the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue, or the Blue Note Shet Baker compilation, My Funny Valentine, playing instead. I don't remember disliking Mana's music or anything. It just felt right. I feel like coming right after a breakup, that's what a dude's going to do. Speaking, by the way, of the PAL territories, the Europe's and the Australia's and the therefore,

Secret of Mana was one of the games that also came out in Europe, you know, prior to Final Fantasy games. And they actually did, they, you know, you may know that in some PAL territories, they did what we got with Earthbound here, which was the big format box that included a strategy guide. They did that for many games, mostly RPGs in PAL territories. And everybody remembers last year when the pound crashed and everybody was like, if you want to, if you've never thought of buying anything from Europe, now is the time. Yes, I had, and the thing that I bought was the big box edition of Secret of Mana, the UK version, which has a big strategy guide. I'm sorry, it's from Germany. It was released only in Germany. It has a big old strategy guide.

Sadly, the artwork on the front is not full res. Oh, no. They just stretched it. So, I mean, the full res exists somewhere, but they just took the super NES box art and they stretched it. And, you know, yeah. Disgusting. It doesn't look as good. I know.

I'm thoroughly just sickened. I'm offended by disrespect for aspect ratios in any case. Yes. But it is. I mean, I was just like, that's the thing I want. So I bought it. All right.

Well, that is great. So we're going to read one last letter because someone needs to say something about Final Fantasy Adventure. From Andy Koch, Good morning. The Game Boy was my family's first gaming system after the Atari 2,600,

and Final Fantasy Adventure was the first epic game that I played on the system. In a pre-Links Awakening world, it was amazing just to think that we were carrying around such a big adventure on a cartridge only a bit larger than a silver dollar. What's a silver dollar? That's a dated reference. That was your standard by which you judged the size of things back in the day. There's silver dollar pancakes. Somebody's rich.

Yeah, okay. How many of those games goes to a breadbox? That's what I want to do. Yeah. A lot. While the mechanics, graphics, dialogue, and story are necessarily minimalistic. The game managed to be very evocative. of Kets Rooms, Amanda's Fates, Fate, and Dime Tower all stand out to me even now as being surprisingly complex for such a simple gaming system.

It's true. Ket's Rooms are like, I just went through that. It's a grueling a journey. When we finally played Secret Amato, we thought this is so much like Final Fantasy Adventure, not realizing its providence. I really, really hope that we'll eventually get to play the 2006 16-bit Japanese mobile phone remake or the more recent 3D remake Adventures of Mano. Didn't you have some thoughts about adventures of mana? Was that you? The Vita version?

Yeah. We just, we talked about it. Yeah, we talked about it. Okay, which game was it that someone was said in the notes was hot garbage? Oh, God, I've blocked it out. Rise of Mona. What the hell is that? Is that like a rising bile?

Yeah, that was supposed to, it looked like a mana game. It was like, oh, it's a cell phone slash Vita, you know, mana game and, you know, it's like a mona game. and, you know, it's like a mono game. No, it's a crappy, free-to-play Japanese, not compu gotcha, but, um, gotcha, gacha combi. Like, it's a gotcha game. And so you're supposed to play these very brief levels over and over and over again and, like, get new monsters, which you combine into other monsters. And I was just like, uh, why?

There's also some really... This was supposed to be a mana game. Supposedly bad Final Fantasy tactics are something for mobile phones that came out, like, when in the past four, And then there's another game that doesn't exist anymore. There's Circle of Mana, and it was for Japanese cell phones, and you can't play it anymore. Good. Yep. You know, probably not a loss.

Probably for the best. Yeah, sorry. There's a few other games I'd like to delete. So, yeah, sorry Frank Zafaldi, but we're going to wipe these off the face of the earth. All right, so any final thoughts on... The opposite of a game preservationist. Final Fantasy Adventure and Secret Amato. Yeah, just, you know, two brilliant games.

Final Fantasy Adventure these days in its sort of original form kind of has to be approached as you are a digital archaeologist and you're going to play this game and mine it for it's the interesting facets of it like I would not say

oh definitely but this comes out on the switch you've got to play this it academically yeah not for enjoying it precisely not for like fun today Secret of Mana also really

you know it's like read read somebody's list of things I wish I knew before playing Secret of Mata just to give yourself a little bit more advantage as to the weirdness of it and how to cheese your way through it. I will say that's, I mean, Secret of Mata, if this comes out, my prediction, by the way, is that they'll release them separately as downloads in other territories and not three. So that maybe you'll be able to buy one and two for like $10 each as downloads the U.S.

That's like a best case scenario, yeah. That I think is the most realistic scenario. They skip three again because it's just too complicated to translate, but they want to, I mean, look, they already did the work. They just got to swap the ROMs out at this point. And maybe it'll just do that. And, you know, obviously, replaying Secret of Mana on Switch is probably going to be a lot of fun. You'll play it with your friends and stuff like that, and you can use the Joycons and whatnot. Yeah, if they do, like, local and ad hoc or whatever, that would be so good.

But what I'm going to do when I get the Switch collection is, I've already recently, I've played Secret of Mana, you know, all the way through at least like five times. So I'm not really feeling anything to play it again. Final Fantasy Adventure is, you know, tough to play. It is. And I actually did recently replay it on a Game Boy with the brighter backlit screen. I'm going to play Saking Dentesu 3 for the first time since 1997. And I'm going to try that out again.

It'll be better because now I can read Japanese. Yay. Bob yourself. Oh, yeah. I mean, I love swear immediately following Final Fantasy 2-4, I was on the Square train. sort of made the square train go even faster, like, at the speed of light for me, because I was like, this is the best looking game and the best sounding game I've ever played up to that point. And I love Zelda. I love Crystallus. I love action RPGs. And I also loved

Final Fantasy. It was like this perfect mix of those two games. And the game was kind of short enough where I could replay it a lot. So I did play this game a lot. And I got it shortly after it was released here. So, yeah, I've always loved Mana. And listening to all the fan letters, like, it's very clear. Secret of Mana is very much, maybe even more so than like the Super Nintendo Final Fantasy games. It was the game that launched a thousand Squarespaceoft fandoms, you know, in the U.S.

Like that was really like the game where you know, I love Squarespaceoft. Squarespace is a company that I like. It was a good gateway. In that way in the U.S. and that's why it's doubly disappointing that Square even to this day has always just sort of failed to follow up

on this nostalgic sort of feeling that we have for this old game with something that even quite frankly, even comes close to touching it. It seems like it would be such a simple formula to recreate, but they can't do it. No. Well, that's the thing. Even with Secret of Mana, I mean, we already

understand that as much as we love Secret of Mana, it too is kind of a broken piece of crap in its way. So it's like there is no one perfect game in the series and maybe it's not possible. Maybe there is no way to make a perfect mana game.

Maybe. So then finally in closing, want to say that we didn't talk about it or touch on it, but Secret of Mana Plus is the greatest arranged album of all time. I don't know if it's the greatest, but it's good. It's real good. It is the all-time best

video game arranged album. It is the original composer Hiroki Kikuta going through taking all his favorite compositions from the game and weaving them into a 40 minute Mike Oldfield style remix with ambient effects

and... Ask your parents who that is. It's just, it's, it's so good. It's a mad genius and is a wonderful, it's one track. Somehow it's one, it's a 43-minute track, yeah. Somehow he incorporates telephone dialing into it, touchtone dialing, and it's amazing. It's perfectly. It's beautiful. It's not the best video game album in the world, but it's top five.

And Kakuta has a weird pathway in his career where he formed a game developer who briefly, like, started making some pretty interesting games. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I mean, he was part of whoever made what prestigious. He did Shadow Hearts, Koldeka. Oh, really? That was his company, Koldelka. Sorry, I always get the name wrong. And then he, I think, started scoring hentai games after that.

Yeah. He took an unconventional career path. Yeah. Like the Monagame. But Sankendensetsu 3 was entirely scored by him as well. It's also very good. It is. It's beautiful.

Yeah. All right. And that wraps it up for this episode of Retronaut. Thanks everyone for listening. And those of you who wrote in, even if we didn't read your letters, thank you for that. Retronauts, of course, can be found at Retronauts.com. If you want to hear more of our cool episodes, you can subscribe to us on iTunes or through the Podcast One Network or on the Podcast One app. You might see this episode in 360-degree VR.

I don't know. I also have to tell people that our podcasts can be downloaded through any podcast app. I think people are confused. But I don't use iTunes. It's like any podcast app. I use Downcast. It works perfectly. You don't have to use a like a particular.

service to get our podcast. iTunes is just like the convenient front end. I just hate iTunes so much. I don't know what they did to it. I don't think it's become horrible. I don't know. Anyway, that's us. You can also support us through patreon.com slash retronauts.

That's how we pay for me to fly across the country to sit in a studio with them because it's much worse when I try to lead an episode through Skype. So yes. What do people get? I guess that's the important stuff. They get a form fuzzy feeling. access to the show. And no ads.

And if you would like to learn more about my life and my stale sense of humor, you can follow me on Twitter as GameSpite. Chris? I'm on Twitter as Kobunheat, K-O-B-U-N-H-E-A-T. Again, just to underscore this for you guys, had a big life change. I'm now Features Editor at Kotaku. I am, you know, much of my day is spent editing other people's pieces, which is a lot of fun for me.

So you're actually an editor as opposed to what every other game site calls an editor, which is a writer. Correct. I am actually an editor. And so I do occasionally, occasionally write things. It's usually about things I'm passionate about, like old video games and wacky Japanese video games. Or acquiring old wacky Japanese video games from Japan.

Also that. And so you can read me, that's where you can read me right now. And then, of course, whenever anybody is like, oh, hey, I have a pitch or a story about old video games. I'm like, I'll edit it. I'll do it. So, yeah, definitely read. Kochaku, I guess.

I do. It's great. Hi, and Bob. I don't have a job because I was like, I don't feel like working anymore. But I work on podcasts instead, which is a lot of work. And you can find me, my other podcast, Talking Simpsons. It's a chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Go to Talking Simpsons.com or find it on Lasertime Podcast.com. If you like The Simpsons, you should like our show. Find an episode of The Simpsons you like.

Download the corresponding episode. We're up to season six now. So you should find one that you want to listen to. And give us a try. I assume you'll like us, and I think you will. And that is it for this episode. Thanks again for listening. We'll be back in a week, if not sooner.

And call her number nine for one million dollars, Rita, complete this quote. Life is like a box of... Chocolate. Uh, Rita, you're cutting out. We need your answer. Life is like a box of chocolate. Oh, sorry. That's not what we were looking for.

On to caller number 10. Oh, gosh. Bad network got you glitched out of luck. Switch to Boost Mobile, super reliable, super fast nationwide network, and get four lines, each with unlimited gigs for just $100 a month. Plus get four free phones. Boost makes it easy to switch. Switching makes it easy to save.

The Mueller Report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the... White House. A special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine, Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by

friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officer started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Bryant don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.