Secret of mana, another unfinished classic?
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...issing-Content
First time im really hearing of this, any truth to it? Granted i dont remember much of the game. Inf act, im playing it again now since i finally got around to rebuying it on the SNES. Id have gone for the android version, but trying to move and charge weapons is awkward. lol
My Gaming Collection (Now at Google Drive!)
A lot of the stuff said in this article has me scratching my head.
I already knew about Secret of Mana originating on the SNES CD add-on. I was under the impression that it was fairly early in development when it switched over to a cart. This is the first I'm hearing a significant amount of content being cut because of that transition.
I've played through the game at least three times, and while I know it's a bit buggy, I was under the impression that most of the bugs originated in the localization process. Either way, I have never once experienced the characters getting stuck in a wall, let alone been in a situation where I was forced to reset. I've never even had any problems associated with saving, though I know others have.
Cut content or not, I feel like the game flows just fine. This article makes it sound like the primary reason to play the game is some deep plot or something, and I don't understand that at all. I know I'm in the minority on this, but I don't even consider Secret of Mana an RPG. To me, it's in the same genre as Zelda, and thus I regard it as an adventure game. I enjoy the game for the exploring, battling, the pleasant graphics, and the great soundtrack. The plot is pretty forgettable, in my opinion, and I don't think expanding on it would make a big difference. It's not uncommon for games like this to get more streamlined toward the end, where you get down to business, with less story and dialogue getting in the way of the final tasks, and that works just fine for me. I'm not sure I would like a bunch of bloat added to the end portion of the game. It's also not usual for games to have unused content and scrapped ideas in general, so who's to say this content wouldn't have been cut regardless? Because, to me, it feels like a complete game already. It doesn't have the feeling of, say, Star Ocean on Super Famicom, where you can very distinctly feel that it was rushed toward the end.
I also think the author is being a bit rude implying that the praise the game gets is a result of people having their judgment clouded by nostalgia. That's rather condescending of her, acting as if she's "enlightened" and those of us who still like the game haven't wised up yet. She says she loved the game at age 8, but then was disappointed with it when she replayed it as a teenager. Well, I was probably even older than she was during her replay when I played the game for the first time. I bought it around 2000 or 2001, so I was almost 20 by then. I liked the game, and I still like it just the same now, in my 30s. I have no nostalgia for the game, let alone the nostalgia of early childhood. If anything, I think I would have less clouded judgment on this game than the author, who probably built up a romanticized vision of the game from childhood that a replay could never live up to.
The theories about Secret of Mana's connection to later games sounds like a bunch of hogwash to me. Outside of some visual similarities between the boy and girl in Secret of Mana and Crono and Marle, I don't see much in common between Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger. I'm not even sure if they have much staff in common. Secret of Evermore is obviously heavily inspired by Secret of Mana, but I don't think it was to "make up" for Secret of Mana. They didn't even have the same people involved. Secret of Evermore was made in the US by Westerners. I think it's more a case of Secret of Mana being pretty popular, so they wanted to take advantage of that. It's funny that the author refers to Secret of Evermore as a "RPG masterpiece" when it actually is not anywhere near as well-liked as Secret of Mana. It also has, arguably, worse bugs. And as for Seiken Densetsu 3, I highly doubt the lack of a localization has anything to do with the development of Secret of Mana. I mean, for one, development and localization are two entirely separate matters. If anything, if the development of Secret of Mana was strained, that would affect the development of SD3, not the choice to localize. I think it's pretty clear that SD3 didn't get localized because it was a fairly late release in Japan, which would've made it a very late release in the US, when gamers were already moving on to next gen systems, and SD3 was already one of the largest SFC carts ever made, which possibly would've had to be larger yet to accommodate an English script, as English generally takes up more space. That large cart means a possibly prohibitively expensive release, on top of it coming late in the SNES lifespan. As much as it sucks that we didn't get a localization, it makes all the sense in the world that Squaresoft passed on bringing it to the West. It's also worth noting that Squaresoft passed on localizing MOST of their Super Famicom games, so SD3 is hardly unique in that regard. A localization was an exception, not the norm.
SD3 likely canceled as Square USA was pretty small then and it seemed like they were only working on one game at a time.
By the time of an SD3 localization, they would've been on to Super Mario RPG.
And then that was about the PlayStation era.
Didn't Square actually close their entire existing US subsidiary (in Redmont) to open a new one (in California)? (though they ended up not publishing until the Enix merger, giving that to Sony and EA.)
I recall Nintendo Power said Evermore team had a second game in the works (if not an Evermore sequel, though that might have been before they even got the "original" out). So that was canned along with the "Secret of Mana II" localization.
Youve really never had one the heroes get stuck in a corner or stuck being attacked by enemies while running someplace? lucky you!Originally Posted by Aussie2B
My Gaming Collection (Now at Google Drive!)
Secret of Mana is a boring turd and plagued with bugs.
They relocated from WA to CA in '96, yeah. I don't think they had any time that they were actually closed for business in the US, but that move could've affected what projects they were willing to take on around that time. You may be thinking of Enix which had a very public closure of its US branch in '95 and didn't decide to do business in the US again until '99, which resulted in no more localizations of Enix games on SNES past that point, and the only localizations of Enix games on the next gen systems until '99 were from other localizers licensing their games.
I've had characters temporarily stuck behind things, of course, since the AI isn't super great at navigating around, but actually lodged within a wall, no.Youve really never had one the heroes get stuck in a corner or stuck being attacked by enemies while running someplace? lucky you!
I remember once having the AI get trapped which caused me to need to reset, but I also have never seen them get stuck INSIDE a wall.
I once played through it in emulation, and after a boss fight, I had a character completely vanish (the sprite character), like the person never existed. I thought it was an emulation bug, and thankfully I had a save state before it. I researched and found out it can happen from time to time on a real cart too, this would frustrate the hell out of me as having to go back and fight a tough boss again would make me take some time away from the game.
I'm surprised no one has pointed out the games biggest issue, imo, enemies who are attacked and receive damage are immune to damage for the next couple of seconds. I'm surprised something like thiis was overlooked as when getting 100% or having a charged bar only for your attack to bounce the enemy backwards with no damage, it's really a huge oversight. You're basically forced to to wait for an ally to attack and then wait until the enemy lands and starts moving to make sure neither you or an ally wastes an attack. It also makes charging your attacks to anything above 1 bar extremely inefficient what with your character taking several hours to actually initiate the strike and things can go completely wrong by that point, unless of course your allies attack command is turned completely off. You could always put their charge meter to go to level 1 each time before they attack, but then after combat you're required to turn it back off again or else they'll be walking to the next area like they need to take a sh*t DBZ style.
However if you play Secret of Evermore this bug is no where to be found. Infact, the only three bugs I know of in that game is the inability to access to pyramid after you reach the boss, if you teleport from Tiny's boss room you can no longer access the room and you're stuck there forever, and if you open a chest with rocket launcher items in them you can actually go over the max limit and anytime you use your rocket launcher it won't decrease from what it's listed as(which is a good bug :P.) However if your dog attacks the enemy and then you attack the enemy immediately after, there's no damage immunity against enemies. If you cast three spells consecutively in a row, again, no damage immunity. Also, the pointless 8(or 9?) bars of charging is only three, and your character doesn't perform a ballet and then attack 30 minutes later.
All that being said, Secret of Mana is a good game. It's just a bit overrated while at the same time I've seen people sh*t all over Secret of Evermore because it's a clone of Secret of Mana developed by Square USA. No reasoning behind why they're saying Secret of Evermore is worse, they just say it is, and now days many people believe it simply because they haven't played them both. Additionally, Secret of Mana looks better graphically, atleast character design and the colorful graphics, so that could also be a reason(also better music, but Secret of Evermore's isn't bad.)
*edit*
Off topic, but Brigandine is also unfinished. Still the absolute best game ever created even being an unfinished game, but on Brigandine you basically finish the game as soon as you take over the continent. Kind of like games like Risk, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, etc. While in the storyline, there's a character named Bulnoil, an extremely powerful mage that's the reason behind the conflict, and you actually never see him anywhere in the game except in the storyline. This is unless of course you use a Gameshark and you can actually unlock the character to use.
Brigandine Grand Edition was later released, a remake to the original Brigandine on the exact same console(ala Castlevania Legacy of Darkness, although PS1 instead of N64.) There were some changes to the core mechanics of gameplay as well as classes, an extra monster added, the Snake of Chaos which was referenced in the first game and Bulnoil himself. Also very slight graphics update and attacks taken directly on screen on the battlefield instead of transitioning to a 3D attack phase. You're playing the exact same game sure, but due to the core mechanics changed, it feels like you're playing a completely different game at the same time. Finished or unfinished, these two games are comparable in quality imo and I'd actually say that neither are better than the other with their changes. Maybe Grand Edition is slightly better, due to the changes that were made, but being so used to the original version it doesn't make a difference to me either way, and the fact that the original is in English(on disc,) makes me prefer playing that one even though I do own both.
Last edited by kupomogli; 04-06-2017 at 03:50 PM.
Everything in the above post is opinion unless stated otherwise.
How dare you.
I really dont see much to complain about regarding Secret of Mana. Personally I think its a masterpiece. Some of the best original music and coolest graphics on the snes.
One of my personal favorites..
Secret of Mana is a wonderful game, worthy of attention from both RPG fans and Action/Adventure fans. Yes it has some bugs (yay for having to unhook AI characters), plus 'features' that were pretty broken (magic magic magic), that was par for the course for Square of the time. There were always tantalizing hints, even if you didn't listen to the reports and rumors, about how there was a lot of stuff missing (mostly lots and lots of stuff on the map you couldn't land on, though getting Dryad practically at endgame came across like that too). That said, what we got was quite awesome, and flowed together pretty well; enough so that it was a very meaty game. And it was a rush job; the game was supposed to be a launch title of sorts for the CD add-on that Sony was putting together for the SNES/Super Famicom, and when that blew up a lot of stuff had to tossed out and the rest compressed so that Square could at least have something to show for it. It may not be all that much actual gameplay, mostly just graphical updates and other "wow" improvements.
This little game does have some effects on later Square titles, just not things like nods and referential gags. The whole snafu with the CD add-on wound up evolving into the Playstation, and Nintendo's on-so-wonderful relationship with third-party devs (and newfound anti-CD sentiment) wound up making Square
jump over to Sony, and with some experience with some of the tech already, went ahead and made this little seventh installment in the Final Fantasy franchise...
The not-quite-hidden animosity probably also had an effect on Square's localization efforts. Secret of Evermore was pretty good, too, but the deliberate implication that it was Secret of Mana 2 really did stir the angry gamer hive a bit. These two together, plus the wane of the SNES probably made already iffy prospects like Bahamut Lagoon, Live-a-Live, Romancing SaGa 1-3, Treasures of The Rudra, and yes Seiken Densetsu 3 ever less attractive to localize.
And harrumph to the implication that Secret of Mana is a 'kiddie' game. I was already 14 when I discovered it (a good year and a half after I tore through SaGa 2, Robotrek, and Final Fantasy VI), and I still love to death. She's probably just upset that you go around killing bunny slippers.
RPGs: Proof that one you start done the dork path, forever will it dominate your wallet's destiny.
Oh, and you get Luna from the Moon Palace, not Lumina/Wisp. *angry pedantic fanboy noises*
RPGs: Proof that one you start done the dork path, forever will it dominate your wallet's destiny.
Heh heh heh!
I can't imagine Nintendo and Squaresoft were already on bad terms starting with the canning of the CD add-on. I mean, they made Super Mario RPG together, and that came out in 1996. The falling out must've happened sometime between that (or maybe even because of that; maybe they were butting heads on the project, I dunno, though that came out great too) and Squaresoft's move to Sony.
It didn't completely kill the relationship; Super Mario RPG alone proves that. What probably happened is that Square went into an increased state of wariness when it came to Nintendo. Plenty of games still were cranked out for the Super Famicom, but localization chances became even more iffy than before. Combine this with Square wanting to make 'darker' games (not that their stuff was all sunshine and rainbows to begin with) and bigger games without the digital contortions the upcoming 64 was going to require.
This is pure speculation, but looking through the chain of events, I always got the impression that Square was doing some understated pleading in Nintendo's direction over the hardware, but Nintendo's glorious tradition of pissing off third-party publishers and devs just had to be followed.
RPGs: Proof that one you start done the dork path, forever will it dominate your wallet's destiny.
I doubt there would've been any issues regarding content. By the time Squaresoft ditched Nintendo, they were years into the establishment of the ESRB, and even Nintendo was making (or at least funding) darker games going forward, like the Killer Instinct series, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Conker, etc. (though they certainly acted as if they were ashamed of Conker, haha). I'm sure Nintendo would've welcomed games like Final Fantasy VII if they had the opportunity.
I've heard Romancing SaGa 1 was actually a pretty buggy mess. Not as sure I want to play after hearing more about it.
And like you don't even fight all 10 legendary beasts or get all 10 stones or whatever that the intro seems to suggest.
If so, that's like, yeah, we know, games don't always get everything put in that they wanted but to not alter the storyline to reflect what they could get in would be a letdown.
And even the WSC version a decade later didn't get all them put back in? Maybe one or something.
Not too sure what to think of the other thing I heard about RS1, in that story changes are determined by arbitrary BS. I could understand wanting to have it seem like the storyline changes with each play, but having it change by story actions would be a lot cooler and less dickish than "randomness".
But then again this is a franchise whose level-up system, including its grandpa Final Fantasy II, is based mostly on RNG. :P (excluding FFL3, one of the VERY few "normal" mono GB RPGs to get an official western localization)
You know what, Kaine? You've been a good and loyal DP poster, and your thread deserves an actual response from me. I agree that Secret of Mana is messy, and I think that gives it an appealingly brisk pace, perhaps by accident. I went on and on about this not so long ago.
As for the scrapped content, the developers mentioned that the original design streamlined and the story grew less dark, though it seems that these never-used elements were discarded either in the planning stages or with the Super NES CD version. If you poke through Secret of Mana you'll find a bunch of unused stuff, but it's not nearly as plentiful as you might expect from a game that reportedly lost 40 percent of its intended weight.
The neatest unused thing is this character, who's either a lost villain or a disguise for Thanatos, the main baddie.
Square's reluctance to localize late-stage 16-bit RPGs probably stemmed foremost from the industry-wide trend of Western publishers dumping the Super NES and Genesis once the PlayStation was a solid thing in early 1996. The RPG market in North America wasn't nearly as strong as Japan's, and Square would've competed against itself if Seiken Densetsu 3 and Treasure of the Rudras had come along too close to Chrono Trigger and Secret of Evermore.
That said, I always thought Square could've slipped out another localized RPG around the early spring of 1996. It would've been far enough away from Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG.
I also think you're right about the Super NES CD's disappearance souring Square in some minor way. The Nintendo 64's cartridge format couldn't handle the games Square wanted to make, so the only recourse in Nintendo's scene would be the Nintendo 64DD...and Square likely thought it'd either be vaporware (which it wasn't) or woefully underfed (which it was).
Hmm, that sprite sheet opens up all sort of cans o' worms. A militant counterpart to Luka? Fake Mana Goddess? Disguise for that bandit chick (the spikes are noticeable). The armor parts seem to at least imply female there.
Back on task, while the biggest factor was money and marketing, never discount personal reasons for decisions like whether or not to localize. The console RPG market was on the better side of niche, but still niche during that time especially in the West. The Playstation was on the horizon. Square deciding to stick it to Nintendo was increasingly defensible from a business standpoint. Some of the marketing for FF7 had a fair bit of spite in it (the picture of the Junon Cannon/Sister Ray with the caption "Bring the guys who make cartridge games a cigarette and a blindfold" comes to mind). The deal with SoM and the CD debacle was probably the first major problem to come along.
Moving even closer, the 40% estimate may well be right, but 40% of code is not necessarily 40% of gameplay. The fact that there is a lot of game to be had even with the missing content can cut both ways. Would it have been more good stuff, maybe like less generic temples and forests and more unique critters to harvest? Some deeper characterization and character expansion (Jema, Dyluck, I'm looking at you) flashier but less broken magic? A chance to drive the sandship as a precursor or supplement to Flammie? A cryptic admonishment to LoM devs that a focused plot and semi-linear gameplay are not mutually exclusive? Would it have been incremental 'production value' improvements and angst-fest cutscenes?
Might-have-beens can be vexatious, can't they? In the end, Secret of Mana is a classic, missing content or no missing content, and if it happens that a working SNES and a working cart come back into my life...well, time is like a river, and history repeats.
RPGs: Proof that one you start done the dork path, forever will it dominate your wallet's destiny.
Posting Permissions
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Similar agreements apply to other advertising or affiliate programs such as those from eBay, Google, etc.
Copyright © 1991 - Present of Digital Press. All rights reserved.
Reply With Quote
