TITLE
Secret of Mana at 30: How its troubled making reshaped an entire industry
AUTHOR
Steven Tucker
PUBLICATION
Whynow Gaming
YEAR
2023
ARTICLE TYPE
Article
FROM THE ARTICLE
One of the best reasons to own a SNES back in 1993 was the format-exclusive Secret of Mana – originally released thirty years ago this week on the 6 August.One of the finest RPGs of all time, Secret of Mana – or Seiken Densetsu 2, as it’s called in Japan – felt like the epitome of the sort of game you just couldn’t buy on rival consoles from the likes of Sega or NEC/Hudson Soft. How ironic, then, that the game’s existence was to prove pivotal in the near-future decline of Nintendo as the dominant player in the home console market, both at home and abroad.
Secret of Mana was the work of SquareSoft (now Square Enix), the most revered 1990s studio making Japan’s favourite and best-selling genre of RPGs – and Square back in 1993 didn’t publish games for anyone but Nintendo. The exhausting experience of making Secret of Mana was about to change all this forever.
GAMES MENTIONED
Secret of Mana