What a masterpiece that game was and on so many levels, just listening to the intro theme is enough to call up the best of nostalgia in my gamer heart. Thanks for that video

@jong2359

10 ай бұрын

So...many...memories.

Just beat this game finally last year after playing it many times as a kid. This was one of the first games I ever played, what a way to start a gaming journey.

one of the best sound track in a game I can remember. "The color of the summer sky" from the village... unforgetable.

Can’t believe this game turned 30 the other day

@ericshun3331

6 ай бұрын

We old

This game changed my life -- if not for Secret of Mana, I would have never met the girl who would eventually become my wife. I joined a Secret of Mana fan army in the late 90s, which is what got me engaged enough in that era of the Internet to discover the webcomic Bob and George once that got started. I was a moderator on the Bob and George forums, and that's where I met my wife.

@pacomatic9833

9 ай бұрын

Wow.

@ZsH85

6 ай бұрын

was it manatheater ? i used to check that site for a long time back in the day. damn i forgot it even existed

@smokinjoe9415

Ай бұрын

Holy crap! That is exactly where I met your wife too, we had some fun in the back room for sure!

Also, this game had surround sound support I believe!

The big secret on Secret of Mana, the game was originally designed and planned for the SNES-CD, built to make use of the space on a CD. When the SNES-CD deal fell apart, Secret of Mana had to get cut down. And if you compared Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger, there are some similarities in graphics. Secret of Mana supposedly had time travel mechanics also included, which all of those cut elements went on to inspire Chrono Trigger. To help support the "SNES-CD game that got cut down", the story and character development (leveling up characters and equipment) starts off slow moving from the start of the game to reaching the Empire. Starting from The Empire, the drop rate of weapon orbs and collection of the last 4 elements along with the story pace picked up fast, suggesting content was cut and what was kept was rearranged to fit a plot. If you want to compare back ground layers, you need to see the Pure Land. Can you imagine what this game could have been if it had a 600+ MB CD to store everything. The artwork would not need compression, just fit the resolution. The extra hardware power from the SNES-CD system would aid the flight. How much more story content there would have been? There is also the music tracks being closer to CD quality.

@Tofu3435

3 ай бұрын

Most 16 bit CD game didn't used 600mb. Also mostly for the sound/VA and for some video. I mean we saw some 16 bit jrpg on CD, most of them are nothing much special compared to cartridge based games.

I really wonder how this would have been if the SNES CD add on was released.

@napoleonfeanor

9 ай бұрын

Or Nintendo atleast giving them a larger cartridge

@BurritoKingdom

9 ай бұрын

@@napoleonfeanor the game was originally developed for the Nintendo PlayStation (SNES CD) before it was cancelled. Much of the material was scrapped and the music downgraded. I also believe Chrono Trigger was originally developed for the Nintendo PlayStation. Square was all in for CDs but Nintendo wasn't ready.

@johnsimon8457

9 ай бұрын

All the elemental palaces are palette swaps with the same tile set. Too many bosses and enemies are also recycled palette swaps. Thanatos’s crew is barely there at all. There are very few optional areas on the map. Lots of stuff could be addressed. But I don’t expect a miracle. Other action RPGs on Mega CD or PCengine CD are nice

I prefer the NTSC USA opening. The tree appears (implied) way larger. This game is a masterpiece. I still play/listen (like so many other people)

@migovas1483

10 ай бұрын

Nonsense, the original japan intro has the full art on all its glory, the NTSC for some reason butchered it... probably copy rights?

Games like this were truly meant to be played on an analog CRT television when referencing the pixel art, while it is still just fine on a modern flat screen or LCD display theres naturally going to be artifacts in the image being rendered for a resolution or display it was never designed for which is the mean reason I still keep with me a magnavox 13 inch CRT from 2005 it was one of the last years they still made analog displays before everyone completely switched over to now modern displays.

@miriamalmeida6687

8 ай бұрын

Crt the best sharp c2199b tv

@MCHH-ml2qq

8 ай бұрын

@@miriamalmeida6687 I've never had any of the Sharp branded ones if I remember correctly I grew up on Magnavox CRT sets specifically their old woodgrain panel sets in the 90s then one of their CRT/DVD combo sets in the early to mid 00s

This is the reason why I love your work, you don't regurgitate facts of games but break everything down and it makes for a downright interesting video that satisfies my thirst for "how's" and "why's".

I'm still hoping a beta of the Akira Toriyama Snes CD-ROM Project Secret of Mana was constructed from will surface someday.

A true classic of my childhood and a game I'll always cherish- I don't usually know much about tech or coding, but I do remember the mapscrolling and getting annoyed by it... so if nothing else, you helped me put one old mystery to rest here :)

I still have yet to see anyone on any channel ever cover the script and story difference between secret of mana in America and Japan as they are significant.

I love this series but I do really wish they had made the screen scroll sooner. I feel like I’m pushing the screen blindly. Still, I’m extremely excited for the mana pack for theatrythm in the next couple of days! The music is just so good and the graphics so pretty.

They dropped the ball wuth that remake🥺

@Dwedit

10 ай бұрын

Yeah, the remake _looked like_ a cheesy mobile game, bad animation all around. Lots of interpolation between poses. The one effect that looks especially bad is the Slow Down spell animation, with the vines perfectly aligned to a spiral inside a cylinder.

When will you do Chrono Trigger? The effects may not be console stretching but it's Chrono Trigger.

@BurritoKingdom

10 ай бұрын

Its Secret of Mana's 30th anniversary. So a CT retrospective would be 2025

@keaton718

10 ай бұрын

@@BurritoKingdom I wonder of Square will have a remake ready for 2025.

@JMFSpike

9 ай бұрын

@@keaton718 Although I want to see it just as much as everyone else does, I'm also kind of afraid of what they might do to a Chrono Trigger remake. This isn't the same company it was in the 90's. They might try to update the gameplay, and I definitely don't want that. I want updated graphics and sound, and that's pretty much it. They can add in things that were originally planned and scrapped due to lack of cartridge space, but they already pretty much did that for the DS version and the result was less then great. I'm also not exactly a big fan of them trying to fix plot holes every time they release another version of this game. I know this isn't a popular opinion, but I wish Chrono Cross was never made. All that game did was introduce those plot issues and it doesn't resemble Chrono Trigger in any way. They took everything that was so great about Chrono Trigger, trashed it, and then replaced it with something far inferior.

I quite liked Secret of Mana.... but I loved Secret of Evermore. Evermore is one of my childhood favorites.

game archaeology? Absolutely peak.

The pre-blurred image of the UK/US versions would account for the faster decoding, for sure. Much lower dynamic range / less pixel changes.

Thank you for this. It annoys me that the KZread algorithm didn’t show me this (or your more recent video) despite me being subscribed and instead shows me more “popular” stuff from people I’ve watched also but not subscribed to. I feel like that’s disingenuous to both the subscriber and the person who puts in all the hard work (aka you!)

Now I need your take on Illusion of Gaia and Soul Blazer. :)

@stickershock66

10 ай бұрын

And Terranigma, if it wasn't already covered!

I find it ironic that I was *just* looking into the Mana games yesterday. The timing on this video couldn't have been better. What I was looking into was how the Sofdec video compression works on DS (because it's not the same format as other systems used) but I didn't find anything. I found it really impressive how Children of Mana got both a decently high quality (3 megabyte) ADX file and a 12-megabyte 2 screen FMV running really smoothly with no obvious visual issues like screen tearing (and without making the video look like a sequence of low quality JPEG images like Mobiclip usually did). Only somewhat obvious issue I noticed is the limited color palette (but that's not very easy to notice on the original hardware).

This is fascinating, I always wondered what had happened to the title screen, for one. I'd like more of this

The entire Seiken Densetsu series are beautiful magical fantasy rpgs. The GBA remake Sword of Mana is very beautiful too

10:04 Interestingly, the dialog box floats above the red mist layer and above the landscape layer. Does the SNES indeed support three layers or did they use sprites? Also, its sequel - Seiken Densetsu 3 - looks even prettier, IMHO.

@cube2fox

10 ай бұрын

The sequel has amazing pixel art!

@jsr734

10 ай бұрын

For bg mode 1, yes, that is 3 bg layers + the sprites layer. But the Snes also supports 4 bg layers in bg mode 0. Sadly there is only one game that uses it, that i´m aware of, "SD Hiryuu no Ken" only released in Japan.

@jsr734

10 ай бұрын

@@inceptional Yes, i knew bg mode 0 is used in other games but not everywhere or almost everytime, specially in-game. In some games like The Lawnmower Man it seems only 3 bg layers are active in bg mode 0, the 4th one seems to be unused. In SD Hiryuu no Ken all 4 bg layers are active and used in-game. I will check Bart´s Nightmare and Dragon Ball Super Butouden 2. I didn´t know they used bg mode 0 in-game. Thanks! 😘

@oldguy9051

10 ай бұрын

@@jsr734Thanks!

@jsr734

10 ай бұрын

@@inceptional If you try the game in an emulator that allows turning off/on the different bg layers you will see there are 4 independent backgrounds + the sprites layer of course. I use UoSnes (a snes9x fork) for quick testing it also indicates the bg mode in the lower part of the window.

It does look nice and feels very Zelda. I don’t think I knew about this on the *Snes* back in the day.

Fantastic game, a bit unpolished compared to Zelda & Nintendo's own, but a must play for the SNES. Interesting fact about alot of the dungeons, they are full of empty rooms. This was due to the game originally being developed for the ill fated SNES CD, as a result they ran out of space and some content had to be removed.

@goranisacson2502

10 ай бұрын

I never made that connection before, but that IS very cool to know and makes sense in retrospect. Even back then I had formed patterns of searching empty rooms for treasures, so it was frustrating to find nothing and think something SHOULD be there...

Seems like if they had more time they would have started with the original art, much like the Japanese release, and altered it themselves. Even zoomed in there was more to work with in the original art that could've been brought over to the SNES.

@PixelOverload

9 ай бұрын

But they must have done that anyway since there _is_ more detail in the zoomed in version than the JP original, which only makes it more confusing Unless the source code contained a pre-cropped+compressed version of the image but lacked a pre-blur version for some reason?

@davidmcgill1000

9 ай бұрын

@@PixelOverload I assumed they had done some manual editing on the image from the Japanese release, as it appeared to be the same background pixels except bigger. If they had started from the original then there would be less artifacts from the zoom in.

@PixelOverload

9 ай бұрын

@@davidmcgill1000 there's literally more image at the bottom than the JP release (it's zoomed in, but also cropped from slightly lower in the base image), I don't think they drew that from scratch

Gebelli also built a similar globe view for FF II on NES. Performance wasn’t so good though

Fond memories

Wow, better than Seiken Densetsu 3? No way!

Compression typically works by finding common repeating patterns and mashing them down, for instance, if "0000" appears quite often it will assign it a single byte keyword of sorts in a lookup table and reduce any appears of the 4 bytes into one byte. The stretching of the image creates a lot of repeated patterns with 4 or 5 pixels(at 1 byte per pixel here at 8 bit colour depth) in a row, and that would almost certainly create patterns that would compress better. Can't say if that's why they did it, but it would make sense.

It's called the Secret of Mana for a reason, mate.

Yeah, that translucent cloud effect is probably unachievable on any other system at that time.

First time ever seeing a KZread video listed as having "No views"

Nawww the Chrono Trigger intro is better

........BOY......... Remove the sword... BOY: Who are you... and what is this sword doing here? I am Kratos

Looks similar to a more action oriented zelda game

Americans again thinking they are the entire West. In Europe, it was called Mystic Quest

@apollolux

9 ай бұрын

I think you have the wrong game, Mystic Quest was branded as Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest here in America. Pretty sure Secret of Mana stayed Secret of Mana over in Europe.

Terranigma is way better.

@lw7918

10 ай бұрын

imo seiken densetsu 3 is the best action rpg on snes, terranigma is VERY cryptic in places. still an excellent game of course

@DenkyManner

10 ай бұрын

The video is about technical aspects of how Secret of Mana was made. 'Better' don't really enter into it

@goatbone

10 ай бұрын

I really like the Terranigma opening. First thought when he mentioned SoM being one of the best.

@lw7918

10 ай бұрын

technically terranigma is amazing, the cutscenes etc@@goatbone

@ZsH85

6 ай бұрын

terranigma have real life places so its a big no. secret of mana is the best. then its crono trigger then its mana3. then maybe breath of fire. thats the right order.