Secret of Mana

[DancemasterGlenn]

I'm supposed to be studying for a test, so of course I'm surfing the web at 3 in the morning. I decided to look up one of my more beloved games, Secret of Mana, on Wikipedia. The information I learned has rocked my very core.

"Secret of Mana was originally going to be a launch title for the SNES CD add-on. After the project was dropped, the game had to be altered to fit onto a standard game cartridge. The game received a graphical downgrade and as much as 40% of the original content was removed."

WHAT.

That's ridiculous!!!! Completely god-damn ridiculous!! I'm surprised and shocked that I didn't know about this. I mean, I know about the SNES CD-drive add on, but I didn't have any idea that one of my favorite games was almost released for it... and because it wasn't, apparently a game I already thought was amazing is apparently less than a shell of the original idea. What happened to all of that content? Is there any information/screenshots/ANYTHING floating around the web about the original production? I need to know more!

Does anyone at all have any more information about this?

[Gil_Hamilton]

I'm supposed to be studying for a test, so of course I'm surfing the web at 3 in the morning. I decided to look up one of my more beloved games, Secret of Mana, on Wikipedia. The information I learned has rocked my very core.

"Secret of Mana was originally going to be a launch title for the SNES CD add-on. After the project was dropped, the game had to be altered to fit onto a standard game cartridge. The game received a graphical downgrade and as much as 40% of the original content was removed."

WHAT.

That's ridiculous!!!! Completely god-damn ridiculous!! I'm surprised and shocked that I didn't know about this. I mean, I know about the SNES CD-drive add on, but I didn't have any idea that one of my favorite games was almost released for it... and because it wasn't, apparently a game I already thought was amazing is apparently less than a shell of the original idea. What happened to all of that content? Is there any information/screenshots/ANYTHING floating around the web about the original production? I need to know more!

Does anyone at all have any more information about this?

Not much more than that.
I know the palace where you got Dryad was orignally intended to be a full map(you can even see the first set of stairs off to your left as the cutscene plays).
There's at least one inaccessable door in the game, though I can't recall where("in a forest" isn't exactly precise).



And of course, it's riddled with bugs and has a sound playback engine that's very prone to dropping music channels during action sequences.
Which makes a lot of sense if it was hacked down massively at the last minute and the sound engine was designed on the assumption of redbook audio.

[Nightcrawler]

And of course, it's riddled with bugs and has a sound playback engine that's very prone to dropping music channels during action sequences.
Which makes a lot of sense if it was hacked down massively at the last minute and the sound engine was designed on the assumption of redbook audio.

Many of the songs in Secret of Mana use all 8 sound channels. Thus, when it's time for sound effect playback, they had no choice but to temporarily drop one or two while sound effects played. It was definitely very annoying, I agree. They would have had to do some software mixing, or dedicated one channel at least to sound effects to have it come out right. It does seem as though it was a result of some quick fix. Most other games don't do this and account for sound effects without dropping music in most cases.

[ReRuss]

Start a petition to get a remake of SoM in it's full glory...

Hell it worked for TMNT Arcade to be released on 360

[Panzer88]

well I figure if they were making it for SNES CD they would have used CD audio or had animated cutscenes because that's about all people did with that kind of stuff back then.

Yeah, I hope square eventually remakes it, and actually does it right. And does it the way they originally intended.

[creaothceann]

Hey let's just take ToP's sound engine and put it into SoM.

[DancemasterGlenn]

I'm all for making a petition/writing a letter, seems to me that depending how far along they already were with the project before cuts needed to be made, they probably already have a lot of the material they were going to use just lying around. Plus, the fact that Sword of Mana was even released shows that Square does appreciate the Mana series enough to do remakes, and Secret of was definitely the most popular US release in the series. Not to mention the classic controller is essentially a spiffy SNES controller (though depending on how big the game is, it could also potentially be a sweet DS game, especially with wireless multiplayer).

Should I make a petition or write a letter (or both?) I've never made a petition before, and I'm not really sure where to start... I think I'd definitely start with a letter, to test the waters.

For now, I'm curious about a few other things... you guys would have a way better knowledge of this than me. Is there any unused stuff in the SoM rom (characters, text, etc) that is left over from this hardware change, like there was with Ocarina of Time? Are there any hackable ways to improve things like the audio, or add in incomplete material like people have been doing recently with Chrono Trigger? I'd seriously pay full price for a new version from Square, but I'm still curious as to whether this game has any tricks up its sleeve as is...

[blackmyst]

40% of the game was cut out? Stop me if I'm missing some crucial info, but why didn't they just increase the rom size? It's tiny compared to some of the larger games out there.

[ReRuss]

Petitions I seen where webpages that had some info about why there's a petition , and a guest book to sign if you wanted to see that happen

Larger supported who would love for it to happen put a link in their sigs , attracting people unaware of the petition

If you really wanna see if happen I got some webspace I could probably throw down

[Panzer88]

40% of the game was cut out? Stop me if I'm missing some crucial info, but why didn't they just increase the rom size? It's tiny compared to some of the larger games out there.

deadlines, and carts being tiny back then (at least the regular ones that didn't cost your arm)?

just a guess really, but I'd beleive it, I mean no matter how big your cart is if you were initially going to launch on CD-ROM there is just no way you can compensate with any cart from that day and age.

also a petition does sound like a good idea, but I know so many petitions that never get heard, any other ideas?

also I've heard that the game information and SNES-CD prototypes are "out there" "somewhere" but that's just speculation.

[blackmyst]

40% of the game was cut out? Stop me if I'm missing some crucial info, but why didn't they just increase the rom size? It's tiny compared to some of the larger games out there.

deadlines, and carts being tiny back then (at least the regular ones that didn't cost your arm)?

just a guess really, but I'd beleive it, I mean no matter how big your cart is if you were initially going to launch on CD-ROM there is just no way you can compensate with any cart from that day and age.

Would it really cost more time and money to develop a slightly bigger cart, than to edit the entire game to fit in the smaller space? They made a bigger one less than 8 months later with FFVI.

And yeah, the music wouldn't fit, but ingame levels? I don't think the missing rooms and stuff would be any different from the rest of the game (i.e. no legend of mana style non-tiled backgrounds all of a sudden that would take up huge amounts of space) so logically it wouldn't really be very big at all.

[Panzer88]

40% of the game was cut out? Stop me if I'm missing some crucial info, but why didn't they just increase the rom size? It's tiny compared to some of the larger games out there.

deadlines, and carts being tiny back then (at least the regular ones that didn't cost your arm)?

just a guess really, but I'd beleive it, I mean no matter how big your cart is if you were initially going to launch on CD-ROM there is just no way you can compensate with any cart from that day and age.

Would it really cost more time and money to develop a slightly bigger cart, than to edit the entire game to fit in the smaller space? They made a bigger one less than 8 months later with FFVI.

And yeah, the music wouldn't fit, but ingame levels? I don't think the missing rooms and stuff would be any different from the rest of the game (i.e. no legend of mana style non-tiled backgrounds all of a sudden that would take up huge amounts of space) so logically it wouldn't really be very big at all.

good point, like I said, just a guess. Maybe we should ask the peeps that made it. Which brings up the question, "how do we do that?"

[Deathlike2]

40% of the game was cut out? Stop me if I'm missing some crucial info, but why didn't they just increase the rom size? It's tiny compared to some of the larger games out there.

deadlines, and carts being tiny back then (at least the regular ones that didn't cost your arm)?

just a guess really, but I'd beleive it, I mean no matter how big your cart is if you were initially going to launch on CD-ROM there is just no way you can compensate with any cart from that day and age.

Would it really cost more time and money to develop a slightly bigger cart, than to edit the entire game to fit in the smaller space? They made a bigger one less than 8 months later with FFVI.

And yeah, the music wouldn't fit, but ingame levels? I don't think the missing rooms and stuff would be any different from the rest of the game (i.e. no legend of mana style non-tiled backgrounds all of a sudden that would take up huge amounts of space) so logically it wouldn't really be very big at all.

As with a lot of games these days, some things simply weren't finished, so it would be easier to trim the game than "paying more to do less".

This is one of the few games that would actually benefit from a port with extra content, as long as they don't release overpowered armor and increase the opportunity to drop the best helmet for the Hero (which is limited because the Pureland is sealed off after completion). What they could do is add some more bosses to drop the missing orbs (some orbs required you to pick up 2 of them for completion) and add better descriptions for the ultimate weapons (bonuses in particular).

[DancemasterGlenn]

40% of the game was cut out? Stop me if I'm missing some crucial info, but why didn't they just increase the rom size? It's tiny compared to some of the larger games out there.

I really couldn't tell you, but I can cite my favorite example of this happening...

Ocaria of Time was originally going to be for the N64DD, it was going to have a HUGE amount of extra features that got cut due to time constraints and the canning of the DD. Check this shit:

http://xoomer.alice.it/mononline/unseen ... ctengl.htm

(by the way, that website rules)

So yeah, this was another situation where they couldn't expand the cart, and in this case we'll probably never see Miyamoto's true vision, because the n64 version has been ported as-is like 4 times already. It's an amazing game, but who knows how awesome it could have been...


So yeah. I don't want that to happen to Secret of Mana. I'll probably start by writing a letter this coming weekend to Squaresoft, I'll post a draft once I have one. Any other ideas/suggestions/thoughts? In case you didn't notice, I think this shit is fascinating.

(any thoughts about looking through the rom to see what could possibly be hacked out of it would be really awesome)

[adventure_of_link]

IIRC wasn't the GC version of ocarina of time (the zelda: player's choice or whatever disk) supposed to be emulated?

also just how did OoT get ported four times? there was the N64 initial port, then the player's choice disk, but how about the other two?

also internet petitions don't work

also there were internal limitations in the N64 anyway to prevent the use of wafers above 512Mbit

[Panzer88]

original n64

Limited Edition with Wind Waker

Zelda Collectors Edition for GC

on Virtual Console

originally they might have been able to do more with the N64DD but the actual Master Quest itself really isn't that big of a deal, it's basically a slight alteration of the main dungeons to make it harder, not that great really.

I do attribute this though to the original game being cancelled for DD and being released on a cart and then the dev team going onto Majora's Mask. Master Quest just seems like a sort of after thought, but whatever.

if the original game had release on the N64DD, and if they had focused entirely on expanding the game rather than continuing onto Majora's Mask. Ultimately though I feel that they made the right choice to do Majora's Mask although Miyamoto scolded the producer saying he should have stuck with OoT.

EDIT: that site is an interesting read. Yeah, again if they had actually been able to do the 64DD original game or deliver with URA Zelda it would have been cool, but Master Quest for 64DD is very MEH.

[Gil_Hamilton]

well I figure if they were making it for SNES CD they would have used CD audio or had animated cutscenes because that's about all people did with that kind of stuff back then.

Or for larger games, or games that required more power than the base system by itself was capable of.


There's plenty of examples of games that are more than FMV + redbook audio on top of a cartridge game, even back in the 16-bit era.

Sonic CD is a good one. It's easily double the size of it's cartridge brethren JUST on the basis of most stages having 4 variants(past, present, bad future, good future), with different music, enemies, graphics, and animations for each variant.
I think it's less prone to slowdown than the cart versions were too, but I haven't played it in a long time.


Yes, Sega's initial developer guidelines WERE "take large cartridge games and start adding redbook audio and FMV to them", but development quickly reached far beyond that.

40% of the game was cut out? Stop me if I'm missing some crucial info, but why didn't they just increase the rom size? It's tiny compared to some of the larger games out there.

deadlines, and carts being tiny back then (at least the regular ones that didn't cost your arm)?

just a guess really, but I'd beleive it, I mean no matter how big your cart is if you were initially going to launch on CD-ROM there is just no way you can compensate with any cart from that day and age.

Would it really cost more time and money to develop a slightly bigger cart, than to edit the entire game to fit in the smaller space? They made a bigger one less than 8 months later with FFVI.

And yeah, the music wouldn't fit, but ingame levels? I don't think the missing rooms and stuff would be any different from the rest of the game (i.e. no legend of mana style non-tiled backgrounds all of a sudden that would take up huge amounts of space) so logically it wouldn't really be very big at all.

It wasn't all Square's decision.

The games were all published by Nintendo. Thus, Nintendo had final say on what size cartridges you could use.
And Square and Nintendo weren't the best of friends. They were denied larger cartridges on at least one occasion because Nintendo wanted Enix to premiere the new larger cart.
That was one of the reasons they jumped to the PlayStation. And then encouraged Enix to do it too because Nintendo didn't give a shit.




Besides.... a developer assuming a then-massive CD-ROM for data storage isn't going to be making exceedingly conservative data formats. That includes maps.
Sure you CAN make a tile-based map tiny. With appropriate compression it can even be REALLY tiny. But it's far easier to make one REALLY REALLY BIG.

And you'll need new sprites and tiles for your backgrounds and non-palette swapped enemies.

And new music, possibly requiring new audio samples.

And new AI patterns for your new enemies.

And so on and so forth.


Yeah. You could get big fast if you weren't planning for compact data in the first place.

[Panzer88]

really? I don't know a lot about sega cd so I would be interested in games that didn't basically look like genesis games with cd audio and FMV. Like really I'd like to play them.

Sonic CD did have a lot more content, but it was more or less the same length of game, and a big feature was the audio and intro/ending FMV. Then there was the nice short little load at the begining of the level. Don't get me wrong it just didn't feel that different from a normal sonic game.

yeah, Nintendo really screwed them over, they didn't scrap the project, nintendo scrapped the system, which kinda forces you to scrap the game, lame. I see the title screen and just wonder how much more it could have been.

[Gil_Hamilton]

really? I don't know a lot about sega cd so I would be interested in games that didn't basically look like genesis games with cd audio and FMV. Like really I'd like to play them.

Looks are deceiving, since the SegaCD added no video hardware.

I could say Sewer Shark, but that's an FMV game(albeit a more advanced one than the usual Dragon's Lair clone).


Lunar 2, as it happens, has no CD audio except in both end credit sequences.
Which isn't to say it doesn't make VERY extensive use of the SegaCD's PCM audio channels, offering a vastly improved audio experience over a base Genesis.
Just that it doesn't use CD audio, largely because developers were realizing it sucked for gaming.




Guess it's time to start running through games with an eye towards technical merits and seeing which do what.

Sonic CD did have a lot more content, but it was more or less the same length of game, and a big feature was the audio and intro/ending FMV. Then there was the nice short little load at the begining of the level. Don't get me wrong it just didn't feel that different from a normal sonic game.

No, the big feature was the parallel versions of the levels. The game is built around the time travel mechanic, and an understanding of the system and how the maps relate is required to get the good ending.

Lesser features were the redbook audio, the intro cutscene, and the 3D bonus game(which made extensive use of the SegaCD's scaling coprocessor).


Logic is as follows:
CD music, FMV intro/ending, and 3D bonus game could be stripped away without changing the game significantly.
The time travel feature and resulting parallel levels couldn't.

[Panzer88]

No I know it's not so much visual changes, and it turns out I have extensively played Sonic CD, Lunar, and Ecco the Dolphin, other than that, just bits here and there.

I'm not trying to discredit the system, just looking for some more games that take true advantage of the edition, the Sega CD didn't last that long in my memory, I don't even know if big game producers even gave it a chance for second generation games.

you said Sewer Shark eh? I'll have to check that out.

[creaothceann]

really? I don't know a lot about sega cd so I would be interested in games that didn't basically look like genesis games with cd audio and FMV. Like really I'd like to play them.

Thunderhawk? Dunno if that'd be possible on a standard Mega Drive; I doubt it.

[sweener2001]

IIRC wasn't the GC version of ocarina of time (the zelda: player's choice or whatever disk) supposed to be emulated?

also just how did OoT get ported four times? there was the N64 initial port, then the player's choice disk, but how about the other two?

also internet petitions don't work

also there were internal limitations in the N64 anyway to prevent the use of wafers above 512Mbit

internet petitions got a bioshock:LE released, and they got a transformers score album which is being released next week.

while not a petition, the internet also got fiona apple's latest album too see a retail release.

it has to be done right, and that's the problem about 99% of the time.

[franpa]

And of course, it's riddled with bugs and has a sound playback engine that's very prone to dropping music channels during action sequences.
Which makes a lot of sense if it was hacked down massively at the last minute and the sound engine was designed on the assumption of redbook audio.

Many of the songs in Secret of Mana use all 8 sound channels. Thus, when it's time for sound effect playback, they had no choice but to temporarily drop one or two while sound effects played. It was definitely very annoying, I agree. They would have had to do some software mixing, or dedicated one channel at least to sound effects to have it come out right. It does seem as though it was a result of some quick fix. Most other games don't do this and account for sound effects without dropping music in most cases.

doesnt the SNES support 16 channels? are you saying they needed more then 8 channels for sound fx?

[HunterKiller_]

Wow, I'm also shocked to find this.
How I would love to play the full game. Funny thing though, because I've always had this feeling that Secret of Mana was kind of 'unfinished'. Guess my hunch was right after all.

*sigh* Now we're left with another one of life's great mysteries... What could the original game have been like... This is a thought we will all take with us to our graves.

[creaothceann]

doesnt the SNES support 16 channels?

How many channels can be disabled in ZSNES, SNES9x and SNESAmp?