Secret of Mana

Secret of Mana is the second installment of the Mana series. It was both developed and published by Square. The game was originally released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1993. Ever since its release, the Mana series was formed, specifically to disconnect from the Final Fantasy franchise, which only includes the first Mana title, Final Fantasy Adventure.

Similar to The Legend of Zelda series, Secret of Mana features real-time battles, although like Final Fantasy Adventure, it has an Attack Gauge that, when filled, allows the player's character to inflict the highest damage to their target. Instead of a generic pause interface, the game introduces the Ring Command menu system, which the player can access by pausing the game to make certain decisions, such as use an item or equip a different weapon. For a large duration of the game, the party consists of three characters, who simultaneously fight at once. A second and even a third player, if they connect a third controller via the peripheral, can join in to control the second and third characters respectively.

In 2008, Secret of Mana was ported to the Wii's Virtual Console, and in 2013 it was ported to the Wii U's Virtual Console, although only in Japan. In 2009, Secret of Mana was released for FOMA 903i mobile phones and then for EZweb in 2010. In late 2010, the game was ported to iOS devices and then to Android devices in 2014. The original Super Nintendo version is one of the three titles included in the Collection of Mana compilation and one of the 21 games included on the. In 2018, a 3D remake of the game was released for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Microsoft Windows.

Development
Secret of Mana began development for the SNES CD-ROM, and was planned to be a launch title for the peripheral. When the SNES CD-ROM was canceled, Square shifted Secret of Mana's development to the Super Nintendo. Similarly, Final Fantasy Adventure started development in 1987 as a Famicom Disk System title, Seiken Densetsu: The Emergence of Excalibur, before ultimately becoming a Game Boy game. When Secret of Mana shifted development to the Super Nintendo itself, the team had to remove a lot of content to fit it on a 16 megabit Super Nintendo cartridge, which is significantly smaller than a CD-ROM. One of the most significant removals was the ability to take multiple different routes, opening the possibility for several different endings. Some of ''Secret of Manas unused features found their way into ', such as the numerous different endings.

Like several other Square-developed games for the Super Nintendo, Secret of Mana utilizes, particularly when the party travels on Flammie high above the world map, as during this, the largely scaled and rotatable background gives the illusion that the ground below is three-dimensional.

The English translation for Secret of Mana was worked on by Ted Woolsey, and was completed within 30 days, a month after the Japanese version was released. Within this short time frame, Ted Woolsey had little time to complete the game's translation, and portions of the game's script had to be removed due to space limitations. In North America, prior to its release, Secret of Mana was titled Final Fantasy Adventure II, indicating that it would be marketed as a Final Fantasy spinoff in a similar vein to how the first three  games were released in North America as The Final Fantasy Legend, Final Fantasy Legend II, and Final Fantasy Legend III respectively. The idea was that the Final Fantasy Adventure series would focus more on action gameplay than the traditional RPG style of the main Final Fantasy series and the Final Fantasy Legend series. When Secret of Mana was chosen as the game's title, Mana became a entirely separate series from Final Fantasy not just in Japan but also in other regions.