Secret of Mana - Development

Development

Secret of Mana was directed and designed by Koichi Ishii. The game was programmed primarily by Nasir Gebelli and produced by veteran Square designer Hiromichi Tanaka. After the release of Final Fantasy III, Tanaka wanted to help design a game with a more interactive battle system that is continuous with the field screen. Because this would not work with Final Fantasy IV, he turned to Secret of Mana. The real-time battle system used in Secret of Mana is described by its creators as an extension of the battle system used in the first three flagship Final Fantasy titles. The data tables for experience points and leveling up were taken from Final Fantasy III. 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 English translation for Secret of Mana was completed in only 30 days, mere weeks after the Japanese release, and was initially advertised as Final Fantasy Adventure 2. The speed at which the translation was done was presumably so that the game could be released in North America for the 1993 holiday season. According to translator Ted Woolsey, a large portion of the game's script was cut out in the English localization due to space limitations and a lack of sequential text. The English translation of Secret of Mana uses a fixed-width font to display text on the main gameplay screen. However, the choice of this font limits the amount of space available to display text, and as a result conversations are trimmed to their bare essentials, leaving a good portion of the game lost in translation. The Japanese release referred to the three protagonists as Randi, Primm and Popoi in the manual, while the Western versions omitted the default names and first acknowledged them with the enhanced port on the iOS.