Music of The Mana Series - World of Mana

In 2005, Square Enix announced plans for World of Mana, a new series of titles in the Mana franchise, whose titles would span more video game genres than the original series. Koichi Ishii, the creator of the Mana series, decided even before he worked on 2002's Final Fantasy XI about creating new Mana games, but first wanted to create a goal for the new series, and eventually decided to make it about exploring how to add "the feeling of touch" to a game. After he saw the game Half-Life 2 at E3 in 2003, he felt that its physics engine was the one he needed. World of Mana went on to comprise four new games in addition to the remake of Final Fantasy Adventure; Koichi Ishii served as director or producer for all of them as he had for the previous games in the series. In 2006, a Mana installment for the Wii was considered but did not enter development. In April 2007, a month after the release of the final game of the World of Mana, Ishii left Square Enix to lead his own development company, named Grezzo; no further games in the series have been announced since. Three of the new games of World of Mana sparked soundtrack releases, with each composed by a different artist or group of artists: Children of Mana, released in 2006 for the Nintendo DS, Dawn of Mana, released in 2006 for the PlayStation 2, and Heroes of Mana, released for the Nintendo DS in 2007. The music of Dawn of Mana also formed the basis of a promotional album included with preorders of the game in Japan, while the music of Yoko Shimomura for Seiken Densetsu: Friends of Mana, a 2006 multiplayer role-playing game for Japanese mobile phones never saw any album releases.