{"id":116851,"date":"2020-08-17T22:43:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T22:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/368369"},"modified":"2020-08-17T22:43:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T22:43:00","slug":"dont-miss-secret-of-manas-enduring-influence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/08\/17\/dont-miss-secret-of-manas-enduring-influence\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Miss: Secret of Mana’s enduring influence"},"content":{"rendered":"
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According to Moby Games and Wikipedia, August 6 will be the 20th anniversary of Secret of Mana! Wow! A big influence for us here at DGF.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Die Gute Fabrik (@gutefabrik) July 26, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This week 20 years ago, Secret of Mana <\/em>was released for the Super Nintendo. The game has remained a favorite of fans of classic RPGs — mentioned in much the same tones as Square Soft’s other SNES classics Chrono Trigger <\/em>and Final Fantasy VI. <\/em>Though the franchise continued through 2007 with installments on the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS, it never recaptured the popularity, relevance, or quality of this game. <\/em><\/p>\n

What has made the game so enduring? And what inspirations does it offer to contemporary developers? Recently, Die Gute Fabrik’s Douglas Wilson (Johann Sebastian Joust<\/em>) tweeted about his enduring love for the game — so Gamasutra’s Christian Nutt decided to engage him in a letter series about the game to celebrate its anniversary and to find out why it matters so much, even 20 years later. <\/strong><\/p>\n

From: Christian Nutt
<\/strong>To: Douglas Wilson<\/strong> <\/p>\n

You recently tweeted that Secret of Mana<\/em> is a big inspiration for you — and this took me by surprise. Your better-known projects have no obvious connection to it. Can you elaborate a bit? <\/p>\n

From: Douglas Wilson
<\/strong>To: Christian Nutt<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh man, Secret of Mana<\/em> is such a big inspiration for me! Such a classic.<\/p>\n

As a game developer, I’ve largely focused my efforts on physical party games (e.g. Johann Sebastian Joust, B.U.T.T.O.N<\/em>.). But that’s only one of my interests. Like a lot of other Nintendo-reared kids, I grew up playing JRPGs like Final Fantasy<\/em> and Chrono Trigger<\/em>. I’m not a natural storyteller myself, but I’ve always wanted to work on that kind of game. Now I’m finally getting my chance with Mutazione<\/a><\/em>! It’s an adventure game (and an entire fictional world) that my business partner Nils Deneken has been concepting for years.<\/p>\n

As I finish Sportsfriends<\/em>, I’ll be transitioning to Mutazione<\/em> full-time. I’m working as a producer, programmer, and game designer. Nils is a gifted illustrator and world-builder, so my role is to help him bring his vision to life. Nils, who grew up in Germany, had never played Secret of Mana<\/em>, so I’ve been showing him some specific parts of the game that I’d like to draw from.<\/p>\n

Mutazione<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beyond the direct connection to Mutazione<\/em>, Secret of Mana<\/em> is a rare example of a multiplayer console RPG. It’s a game best played with a friend… or two friends, if you had amultitap<\/a>! People forget how totally bananas that was at the time — you could play three of you all together! (Mind you, this was before the N64 made four-player standard.)<\/p>\n

I’m sure Secret of Mana<\/em> helped inspire my interest in getting people together in the same room to play video games with one another, simultaneously. There’s a real lineage with the kinds of local multiplayer games I’ve been working on with Sportsfriends<\/em>.<\/p>\n

From: Christian Nutt
<\/strong>To: Douglas Wilson<\/strong><\/p>\n

So was Secret of Mana<\/em> the game that defined mulitplayer gaming for you, at an early age? It’s interesting, because, like you say, you’re so well known for multiplayer games.<\/p>\n

From: Douglas Wilson
<\/strong>To: Christian Nutt<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t think I’d say it was the<\/em> game that defined “multiplayer” for me. What I would say, though, is that Secret of Mana<\/em> is one especially interesting example. Local multiplayer games were usually titles like Mario Kart<\/em>, Smash Bros.<\/em>, Street Fighter<\/em>. Secret of Mana<\/em> was a multiplayer experience set in a more traditional story-based, “world-centric” game. At the time, that was pretty mind-blowing to me. I used to play RPGs and adventure games with my brother or with friends, and we’d just watch one person play. That was certainly engaging, but with Secret of Mana<\/em> a few of us could play simultaneously<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to Moby Games and Wikipedia, August 6 will be the 20th anniversary of Secret of Mana! Wow! A big influence for us here at DGF. \u2014 Die Gute Fabrik (@gutefabrik) July 26, 2013 This week 20 years ago, Secret of Mana was released for the Super Nintendo. The game has remained a favorite of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}