A while back Deques brought us news of the Children of Mana soundtrack being available for purchase at Square Enix’s iTunes store, and the near release of Dawn of Mana’s OST. Now, if you’re still not the proud owner of the previous games’ soundtracks, you can now buy and download them here: http://www.square-enix.co.jp/music/sem/page/dl/seiken/

Available are:
– Seiken Densetsu 2 (aka Secret of Mana) for 1200yen
– Seiken Densetsu 3 for 2700yen
– Seiken Densetsu Mobile for 900yen
– Children of Mana for 1800yen

Or, if you were looking for hard-copies on CD, you can mosey on over to their Amazon store and buy the following:
– Seiken Densetsu (FFA) for 3700
– Seiken Densetsu 2 (1 CD) for 1835yen
– Secret of Mana + for 2421yen
– Seiken Densetsu 3 (3CD set) for 3486yen
– Legend of Mana for 2570yen
– Sword of Mana Premium Soundtrackfor 2850yen

And in case there wasn’t a date already, the OST for Dawn of Mana is slated for 24th Jan 2007 at the price of 3800yen, and comes in a 4CD set.

It’s also worth mentioning at this point that Kikuta-san recently launched a solo project containing music that he composed round about the time he started work on SoM, but which was never used in any game. The CD is called Lost Files, and is available for 2700yen from Amazon in Japan.

Monster, monster.

Click here to visit a page for the soundtrack to Dawn of Mana!

The page has a really awesome intro to it, some really beautiful background art is used in it.
So far at the page there is only one song to listen to, but it looks as though they’re going to be releasing more as time goes along, you might want to watch this page!

For all hardcore Mana fans this wouldn’t come as a surprise. But for all other fans here is a juicy information for you.
The eight elements are coming back in this game and will have a big role in the story. For each elemental spirit the player obtains they will be rewarded with new abilites and the spirit’s power.
Isn’t that juicy? Well, I don’t know why even I should write this kind of news. But apperantly they were published in the magicbox.

Check the gallery for high res. scans

There are still no words whether this game will be released in North America or Europe
Source: Jeux France

I’ve put this together, and will continue to expand on this, from various sources I’ve been coming across.

The game begins with a text-heavy prologue in which the eight elementals are debating over something (currently unknown). Once this is over, the scene changes to a rabite (named Puck) in the forest jumping around that belongs to the lead female character (Ritzia), and became her pet when seperated from his family. She has a bit of a panic at the prospect of her pet getting hurt by the monsters in the forest. Enter Eldy, lead male character, to save the day and begin beating back Mushbooms.

Innitially the weapon of choice is a stick found in the woods, and the controls allow for a simple attack or combo with [], jump and double jump with X, and defend with L1. Enemies can be pushed away by shoving them during defense with []. Also, the same principals of recoil described in Children of Mana apply here, enabling the use of objects or other enemies as weapons, as it were.

Action is free-roaming in 3-D, with camera angles close to the character (akin to Kingdom Hearts), through enviroments that are huge. A radar is provided to keep track of enemies, characters and the Rabite. Camera angles sadly are limited, so reliance on the platform aspect of the game could be a drawback.

The usual items are availabe for the picking (candies and such), as well as tokens to gain experience in certain areas, as well as the general experience level (details sketchy).

The ring menu, sadly, is missing, and additional characters to control in multiplayer are as of yet unknown, and were’nt available at the demos written up from TGS.

Some additional screenshots of the action courtesy of Gamespot: Dawn of Mana at Gamespot