I finally got around to finishing my translation of the Rule Book to the LoM TCG.

With full rules, scans, and translations this game is finally fully posted online. There is actually a Japanese site out there with its own rules write-up (text only), but besides two other card listing pages (neither have images, one even gets details wrong) those are the only sites out there about this game besides here.

I tried to document everything I can about this game, so it finally has something comprehensive online about it.

I plan to put together some more pages on the site in the future, including strategy discussion and translation of other materials related to the card game (passages from a book, a few comics).

EDIT: Special thanks to Sevon for helping me get the Item names in line with forged weapons in the game. Check out Sevon’s nifty Legend of Mana pages (which helped me a lot in this process), as well as the intensely immense SaGa pages!

The Legend of Mana Card Duel section now has all of the Item Cards, which means that all 150 cards in the set have been uploaded and translated!

Yeehaw!

Items are equipped by Characters in battle to help them square up against Monsters. There is one card for each weapon type, and two of each four instruments resulting in one for each of the eight Elements. As mentioned with the Character cards, there are some limitations as to who can equip what. The abilities offered by Items are all based on Special Techniques and Magic Spells, so that’s pretty neat. I used a mix of PSX and Remaster translations for these, based on what I felt was best.

The 2H Sword and Fire Flute were both “Dragon” weapons, which doesn’t give much hint in Japanese as to their actual material (Scales or Skin) so I just assigned one to each.

All that is really left for the Card Duel section is the Rulebook translation, but I’ve actually got a number of other updates in mind for it. The Rulebook and other content will take a bit of time, but look out for them in the future!

The title theme of Legend of Mana, Song of Mana, was performed by the Swedish artist Annika Ljungberg. What most don’t know is that she is a member of a band called Rednex. They were big in the 90’s and their most famous song was Cotton Eye Joe. The band is still active even after 26 years.

Song of Mana got an arranged version in the Legend of Mana Arrangement Album – Promise-, but sadly the new singer wasn’t Swedish so there were a lot of mispronunciations of the Swedish words.

Aftonbladet, one of Sweden’s largest newspapers, had an interview with Annika Ljungberg in 2014. In the interview she explained how she was contacted by Yoko Shimomura and her experience of singing the title theme song for the game.

Below is translated text by me, Deques.

One day she was suddenly contacted by the world famous composer Yoko Shimomura.
It has been 15 years since Rednex-star Annika Ljungberg recorded the now legendary theme song to the Japanese game “Legend of Mana”, which was never released in Sweden.
– “It was the most exciting moment I had in a studio in my 20-year career”, she said to Nöjesbladet’s Spela-pod

The year was 1998. Yoko Shimomura had completed the music to the fantasy RPG “Legend of Mana”, an epic soundtrack that she today still considers her most personal and favorite soundtrack. But something was missing: A [title] song.

Shimomura decided that the song was not going to be performed by a well-known artist, not even in the Japanese language. For some reason she found the Rednex-star, Annika, who recently appeared in the TV-series Baywatch. David Hasselhoff hand picked three of her songs from her album “Me & Myself”. Shimomura was breath taken and took a flight to Stockholm.

Annika Ljungbergs tells the story:

“I was contacted by her management team. She had heard my samples and thought that it was exactly that she was looking for. The text was translated by a girl in Sweden who didn’t know how the rhythm would be applied to the melody. It was not a walk in the park. A lot of gray hairs here and there, and it was a technical challenge to make it work. I had no experience in games so I was a novice.”

“I was told that it was the game that she was most artistically satisfied with. She did a great job with the whole soundtrack. We spoke in the same language, artistically, and she was very humble.”

Did they ever explain why the song was to performed in Swedish? – “No, it was a question mark for me. We had a tight schedule when they flew to Stockholm. I was in an open studio, not a booth. They wanted to use body language to communicate, because we didn’t fully understand each other all the time.”

Have you played the game? – “It was the first time that I played a Play Station game. It was an exciting game. It was an experience that I will never forget. This was one the most exciting moments that I had in a studio in my 20-year carrier.”

Original Source (In Swedish)

Inching towards the final big updates to the Legend of Mana Card Duel section, you can now check out the Character Cards!

In the game you have a special deck just for Character cards, so they all have a different backing than the cards in your main deck. You must put 8 Characters into the deck, and you are not allowed any duplicates.

At the start of the game you draw 3 Characters to make a party, and at the beginning of your turn if you have less than 3 Characters in play you replace them from the Character deck. When all 8 are disposed of, you lose the game!

Characters do battle with Monsters, and you use them to keep your Lands clear so you can complete Land Make and win the game.

There are some really interesting choices for “playable” Characters in the card game, so make sure you check them all out! These are the last of the cards with NPCs or Monsters on them. If your favorite NPC or Monster didn’t make the cut here, you’ll just have to wait until Square-Enix decides to make another set… 22 years after the fact.

Only 19 cards left, and they’re all equipment that these Character cards can use. Look forward to it soon!

For the third of six big updates to the Legend of Mana Card Duel section, we’ve got the Support Cards!

These are essentially spell cards from other card games, and each one has an NPC from Legend of Mana featured on it. Unlike the Artifact/Land Cards or the Monster Cards, which just use the names directly from the games, the Support Cards have some neat flavor to them with titles such as “Sage Tote’s Mediation”, “Professor Mephianse’s Dangerous Experiment”, “Florina’s Teardrop Crystal”, and my personal favorite “Useless Putty”.

You will notice, once again, some faces you might expect to see represented among NPC characters seem to be missing here. They’ll show up as Character cards in the next update!

To represent the “attribute condition” of each card, I made little images using sprites from in-game. I think it came out nice.

 

 

Here comes the second of six big updates to the Legend of Mana Card Duel section. It’s Monster Cards!

It is quite interesting to see which monsters were chosen, and for which element as well.

I’ve got a brief rundown of the rules for Monster cards on the page, and I’m still working on getting the full rulebook done as well (that’s likely the final of the LoM Card Duel updates). The images I use (such as the one below) to show the parts of cards are actually my updated and translated version of the images from the rulebook.

You’ll also notice that our little buddy the Rabite does not make an appearance on this page. Quite the oversight? Actually, no! Rabites have been promoted to full Character status for this game, so you’ll get to see one when I post all the Character cards. 

 

 

What is an Aerolite? Well it’s a stony meteorite, and in Legend of Mana it includes some far out materials that you can either pick up from Shadow Zeroes, or from running around in Ring Ring Land. Here is what the game has to say about them:

Just what are the unusual/useful properties they have? Well they all start with a bit of Salamander essence, and they lose one Salamander essence every time you temper them. It’s actually quite a useful effect, and you can use the energy from the drained essence to feed another essence you are trying to raise. You can even lessen the energy requirement for Salamander, and use the drained energy to feed directly back in to itself! But this isn’t a post about tempering, is it?

Whereas many primary materials in the game have names referencing locations in other Mana games (Topple Cotton and Menos Bronze as examples), the Aerolites do not follow the same naming scheme. So just where do their names come from?

Comets!

Or probably more accurately, the people who discovered them! If you are one to go down Wikipedia rabbit holes, I’ve included links to all of these comets and people below.

Jacobini Rock – The localizers for Legend of Mana didn’t seem to realize what these names were referencing, as this one should have been spelled Giacobini instead. This one references the Comet Giacobini-Zinner, and was not discovered until 1900 by Michel Giacobini and observed again three years later by Ernst Zinner. The International Cometary Explorer was sent after this one in 1985 and it was also spotted by the Pioneer Venus Orbiter the same month. In 2025 this one will be its closest to Earth.

Halley Rock – This was the one that made me realize were dealing with comets. Everyone knows Halley’s Comet! It is the only comet regularly visible to the naked eye. It actually was not discovered by Edmond Halley (being discovered in prehistoric times) but rather Halley computed its orbit in 1705. It comes around every ~76 years or so. Look forward to seeing it in 2061!

Ankh Rock – Another one that went over the localizer’s heads (get it, over their heads?). This one references Encke’s Comet, discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1786 but named after Johann Franz Encke who computed its orbit in 1819. It is a very dull comet, reflecting very little light, but like all others has a big bright tail behind it when near the Sun. It will be close to the sun in 2023, and comes around regularly as the last time was in 2020.

Vinek Rock – Here is where the localizers were the furthest from getting the name. The comet referenced here is actually the Comet Pons-Winnecke named for its discovery originally by Jean Louis Pons in 1819 and its second sighting many years later in 1858 by Friedrich August Theodor Winnecke. Initially astronomers thought this comet would strike the Earth in 1921, and it has caused a number of meteor showers by getting quite close. This one actually came by recently in May of this year!

Tuttle Rock – They spelled this one correctly! Now, this aerolite’s name could actually reference a few comets, but I’m going to reference the Comet Tempel-Tuttle. It was actually independently discovered by Wilhelm Tempel and astronomer / Civil War veteran Horace Parnell Tuttle in 1865 and 1866 respectively. This comet comes by every 33 years, and causes the Leonid meteor shower whenever it shows up. Unfortunately, we won’t get to see those sights until May 20, 2031.

Nemesis Rock – Ok, so here is the odd one out. The exception that proves the rule, as it were. This one actually references a hypothetical star that orbits our Sun and supposedly caused a bunch of extinctions (through comet like meteor showers, there is the connection!). This one is kind of weird, and worth a look.

Biella Rock – This one almost gets the name right, it should reference Biela’s Comet. This comet was identified in 1826 by Wilhelm von Biela, and it promptly split in half and has not been seen since 1852. Though it has been destroyed, it still lived on as the Andromedids meteor shower, but it seems that may have gone away as well.

Swifte Rock – Like the Tuttle Rock above, this aerolite could reference a few different comets but I’ll choose to focus on the Comet Swift-Tuttle (like the Tuttle Rock above…). This one was discovered independently by Lewis Swifte and Tuttle on July 16 and 19 of 1862 respectively. This comet causes the Pereids meteor shower, which happens yearly between around July 17 and August 24. They aren’t very visible, due to occurring between dawn and noon, but sometimes they can show up before midnight.

And there you have it! The origin of Legend of Mana’s Aerolites, and a bit of information on each of the comets/astronomers they were named for. This news post made me feel like I was writing a school report.

Also, does this mean Shadow Zeroes come from outer space? Things to think about.

In the first of six major updates coming to the Legend of Mana Card Duel section, we now have Artifact and Land Cards scanned and translated!

The translations are done by me, and for the flavor text of each card I’m just using the in-game Encyclopedia entries because they are close enough. I may go back in the future and change those up, however.
The page also includes some rudimentary rules and information up top, but there will be a much more fleshed out Rulebook page in the future.

Stay tuned, as in the future I’ll get sections for the rest of the cards added along with those rules!

Special thanks to Deques, for working hard on getting the CSS for the translation info set up how I wanted and putting up with my tiny nitpicks!

Now you can find a written guide to tempering weapons and altering armor right here on Seikens!

Marcus Majarra graciously gave us permission to host his guide on our site. I’ve updated the formatting a bit here and there, and you can head on over to the Tempering for Dummies page to learn everything you need to know about the process!

Hey, what do you mean this isn’t really “new”? Yeah, I know it’s a 20 year old guide, but it’s new to Seikens isn’t it? The information is still very in-depth and the best out there!

Well ok, if you must know, Marcus Majarra is working on an updated version of the guide, and we’ll be hosting it here in the future! Stick around for updates!

Thanks, Marcus Majarra!