Let’s watch another video from the YouTube Channel of ManaRedux. This time, we’re learning about the Upper Land. As a kid, I got hard stuck at the Fire Gigas fight for a very long time. I borrowed the game from an aunt, and I didn’t quite understand leveling. After finally beating the Fire Gigas and moving on through the game, I feel like things really opened up at the Upper Land. This place felt remote with its lack of real cities (until Matango which feels so different) and deep caves. Later on, after getting Flammie, I took notice of the lack of detail the area had on the map. It was such a large area, but the actual maps were not nearly as large. That always stuck out to me.

Behind the Scenes of The Upper Land

Starting out, we go over the map discrepancy. Exactly what I was looking for! The Moogle village always stuck out to me as weird without buildings, so it’s neat to see they were initially planned. Finally, all the detail of the Wind Palace is very interesting. Overall some really cool stuff!

I’ve been gone for a bit, and in that time ManaRedux from over at Secret of Mana: Redux has been busy making videos for his YouTube Channel. I’m going to watch through them when I get time, and you can watch along with me if you’d like. Or just go binge watch all seven right now. Me? I’m gonna take my time.

Two Northtown Anomalies

These two anomalies kept me pretty busy guessing as a kid. I always wondered if the weird secret passageway in Northtown mentioned on our Secrets page had something to do with the carousel looking thing. As for the door in the resistance base, I think kid me chalked that one up to the base actually being a much larger operation with multiple levels only accessible to the most trusted operatives. Obviously, with Popoi in tow, Kristie wasn’t taking any chances.

On second thought, that one was pretty short so I’m going to watch another. Some of the others are quite a bit longer, but the first couple are short.

The Mysterious Deleted Path

This video has some great information and footage about early versions of the early game map. The little islands with the whip poles on them remind me of the area surrounding Wendel in Final Fantasy Adventure. The Garuda from FFA showing up, along with a small dock that looks perfect for a Chocobot to take off from just emphasize the similarities to me. It’s awesome to see these glimpses into early development. It’s just a shame the entire game could not have had this much time poured into it (looking at you, Ice Country).

If you liked the content in the videos, make sure to check out all Secret of Mana: Redux has to offer.

Head over to Secret of Mana: Redux’s Locations Page if you haven’t, because there are a ton of great beta images to sift through.
I’ve attached only a handful of them here, but go on and check out the main site and see all the neat things you may have never seen! ManaRedux has collected an awesome library of magazines with pre-release information over the years, and just keeps adding more to the site!

Over at Secret of Mana: Redux, you can read a retrospective about the game that released a couple months ago for the 30th anniversary of the game.

This is a big article, full of information about the creation and history of the game from various interviews that you can really only find at Secret of Mana: Redux!
Check it out, you’ll likely learn a few things!

Happy 32nd anniversary to the Seiken Densetsu series!

A set of Mana Series tracks will release as DLC for Theatrhythm Final Bar Line. Fun fact, this game was made by indies zero who just happen to be the same company behind Legend of Mana Card Duel.

The @ManaGame Pack Vol.1 launches for Theatrhythm Final Bar Line on June 28th with songs from Final Fantasy Adventure and Trials of Mana:

– Nuclear Fusion
– Battle 2
– In Search of the Sword of Mana
– Swivel
– Powell
– Meridian Child
– Sacrifice Part Three pic.twitter.com/QxyEBg5EoJ

— FINAL FANTASY (@FinalFantasy) June 26, 2023

In other news, there will also be a special exhibit of the late Hiroo Isono‘s artwork in Japan. Five of the original arts for the Mana Series will be shown off, awesome! That should be two artworks from Secret of Mana (characters before the tree and the night time image), two artworks from Trials of Mana (characters on the road to the tree and the world map), and one from Dawn of Mana (character before the tree). If you are wondering why the Children of Mana artwork is not included, that is because it was actually done by Nao Ikeda, who masterfully imitated the stipple style art.

#聖剣伝説2 や #聖剣伝説4 のパッケージビジュアルなどをご担当された磯野宏夫氏の企画展『磯野宏夫展　－生命(いのち)輝く森－』が7月1日(土)～8月20日(日)の期間、稲沢市荻須記念美術館にて開催されます。
シリーズの原画5点も展示されますので、この機会に是非お立ち寄りください！#聖剣伝説 pic.twitter.com/R7ouTIoMbG

— 聖剣伝説 -公式- (@Seiken_PR) June 28, 2023

There are a bunch of strange items available over at eeo store for The Teardrop Crystal. A lot of it is little knick-knacky nonsense, but there are some things I am looking forward to. The glasses case in particular is fun, and who wouldn’t want some random bag with Inspector Boyd on it?

When it comes to the gj Character G Jumi Pendants I posted about previously there was a small restock in Florina Pendants. I managed to get one this time, but it looks like they’re going fast again. Last time they sold out almost immediately. The other two pendants have been available this entire time, though. I took some photos of the two I had arrive. These things are really tiny! I should have paid attention to the description, but I would have gotten them regardless I guess.

Finally, the Super Groupies Secret of Mana collab that I posted about back in October seems to have had a substantial restock. These ended up great, I think. Check the photos I took out below.

First up, the Backpack. I thought it would be full leather, but that’s only the buckles and trim. The material is nice and light, though, and seems tough. The printing inside is beautiful, and my only real complaint is that the thing is a bit of a pain to open. Not due to the buckles, those are all just for show (magnets do all the work), but the Flammie strings that cinch it shut are a bit of a pain.

Next, the Wallet. This was much larger than I thought. It’s very hard to see the Mana Tree printing inside, and the embossing on the Ring Menu is a bit weak. This is the weakest of the three items, but it’s still nice.

Lastly, the best item, the Watch. It’s really beautiful, I’ve been wearing mine since I got it and it feels great. The elementals look really nice, I thought they would look cheap, but they’re actually printed with some texture. They cycle from Shade at midnight, through Luna, Undine, Dryad, Lumina at noon, Salamando, Gnome, and Jinn every 3 hours. The little gems are a bit hard to tell the differences in (especially the “dark” one), but in the right light they look incredible.

I am hoping these restocks mean I’ll be able to get my hands on the Super Groupies Teardrop Crystal collab stuff I missed out on last time.

Fun Fact: Kassidy sent me that Perler bead Sheexy around 15 years ago.

First up, just to follow up on the Jan 2023 Merch Sightings, I got my hands on some of the Flammie and Rabite plushes mentioned there. I’ve got to say, they’re really good and I recommend them to any fans of the series. You can find countless of them on Japanese auction sites, and the prices aren’t bad at all.

The Flammmie plush is a lot higher quality than I expected, Taito did great on these. The Rabite plush is ridiculously soft, and looks a million times better than the one that Taito put out back in 2018.

Next up, the Shiloh and Serafina POP UP PARADE statues are up for pre-order now, between Feb. 28th and March 30th, 2023.

These are looking pretty great, I love how they went with the classic poses for the two.

Here is something really cool. The youtuber Jammin’ Sam Miller has apparently taken to restoring the soundtrack to Secret of Mana. Essentially what he does is recreate the entire soundtrack using the original samples from all sorts of sources from when the game was made. We’re talking keyboards, drum machines, sample libraries, etc. This guy finds them and does the best he can to remaster the entire soundtrack. If you have not seen his Donkey Kong Country pieces, you’ve gotta check him out. Anyway, here is his “Fear of the Heavens” restored:

Did you ever think you’d hear those whales so clear? Apparently they come from “OMI Universe of Sounds Vol 1” and are entitled “SFX_Animals”. Really wild stuff. You can check out the information on where samples came from here.

The project has an anonymous sponsor, and will result in a vinyl release in the end. I might have to get this.

If you want to represent your love for Secret of Mana, Super Groupies has you covered. Siliconera and 4Gamer posted about this, and I heard about it over on the Mana Series Discord from Agent G.

From now until October 24th, you can pre-order three Secret of Mana items.

The first item is a Watch, going for around $175, that features a beautiful Mana Tree in green and gold with gems for each of the elements. In addition, the dial rotates to display the eight elementals in the order of Lumina, Salamando, Gnome, Sylphid, Shade, Luna, Undine, and Dryad. They are not weekday indicators, obviously since there are eight of them, but instead seem to change throughout the day which is kind of fun.
The second item is a Backpack, for around $120, which only has a little Flammie on display on the outside, but features some beautiful interiors with the game’s box art in the main section and the elementals (with the battle AI grid) in the side pockets. The belt is supposedly sword shaped, I can kind of see it I guess (the bottom zipper is the guard).
The final item is a Wallet, for around $98, again sporting Flammie, but this time with a little drum charm attached. On the interior is a card pocket with a distressed item ring menu, and a handful of pockets sporting the game’s box art again.

Check out the small thumbnails below, and head to the actual pages linked above for even more photos of each item.
What do you think of the items? Going to pick them up? Keep in mind you’ll have to import from Japan for this. These are also made to order, so finding them on the secondary market may be difficult.
I, for one, can’t wait to carry these bad boys around and represent my favorite series in style.

So over on the Japanese side of the web, there was a great site called “Death Queen Ward” that unfortunately went down back in July. The site started out as a “Village” in 2002, upgraded to a “Town” in 2009, later a “Ward” around 2013, and now it is back in “City” form as of 2022. When the site went down, I reached out to the owner over Twitter and that seemed to have spurred them to rebuild the entire thing to bring it back.

So, what is it? Well it’s a great repository for all things retro Square, mostly within the Famicom and Super Famicom era. So Final Fantasy Adventure, Secret of Mana, and the original Trials of Mana fall right in place. The owner of the site, the Mayor Queen, has an extensive collection of merch and print media from that era along with a very impressive Phone Card collection. Trials of Mana in particular has some very rare and very expensive phone cards that I have opted out of collecting, just to save my sanity (and wallet).

Check out the merch Death Queen Mayor has picked up for these Mana games:
Final Fantasy Adventure
Secret of Mana
Trials of Mana
and even the Mana game that never was, Seiken Densetsu: Emergence of Excalibur
Also head over and see all the other goodness at Death Queen City.

It’s a very cool site, the new layout is particularly stylish, and it will be critical in helping me with my own rebuild of the Merchandise section here on Seikens whenever I can find time to get around to it!

I wonder where Death Queen City will go in the future… Death Queen District? Death Queen Metropolis? Maybe someday we’ll even see a Death Queen Ecumenopolis.