Ahh school is getting incredibly hectic around here, so I don’t have much to say in this update. One of my classes has gotten to the point where instead of coming to class the teacher is letting us skip it so we have time to work on the multiple projects we have due soon.
I’ve picked a nice soft and calm track, I think everyone can appreciate music like that.

So sit back and relax a bit to this one:

Dawn of Mana ~ Opening Theme – Ryuichi Sakamoto
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Unfortunately I spent all my relaxation time working on this update because my internet connection is so bad right now, but hey, what can you do?

Now you can bookmark Seikens and get a nice icon in your iPhone/iPod Touch.

Isn’t this cute? 

I hope you have a spooktacular day today, or something along those lines.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get my update I wanted for today done due to schoolwork and the likes, but you can still have your candy!

See, we’re one of the cool houses here at Seikens, we don’t just give you one piece of candy we give you two. That’s because we’re nice. And also, those aren’t just any candy and chocolate, they are the official Secret of Mana artwork for those two items. I think it’s really fun to know that the Chocolate has little Rabites stamped into it. Anyways, these and other official arts will be making their way into the Secret of Mana section as soon as I get some time on my hands again!

Happy Halloween!

– Whoa, there are a ton of good deals on eBay this week, so we’re gonna try to compact this as much as we can by running through items game by game! Ok Mr. Moti, you’re up first with Final Fantasy Adventure!

– I’d like to start off by linking you to this Japanese Copy of the Game, it’s at a pretty good price considering how rare it is! You should pick up this Seiken Densetsu Basic Guidebook too, it’s really cheap! It’s got all the awesome hand drawn items, weapons, armor and monsters in it! In fact, you could get From This Seller too!

-Secret of Mana has a basic guidebook like that as well. Here Is One for a good price, and the shipping is free as well! This other Secret of Mana Guidebook isn’t as good as the first one I linked to, but it has small one panel comics showing how to fight the bosses, and that is neat. If you want the map for the game you can Get the Map Alone or you can Get the Map with the Cartridge! Then you can buy The Manual and English Guidebook for your collection, and round it off with the Nintendo Power Poster!

– Great job Neko, that’s a ton of Secret of Mana stuff! As far as Seiken Densetsu 3 goes all I found was this Seiken Densetsu 3 Guidebook. It’s not as good as the other two guidebooks, but at this price you can’t complain!

– Now we’re running out of stuff! How about music? Get the Legend of Mana Soundtrack for a good price! Also you might look into getting this Pandora’s Vox 2 Doujin CD. I didn’t know this existed, but the first one is good so I imagine the second one would be too!

– I guess I’d better wrap it up here! You can’t go wrong buying the Children of Mana and Dawn of Mana Artbook. It’s really one of the best pieces of merchandise you can get.

– See you next week everyone, have a happy Halloween!

In Japan of course.

The rest of the world will just have to be happy looking over the Official Website for Secret of Mana Mobile.

There you can see new graphics and some other stuff, check it out!

Well it’s the week before Halloween, so we’ve gotta have some creepy music right?

Here is Ceremony from Secret of Mana, probably the creepiest track any of the Seiken Densetsu games have to offer.

Ceremony – Hiroki Kikuta
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But, since we almost always use Ceremony around Halloween, I’m also putting on another creepy track for your listening pleasure.

Sacrifice Part 1 – Hiroki Kikuta
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And with that, this update is over, but be sure to check back later this week so you can get your Halloween candy.

– I want to start off today’s update with an important message:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN ENGLISH SEIKEN DENSETSU 3 RELEASE

SEIKEN DENSETSU 3 IS ONLY JAPANESE

So if you see an English copy of Seiken Densetsu 3 on eBay or any other auction place, don’t waste money on it. Sure they put a ROM into a real SNES cartridge, and they made a neat looking fake box for it, but there is no way it’s worth how much I see the things sell for.

Over 100 dollars for a fake merchandise item is not a good buy! Don’t get fooled!

– Wow, all caps, this really bugs you huh?

– It’s just a real jerk move to take advantage of people who don’t know any better. So please, people, don’t fall for any scams involving Seiken Densetsu 3 in English. It’s home-made and non-official.

– Well how about these official Legend of Mana goods then? And at amazing prices to boot! You can get this Legend of Mana: Making of Mana art book and enjoy all the character and item drawings in the game, as well as two manga chapters and an overview of all the LoM merchandise that exists! You can also get the Legend of Mana Ultimania Guidebook! Just remember, it’s all in Japanese!

– Get this Secret of Mana Nintendo Power Poster and hang it up on your wall. You know it would look purrfect in your room. This Sword of Mana Poster would look great too.

– Music lovers like me should pick up a copy of the Sword of Mana Soundtrack (One, Two). Or you can get the Piano Book and learn to play the seven piano songs on the second disk!

– Speaking of Piano Books, this Seiken Densetsu Piano Book has all the game music, and is immensely rare. Reflecting its rarity is its price however.

– Speaking of prices, the Children of Mana and Dawn of Mana Art Book (One, Two) may seem expensive, but I assure you it’s worth the money. Here, take a look at these pictures I took of it: The Cover, Character Page Example, all of the main characters have big sections devoted to them like this, and even some side characters. Children of Mana Characters also include pictures of all of their text box faces, The World Example, each area in the world has a large amount of history and design information devoted to it, The Character Designs, this is where the heart of the book is at, all the Dawn of Mana characters big or small and all of the enemies have a large section showcasing their designs and sketches involved with the process, The Enviornment Designs, this is like the character designs but for the enviornments in Dawn of Mana.

You know, honestly I expected things on eBay to pick up by now, but there really isn’t anything worth mentioning. I might put the Shopping Updates on pause until stuff starts showing up, even though that’d break my New Year’s Resolution, but I don’t like dancing around the fact that there is nothing to mention there.

As far as site updates go, I’ve got a lot of material to work with. I’ve gotta continue the Bestiary updates, I’ve got 950 Megs of scanned material I’ve gotta clean up and add to the site. We’re going to have the Nintendo Power scans soon, as well as lots of artwork from both Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy Adventure. So stick around for updates and such! I’ve just gotta get nicely settled into the school year before I sink any time into non-schoolwork stuff.

Today’s news starts with a little lesson about what Seiken Densetsu means. Most of you will already know this, but for those who don’t let me enlighten you.

To the right is the Japanese logo for Sword of Mana, or Shinyaku Seiken Densetsu as it is known in Japan. The two little Kanji at the top are “shinyaku” together, which means “New Testament,” but that isn’t important. What we are looking at is the main part “seiken densetsu”.
There are four Kanji, “sei” means holy, “ken” means sword, and the final two together, “densetsu” mean Legend. So basically we can say it means Legend of the Holy Sword.

Now let’s look at the logo for the original Seiken Densetsu. Not the one you know and love as Final Fantasy Adventure or Final Fantasy Mystic Quest though. The game for the NES that was cancelled and really had nothing to do with the Mana series we know and love today. It was going to be more similar to Final Fantasy following a turn-based fighting system, and was to be released on the Famicom Disk System. But that never happened and the name was eventually used for a new game Square was making for the Gameboy, known as “Gemma Knights,” which is the first Mana game we know today. But I digress, onto the logo:

See that, “Emergence of Excalibur” there? That’s important here too. The Seiken Densetsu series has taken a few lines out of the various stories surrounding this legendary and maybe even holy sword.

First off is that in Final Fantasy Adventure, both in the Japanese and English versions the Rusty Sword does not turn into the Mana Sword, but rather it turns into Excalibur (XCalibur in the English due to limited typespace).

Secondly is that sometimes Excalibur and the Sword in the Stone are referred to as the same weapon. Secret of Mana puts the Mana Sword squarely into a stone at the beginning of the game.

So where am I going here?

For those of you who can’t read it, in the big characters known as Katakana it reads “Excalibur” and the Kanji below it you may recognize as reading “Seiken Densetsu,” so this is “Excalibur: Legend of the Holy Sword”.

Now look at that thing, it’s ancient, you can tell because it’s on VHS and no one uses that anymore. Who knows what mysteries could be locked away in this tape? Could it hold the secrets to “Seiken Densetsu: Emergence of Excalibur” and what that game was like? Could it be an anime retelling the story of Final Fantasy Adventure? Well, I’ve seen the contents of the tape and I will reveal all, continue reading to uncover the mystery of this tape.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Seikens now have a page on Facebook! Yes indeed, we have joined the band-wagon of social networking, and who knows, maybe this will actually convince Sheexy to get an account at last!

This means that you can show your friends on Facebook that you’re a fan of the series and of our site, and you can receive our front-page updates direct to your Facebook as news items.

Click here to visit it, and spread the love!