Just a small little shopping channel update, an item I haven’t seen in a very long time appeared on eBay recently:

Legend of Mana Rabite Zipper Pull and Phone Card

It’s a little Rabite zipper pull along with a pre-paid phone card that comes in a neat little cardboard frame thing. The price is pretty ridiculous I think, but generally only the phone card shows up in auction, and I haven’t seen a complete set of this since I bought my own probably over 5 years ago now.
Keep watch on the auction to see if the seller ever drops the price, or if you’ve got money burning a hole in your pocket pick this item up.

There are two things that really define my child hood, and those two things are Secret of Mana and LEGO bricks. LEGO enthusiast Deviet recently uploaded what I can only describe as a childhood dream come true to Flickr, just check out that thumbnail to the right!
You know that’s one of the coolest things you’ve ever seen, so click this link to see it in all of its glory and from a few different angles as well:

Secret of Mana by Deviet at Flickr

While you’re there you should check out some of the other amazing builds in Deviet’s gallery. The attention to detail in all the different scenes is incredible, and I can’t get enough of all that plasticy green nature goodness.

We save Mana.

Mana Beast defeated under the conditions set. Bam!

Some more on this later.

The president and representative director of Square Enix, Yoichi Wada, is stepping down from his position following the company revising its financial forecast.

Wada’s resignation is expected to come into effect from June, at which point Yosuke Matsuda, who joined the company in 2001, will replace him.

The move comes as part of a financial revision for the company, in which it’s revealed that Square Enix now “expects to incur extraordinary loss in the settlement of the accounts for its fiscal year ending March 31, 2013.”

While the company had been predicting net income losses of ¥3.5 billion, this has now been revised to ¥13 billion following a decline in Western retail and digital sales.

The report explains the revision comes, “due to slow sales of major console game titles in North American and European markets. The Company is also experiencing sluggish performance of its arcade machine business.

“In addition to these factors, the Company expects to incur extraordinary loss about loss from restructuring in the settlement of the account for its fiscal year ending March 31, 2013.”

Wada joined Square in April 2000 and rose to the rank of CEO in December of that year. When Square merged with Enix, he took up the title of president and representative director of the new company and oversaw the acquisitions of both Taito and Eidos Interactive.

Source – IGN

Well, I can’t say that I’m overly sad at this. As far as the direction of a lot of the classic RPG series have been concerned, developments since the Squenix merger have been lack-lustre. I very much doubt that there will be a change of focus with this departure, and the chances of anything good coming to those franchises that we love so much are slim… but who knows.

Where we fail. A lot.

Venturing into the Mana Fortress, getting ready for the finale.

After a lot of cleaning contacts and power-cycling the SNES, managed to load up my copy of Secret of Mana for the first time in over a decade, and the save-games are still there. Even has the save-game started by the guy I bought it off second hand however many years ago it was.

Here in Pure Land there be dragons!

In which I get distracted by the thought of pumpkins falling apart, and head for Pure Land.

We also highlight one of the difficulties of a “no offensive magic vs bosses” run… but using magic.

Hunting down a Dryad and rambling. Still alive!