First test of the year tomorrow, so why not start off the week with some battle music?

Battle with the God Beast – Yoko Shimomura – Heroes of Mana
[audio:https://www.seikens.com/seikens/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/bvgb128k.mp3|titles=Battle with the God Beast]

Now for something different we’ve got a Children of Mana track!
I really like this one, it’s nice and upbeat. Does it remind anyone else of Kirby’s Dreamland, or is that just me? I’d swear you could almost paste this song in that game and it would fit perfect!

Fate – Takayuki Aihara – Children of Mana
[audio:https://www.seikens.com/seikens/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/05-Fate.mp3|titles=Fate]

Well I missed last week, but here is the continued short stuff thing I was doing! This time they come from Seiken Densetsu 3.

Not Awaken – Hiroki Kikuta – Seiken Densetsu 3
[audio:https://www.seikens.com/seikens/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/01-Not-Awaken.mp3|titles=Not Awaken]
Positive – Hiroki Kikuta – Seiken Densetsu 3
[audio:https://www.seikens.com/seikens/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/11-Positive.mp3|titles=Positive]
Closed Garden – Hiroki Kikuta – Seiken Densetsu 3
[audio:https://www.seikens.com/seikens/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/13-Closed-Garden.mp3|titles=Closed Garden]
And Other – Hiroki Kikuta – Seiken Densetsu 3
[audio:https://www.seikens.com/seikens/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/09-And-Other.mp3|titles=And Other]

Today I’ve got kind of a weird assortment of stuff here for you, tracks by Hiroki Kikuta that are all under 60 seconds long. Why? None of these are really long enough to stand up on their own as an MMM update, so I thought I would give them the light of day together. We’ll cover SoM this week, and SD3 the next. Enjoy!

The Little Sprite
[audio:https://www.seikens.com/seikens/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/10-The-Little-Sprite.mp3|titles=The Sprite Child]
Happenings of a Moonlit Night
[audio:https://www.seikens.com/seikens/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/11-Happenings-of-a-Moonlit-Night.mp3|titles=Happenings of a Moonlit Night]
Mystic Invasion
[audio:https://www.seikens.com/seikens/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/13-Mystic-Invasion.mp3|titles=Mystic Invasion]
I Closed My Eyes
[audio:https://www.seikens.com/seikens/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/44-I-Closed-My-Eyes.mp3|titles=I Closed My Eyes]

Special thanks go out to Duran from the forums for taking the time to find and write up a little intro to today’s track!

This is Duran here, giving you something special for MMM. This one is an arrangement of Hiroki Kikuta’s “Into the Thick of It” from Secret of Mana, performed by renowned music group, The OneUps.

For those who don’t know, The OneUps are a jazz/funk fusion band who are best known for their stylized arrangements of such games as Contra, Metroid, Chrono Trigger, and Toejam & Earl. These guys have performed at major conventions like Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) and Magfest and have been featured on numerous publications, including Destructoid and MSNBC.

As for the song itself, it’s a smooth take on the original, with a slight blend of it’s sister-track “Can You See the Ocean.” Overall, a great song and worth a listen.

If you enjoy this track and want to check these guys out, visit their website…and maybe even drop them a line to arrange more Mana tracks.

Into the Thick of It – The One Ups
[audio:https://www.seikens.com/seikens/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/1-05_-_Into_the_Thick_of_It.mp3|titles=Into the Thick of It]

Thanks again Duran!

Today’s track is the intro to Secret of Mana, isn’t it just classic? I’d take this track over Rising Sun anyday, not to say Rising Sun is bad it’s just overdone. Sometimes when I was little I’d just start the game up and listen to this for a while, it’s really great.

The noises at the beginning still creep me out a bit though.

Fear of the Heavens – Hiroki Kikuta – Secret of Mana
[audio:https://www.seikens.com/seikens/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/01-Fear-of-the-Heavens.mp3|titles=Fear of the Heavens]

– Hey guys, it’s been a while huh?

– Who are you, what is this place?! Am I still dancing?

– You’ve got that dance down! It’s Seikens and this is the shopping channel update that we used to do pretty much every week! There hasn’t been much worth mentioning, but suddenly there were a lot of cool things on eBay so I figured we’d do an update today!

– Am… am I still a cat?

– You sure are! Now let’s peddle those wares!

– I found this Sword of Mana Premium Box for sale! It’s pretty uncommon and it’s a great collectible to have. It comes with Sword of Mana, but also with a Rabite finger puppet and a Lil’ Cactus desk toy. When exposed to light Lil’ Cactus will rock back and forth!

– I rock.

– Hey, Lil’ Cactus showed up too! What a momentous occasion! I’m so happy I want to share all these posters I found for sale! Here is a Secret of Mana Poster from Nintendo Power! You can also get the Sword of Mana, Children of Mana and Heroes of Mana Nintendo Power posters together in a lot, or just get a Sword of Mana poster and Guidebook if that’s your thing!

– Mreeow, like all cats I love shiny things, so I love these Sword of Mana Lenticular Postcards (1, 2) and I think you will too.

– Rabite Phone Strap.

– And finally I found this Secret of Mana Manual that appears to be in amazing condition. Pick it up if you don’t have one!

– Ah, that felt great! Nothing like trying to sell stuff, am I right Neko?

– Purrsonally I would have liked to have seen higher prices…

– Bad cat.

– Aw, c’mon Lil’ Cactus, he’s not that bad. But he definitely is still a cat.

– Yes. Still a cat.

Sheexy tipped me off on this one after finding an auction on Yahoo.co.jp, and after a quick search, it turns out that an official album is on the way from the hands of Kenji Ito.

Re:Birth/聖剣伝説 伊藤賢治アレンジアルバム, will be hitting stores on October the 19th to celebrate 20 years of Seiken Densetsu, and will consist of a series of tracks originally composed by Kenji Ito, arranged by… Kenji Ito. It will apparently cover a variety of styles, and although the full track list has not been released yet, it will include the following:

Rising Sun (No, really, ya think?)
Mana’s Mission (SD1)
In Search of the Holy Sword (SD1)
Final Battle (SD1)
The Fool’s Dance (SD4)
The Endless Dream (SD4)

It will be available for the price of 2,500 yen from Amazon.co.jp and The Square Enix e-Store. A sample is available here of the track that includes, are we at all surprised, Rising Sun.

The CD will also be included in the Box Set due to hit stores around the same time for 21,000 yen.

The article I posted about last week made me think about FFA a lot, so I’ve picked out a track from the game for this week. It’s a dungeon track, the second one to be more specific. Some of the titles of these old songs just mention what they are for instead of having a name, it’s kind of interesting. I wonder if they did that for convenience, and there actually was a real name for the track but it was just never mentioned on the CD or anywhere else. Anyway, Sword of Mana has all the same tracks, just redone, and they actually have names there. So here is Dungeon 2, or Temptation of Doom as it is known in Sword of Mana, enjoy!

Dungeon 2 – Kenji Ito – Final Fantasy Adventure
[audio:https://www.seikens.com/seikens/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/25-Dungeon-2.mp3|titles=Dungeon 2]
Temptation of Doom – Kenji Ito – Sword of Mana
[audio:https://www.seikens.com/seikens/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/23-Temptation-of-Doom.mp3|titles=23 Temptation of Doom]

Chad Concelmo writes a series of articles for Destructoid called “The Memory Card” where he writes about his thoughts and experiences with older games.

This week he’s got an article up about my favorite game, Final Fantasy Adventure, and he talks about one of the experiences in the game that I really feel sets it apart from most others. You can read about it here in The Memory Card .98 Killing Medusa, it’s a nice read but only go into this if you’ve already played the game! If you haven’t played the game you really should, it’s a lot different from other GameBoy games and it’s awesome to see where the Seiken Densetsu series started.

Thanks to bastian from the forums for directing us to this article!