Only a very small and quick update, two new items have been added to the Secret of Mana Secrets page, under the new header of “Unused and/or Unlockable Items“. We’ve risked our savegames so that you don’t have to.

You didn’t hear it from me, but there seems to be a huge Seiken Densetsu 3 remixing project going on behind the scenes over at OverClocked Remix. I hear remixers such as Sixto Sounds, Usa, The Joker and Abadoss are involved.

The estimated track count sounds to be really impressive, 20 to 30 remixes or so including some that don’t get much love in the remixing community.

The walls have eyes, so if you’ve got a favorite Seiken Densetsu 3 track that hasn’t ever gotten the honor of being remixed maybe make mention of it here or over at OverClocked Remix. Maybe someone involved will hear you and make it happen.

I wonder whether my excuse of having a lot to do on at work is growing old yet. Rest assured though, I am working behind the scenes here at Seikens too, you’ll just find out at some point later.

Anyway, this week’s MMM is multi-fold, in that we’re bringing you a track, and promoting a currently on-going project.

First thing’s first, Impurfekt over on the Forum is starting a Secret of Mana music project, and needs your help to decide on the track list. So if you want your voice to be heard, head on over to this post, and give him some ideas. If you want to listen to some of his previous work, you can check out his last.fm page.

On to the track for the week, this one is a remix of Hightension Wire from Seiken Densetsu 3, done by Levo Lution. You can purchase his stuff at his webpage. This track specifically is from his 2002 album, Lestia.

[MEDIA=172]

– Busy day today, so here is just a list of deals:

Games:
Children of Mana SUPER DEAL!
Dawn of Mana SUPER DEAL!

Books: The basic guides all contain concept art of armor, weapons and items and some enemies.
Secret of Mana Basic Guide
Seiken Densetsu 3 Basic Guide
Seiken Densetsu 3 Basic Guide (better deal)
Sword of Mana 4 Panel Comics

CDs:
Legend of Mana 2 CD Soundtrack
Dawn of Mana Soundtrack
Dawn of Mana Soundtrack

Other:
Rabite Screen Cleaner
Rabite Screen Cleaner + Bonus! SUPER DEAL!

If you somehow missed the prank, Click here!

Are your senses fried from the terrible HTML, the clashing and flashing colors, the annoying old midi? Chances are right now, that midi is still following you along with that frame! Muahahaha!

But seriously folks, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke as much as it is an insight into where this site would be without Deques. Deques is the cool dude who makes sure the website looks beautiful and keeps it a step, nay, a whole staircase above the place where gaming websites originated.
Geocities.

To see what we did the last two years head over to the April Fool’s Section found in the Fan Section.

Also acccording to my Sword of Mana calendar, today is some character named “Gem”‘s birthday… but uh, there is no character named Gem. I’ve just searched through all my Sword of Mana stuff trying to figure it out, to no avail.
Did I just get pranked by a five year old calendar?

Anyway, April Fool’s day is probably my very favorite holiday, so if you’ve got any great stories come and share them with me on the Message Board!

The list continues!

When Legend of Mana came out in Japan they raffled off a lot of neat things. This little necklace is just one of them. There were maybe 700 or so raffled off.

The little Rabite is made out of pewter and looks the same as the one from the phone card and zipper pull set. The cord the Rabite is on is super small, so if you plan on wearing this thing you might want to extend it.

These were also raffled off when Legend of Mana came out, there are around 500 of them.

This is the same pewter Rabite that is on the necklace, only now it’s on a decorative cord ready to be strapped onto your cellphone. I keep this little guy on my cellphone all the time, it brings me good luck. Maybe.

Hey, it’s another cellphone jockey, only this one is in color! The colors Duke, the colors!

This one has a much happier expression on it and also comes with a light blue strap that says “RABI” on top, and has a super soft tan material on the bottom.
I’m not entirely sure how durable this little guy is though, as I haven’t used mine on anything yet.

Finding big Rabite plushes is hard, so this tiny Rabite plush is the next best thing!
Well maybe not… but it’s pretty neat. It’s designed to tag along on your DS and you can use its super soft underside to clean off the screen. You could also use it for your cellphone or your computer or even your microwave, but to be honest I think I’ll keep mine away from dirty surfaces and keep it in mint condition. You can also pretend that it’s a baby Rabite. Not that I do that or anything.

You can get your own here.

Fire is awesome. Rabites are awesome. A Zippo lighter that has Rabites on it?

That’s double awesome!

There are only 300 of these items in existance, and they were either given to people who worked at Square or raffled off in Japan, so finding them is near impossible. They have Rabites on each side except for the top and bottom, and it’s official Zippo too, so you know it’s good. Mine is number 284.

These little guys come in two varieties, those with their eyes open and those with their eyes closed. They are both super awesome. There are so many things you can do with them, for examples see this video I made.

So I ask you, what’s better than a small rabite plush? The answer is…

This giant Rabite Plush is easily the greatest piece of Rabite Merchandise ever made.
Look at how happy that lady is. Just look at her.

I can only hope that one day I will be that happy.

Step One: Get home from school.
Step Two: Open up Windows Media Player.
Step Three: Make sure shuffle is on.
Step Four: Press next track until you hit a Seiken Densetsu track.
Step Five: Upload onto ftp.
Step Six: Write news post and put the track in it.
The Premonition Begins – Yoko Shimomura
[MEDIA=171]
Step Seven: Post news.
Step Eight: Do homework.
Step Nine: Seriously, stop procrastinating and get your work done!

Let’s face it, Rabites are awesome. So awesome that Square-Enix has released a few various pieces of merchandise in their image. Most of them are awesome, but some don’t seem to capture the true essence of the Rabite. In this news post I’ll take you through the range of Rabite themed merchandise, starting with the sub-par and ending with the spectacular.

This less than amazing T-shirt has two pictures of Rabites on it. A tiny colored one on the back, and an outline of one on a sleeve. Finding this item is doubtful, because after nearly 10 years any T-shirt is probably going to be looking ratty.
Exciting.

The Legend of Mana Postcard booklet comes with a lot of great drawings of the characters from the game, but it seems they got lazy near the end of the booklet and just started packing random characters together on the cards. In this great card we have a Rabite about to be jumped by a miniature Golem.

This combination just puzzles me.
You get a 50 minute pre-paid phone card and a stainless steel zipper pull together in a pretty neat little Rabite themed frame.

I thought about using the Rabite phone card while I was in Japan, but I decided against it because it would punch holes through the thing. So forever it will sit inside the little nook on this frame. Also I haven’t put the zipper on anything because it seems to remove it from the frame.
I will never understand the logic behind this thing.

Technically this isn’t merchandise, as they gave them out during conferences or as a press kit, but it’s still a Rabite. Great for cooling yourself off on a hot summer day, or for using in an old school style play where you have to put a mask up in front of your face!

Tomnet from the forums has one and I’m totally jealous.

Alone you can’t do much with this card, but if you have more of the cards you can make a deck, and then you can play the Rabite and tap it to prevent two damage to one of your characters. That’s probably helpful. Also the Rabite gets an attack or defense bonus if you have the Hero or the Heroine out! Neat!

Seiken Densetsu 3 also has a card game to go with it. You can read the news post about it and the LoM trading card game here, or learn how to play the former here.

I want to find one of these. But I wouldn’t use it as a mousepad, I would hang it on my wall.

Finding one of these is probably going to be impossible, because every mousepad I’ve seen has ended up looking really terrible after just a few years of use, let alone over nine.

Imagine how much fun you can have with a Rabite finger puppet.
If you said not much, then I’m afraid I have to disagree with you. Once you put this little guy on your finger the whole world changes. Now your bedroom isn’t just your bedroom, it’s Gaia’s Navel. Your back yard isn’t your back yard anymore, it’s the fields between Potos and Pandora. Those aren’t your parents coming to play Rabite games with you, they’re coming to offer you psychological counseling.
This thing is seriously fun though, don’t knock it until you’ve played with it.

That concludes the list for now! Tune in on Tuesday when I go over the best of the Rabite Merchandise!

– Neko, our ratings are going down because we’ve been treating you so bad, so we’re going to let you head up today’s shopping channel update. Just don’t pick super expensive stuff ok?

– Nothing is too expensive for busy travellers! Just look at this Seiken Densetsu 1 Sheet Music Book.

– That thing costs 75 dollars.

– But it’s one of the rarer Seiken Densetsu collectables.

– Ok fine… you got any less rare stuff though? Y’know, with lower prices?

– Well… there is this Seiken Densetsu 3 Basic Guidebook for cheap, it has all those interesting weapon, armor and item drawings. This Secret of Mana Basic Guidebook also has all those neat drawings and is a good price. And there is also this Sword of Mana Four Panel Comic Book that is really cheap.

– See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?

– Nyaaaaaa…

– Say, what’s wrong Neko?

– Nyaaa fair prices… nyaa killing me… cannot breate… nyaaa

– Hold on buddy, Mr. Moti, grab something with an immense price tag and quick!

– How about this super rare Seiken Densetsu 3 Test Rom that Square made to check everything over in the game?

– Hey, I’m feeling better now! I feel good enough to try and sell this Children and Dawn of Mana Artbook!

– You guys are too rich for my blood, I’m going to do homework.

– See you all next week when we’ll still try to find nice cheap deals for you!

– I’ll still be a cat.

Yes, that’s right. Willy is dead. AT LEAST HE SHOULD BE.
*cough*swordofmanawhydidyouruinhischaracter*cough*

I was looking at the little calendar cards that came with my copy of Sword of Mana that came with the fun Rabite finger puppet and Lil’ Cactus thing, and I realized the calendar had a bunch of holidays written on it in Japanese. It turns out the calendar lists a bunch of character’s birthdays as well as other fun little events, so start looking forward to random updates about characters.

Since it’s Willy’s Birthday today, and since he’s dead, I thought we’d listen to the track it plays when he is dying.

Requiem – Kenji Ito
[MEDIA=169]
And since that song isn’t very long or happy I uploaded another happier one to celebrate his birthday.

Second Truth from the End – Hiroki Kikuta
[MEDIA=170]

It’s the ending theme to Secret of Mana, such a fun and happy track.