The Real Secret in "Secret of Mana"
The adolescent thrill of discovery, a busted toe, and mowing an impossible lawn.
As I dropped a cartridge of top ramen noodles into the boiling water, I heard a triumphant yell. Immediately recognizing the significance, I tore out of the kitchen, hurdled the slumbering German shepherd in the living room and skidded on one bare foot, Kramer-like into the hallway. Framed through my bedroom doorway, I saw Matt hopping up and down in front of my little Sony 13" tube television. For the last several hours we had been on a mission to find Neko, the feline armorer with a penchant for hiding out. The behavior seemed a questionable business decision, but I suppose he couldn’t be too careful with so many fresh baddies around. For all his sneaking about, he did boast those primo, higher-end rarity items though, and it was those upgrades that we had long coveted. Indeed, Matt had found him. I couldn’t wait to see what he had in stock and to celebrate the discovery.
But, wait I would.
My left pinky toe—a laughably diminutive digit that numerous people have literally giggled and gawked at my entire life—transferred the full force of my momentum into the doorjamb. As I crumpled in agony and shock onto the strip of carpet between the bed and the rolling doors of the closet, I recall a second thump as Matt hit the floor too, crumpled in laughter. It's an ignominious moment that we still relive every so often. An immutable core memory.
Secret of Mana was the first non-turn-based RPG where more than one person could play at once. The year was 1993, and bits were still capped at 16. Super Nintendo, with its excellent suite of games is unrivaled in era-relative influence, to me. The hype for this game’s stateside release was real, and Matt and I had finished saving up for it together by hand mowing the most crab-weedy lawn of all time down the street from my house. At the time we had gone door to door in my neighborhood soliciting any work we could get to raise the necessary funds. I think it was in the $30-40 range at the time. This particular patch of grass was a formidable boss. We would get a running start and occasionally make a few feet of progress before the blades would catch on an impossibly thick stem and send the handlebar deep into one of our abdomens. We cackled relentlessly at each other's expense while we took turns, eventually defeating the lawn and collecting our reward. We brought that same kind of energy to our gaming, too.
SoM features three juvenile companions, who form a necessary bond over adventurous heroism to save the kingdom from a creeping evil. The Hero (who we always name Rafops), The Girl (Lesa, a high school crush), and The Sprite (Ebola, lol). You can probably guess their specialties: melee weapons for the hero, healing magic for the girl, and attack magic for the sprite. Other RPG’s might have had similar tagalongs to the main character, but up to this point had only been single player. When we bought the game, we sure as hell couldn’t know how much it would change our lives by advancing the genre such as it did. For whatever reason, we didn't know yet that two could play simultaneously, even though looking back it was clearly indicated on the front of the box. We were blinded by enthusiasm I guess. The moment I found out is a classic memory too. It's simple to hop in and out as player 2 - just press start on the second controller. Or maybe it was select? But that's it - tag in, tag out. So cool.
Figuring this out while on navigator/booklet duty, I hatched a plan to quietly pick up the second controller (already conveniently plugged in because of a 2P racer we had played previously) and began to control one of the tagalongs, whichever was second in line at the time. The gameplay necessitated an invisible tether, so one character couldn't stray too far off from the other. So Matt would try to go through a door, and suddenly his second in command would appear to have other plans, which stopped him in his tracks, legs spinning cartoonishly. I kept a straight face as long as I could, but the joy of that discovery soon detonated the room with excitement as Matt became privy to what I already knew.
THIS WAS HUGE.
I honestly don't remember if my toe was broken or not. I must have fractured it at the very least. Maybe its absurdly meager stature and lack of discernible knuckles saved it from certain obliteration. It's small, and tough, like a thimble. We were young, and healing was essentially a given back then. In the kitchen, a half opened sodium-laden seasoning packet needed to be stirred into the noodles, our brand new armor had to be equipped, and there were many fine townspeople to save. I tapped back in, a few health points down perhaps, but not out.
The spirit of collaboration and thrill of discovery that this game instilled in me has long informed not only my creative process, but my way of life. There’s a methodical “leave no stone unturned” mentality that I can deploy for any given challenge. Hikes and adventures are tinged with a nostalgic giddiness that I might come upon an oddity or discovery. Our gaming years injected a permanent curiosity into just about everything, an attribute that has served us mostly very well while kicking and screaming into adulthood.
And then, there is the soundtrack. Composed to simple perfection by Hiroki Kikuta, each town has its own epic theme song. As do the boss battles, cut scenes, temples, and outdoor regions. These themes are absolutely tattooed into my genes after so many hundreds of listens. Matt and I revisited the game in full sometime in the early aughts, and I’m sure we mowed through a lot of grass then too. In 2011 I created a series of abstract music videos using early iPhone video that I called “The Kikuta Chronicles”. No, I don’t know where Part 4 is.
Originally composed for the Super Famicom—the Japanese version of Super Nintendo—the music had to both fit onto the limited 16-bit hardware and be composed to loop perfectly. Kikuta has said he sampled the original instruments from the game system onto his Yamaha SY77 synthesizer to have greater control at sound manipulation. Some instruments and parts had to be rendered lo-fi to fit, and it required extensive experimentation to discover which. I love thinking about that. Kikuta created the music as he might as Rafops in the game. Solving puzzles and moving forward. A most pleasing parallel.
“Communication comes into existence when we acknowledge the difference between ourselves and the other, and attempt to measure its distance. Without communication, there is no self and no world. There are various ways to form connections with others, and music is highly effective. Through a single musical phrase, it’s actually possible to influence the creation of a kind of world in the imagination of the listener.”
- Hiroki Kikuta
If not a direct gateway, Kikuta was a precursor. In recent years I discovered another Japanese composer named Hiroshi Yoshimura, mostly thanks to a pandemic era re-release of “Green” from Light in the Attic Records. I’m sure I’m miles from alone in having needed a bit more ambient music in my life through all that. Life as I know it has carried on pulling few punches for several years since, and Hiroshi’s music has been a calming companion on many difficult days. Through countless listens to Green I have discovered a mood that suits and soothes my nervous system. Spotify calls this genre “Fourth World”. Had to look that up to double check that was a real thing. From what I can tell the phrase originates from a 1980 Jon Hassell/Brian Eno record. Hassell said at some point when he was still around that Fourth World music is "a unified primitive/futuristic sound combining features of world ethnic styles with advanced electronic techniques."
Get into it:
What is “The Secret of Mana”? With no definitive answer from the game itself, players continue to be at liberty to assign one or more themselves. I’ve always been secretly thankful for that.