- Ouya begins shipping to Kickstarter backers
- Hideo Kojima talks Metal Gear Solid V
- Mark Cerny and Yu Suzuki talking Shenmue III strategy?
- Etrian Odyssey: Millennium Girl teaser site opened
- Sony shares new PlayStation 4 details at GDC
- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain announced as Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain combined
- Persona 3: The Movie hits Japan this fall
- Atelier Escha & Logy revealed for PlayStation 3
- Yoichi Wada steps down as Square Enix CEO
- Spelunky, Metrico, more announced for PS Vita and PS3
- Phantasy Star Online 2 western release delayed
- Final Fantasy X | X-2 HD Remaster debut trailer
- Double Fine Adventure named Broken Age
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Telltale Games And DC’s The Wolf Among Us Puts A Gritty Spin On Fairy Tales
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RetroN 5 Game Console Runs NES, SNES, Genesis, GBA And Famicom Games
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The Phantom Pain And Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes Are Two Separate Games [Update 2]
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Wii U Video Shows Reduced Load Times After April Firmware Update
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Meet The Protagonists Of Atelier Escha And Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky
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This Vita JRPG Parody Solves Grinding Problem With “Boss Battle Only” Option
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Here’s A Look At Rain, By The Developer Of Tokyo Jungle
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Nintendo’s Message To Indie Developers About The Nintendo eShop
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Inside Japan’s indie scene
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All this changed with Secret of Mana, the first game that left a strong, lasting, impression on my young self, which showed me the power of video games as an emotional medium and, more importantly, which shaped my tastes and expectations for the future. It’s difficult to pinpoint what exactly this game did so right, and what magical recipe was impossible for Square to replicate afterwards (Seiken Densetsu III was “better” on paper although it lacked the “je ne sais quoi” that made the second so unique, and it was all downhill from Legend of Mana onwards). The setting of Secret of Mana was simple, almost simplistic in the beginning (the characters are referred too as “the Boy”, “the Girl” and “the Sprite”, I mean how much simpler can you get than that?), simple like a biblical tale or a Greek tragedy, and while it grew deeper as the story progressed, it mostly rested on symbols and the player’s interpretation of the relationships. I think it was the first game I played where several stories weaved together seamlessly, and looking back on it, one of the main storylines, the quest save a girl’s fiancée whose body was possessed by demon, was and still is quite unusual, as it implies a particular relationship between the protagonists. It was also the first time I found game music to be of higher quality than some mainstream music, and the first time I was seduce by the artwork of a game.
As I said earlier, Secret of Mana forged my tastes in video games, and my aesthetic tastes in general. First of all, I expect my final bosses to at least wear some nuances of pink and blue. Kidding aside, Secret of Mana was my first exposition to japanese cuteness, an acquired taste that was perpetuated by games such as Windwaker, Radiata Stories, Harvest Moon, Atelier, and that probably explains my obsession with 
thelastsavepoint 
