Released in October 1993, Secret of Mana sets three teenagers on a quest to save the world. At some point in the past, a civilization used a force known as Mana to become powerful. This mana was used to constuct the ultimate weapon: the Mana Fortress. The Fortress was eventually destroyed by complicated events surrounding a war with the gods, giving rise to an era of peace. But time flows like a river...and history repeats... The evil Empire, led by Thanatos, is set on reactivating the mana fortress. The unsuspecting hero and his companions must find a way to stop this, before it's too late.
Best time on PAL version: 5:15 by Frank 'Seiken' Cid on 2005-08-26 in 8 segments.
Author's comments:
-Thanks to Nate for to capture my run.
-Thanks to Radix for to upload it.
-Thanks to all the people who encouraged me.
At first, I was a little suprised that Secret of Mana was a popular game but at the same time nobody really found tricks for speed running this game. But on the other hand, this run was delayed, so it motivated me when i had a ton of problems with recording.
At the beginning I wanted make a single segment, but it was too hard for me, I needed too luck if I don't want to make a good part of my time boring leveling.
When i started to record this game, I thought immediatly about the Tree Palace and Pureland, which were the nightmares of my childhood: how to do a decent time with them? Pureland was the hardest part, with a poor bug at the end of the Battle with the Red Dragon.
Even with the run segmented, I had difficulties at a few parts. It's not rare I take damage, but sometimes it's faster to run in the garbage than to follow the way for to not take damage.
Sometimes my behavious can seems strange (when I walk with one of the 3 chars) but it's because it's faster to do a little other way for to deblock the two others chars than to controll them for to remove the matter. Lots of time that's the game which is responsable, you have lots of maps where if you choice the fastest way the 2 others chars will be inevitably blocked when they try to follow you.
Sometimes it's easier to run with phantoms, they don't run so dumb against the monsters, but if they are blocked against a wall, you can't controll them.
There are 2 crap moments (gameplay) in the run:
-in the castle of the emperor.
-when i got to the golden island with the dragon.
These mistakes don't take lots of time but remain pathetic.
For the quality, there is two crap moments I always had in all my attempts of speed run, I concluded my Video Tape Recorder is stupid because it doesn't understand a few intenses analog signal (even if it's news), you have 2 distorsed parts, but there aren't missing parts, and it took less 1 second. Thankfully, it happens at the very beginning of the game and during cutsenes very far from "criticals situations":
-when i go in my natal village, the first time the fat guy hit me, it's distorsed.
-when i go in the first time in the Water Palace and touch the seed for the first time, it's distorsed.
No matters in the rest of the run.
Obviously I am entirely responsable for some mistakes in the run, but you have also "random mistakes". The fight against Tropicallo for the best exemple: sometime a bomb goes on you and you don't take damage, sometime a bomb miss you and explodes, then you goes in a good distance of the explosion (after it is finished) and you take damage.
I hope you will happy with it, it's sure that someday I will improve this run with the NTSC version and with 2 others players, but until this time, I will perharps improve the run played alone on PAL (I keep the same category), but it will be next year, unless another person does it before me.
For asking me questions or comments my msn is seikensda@yahoo.fr.