Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Secret of Mana on Virtual Console

In case you didn't read the title: SECRET OF MANA ON VIRTUAL CONSOLE!

Yes: it's available for download to your Wii. Yes: the three-player co-op is intact. Yes: Squeenix are finally releasing their SNES classic for your retro-gaming delight.

This is one of those games that's every bit as good today as it was when it was released. If you've (somehow) never played Secret of Mana this is a must-buy Virtual Console title. If you have played it, heck, it's still a must-buy.

So - who wants to help me complete this for, what, the fourth time now?

NOTE: I'm not entirely clear whether this is "out now" or "out come the next VC update, either this Friday or the Friday following". I'll check the VC store when I get home and let you know.

9 comments:

Grant said...

God damn it, now I actually have to go out and buy a Wii.

Greg Tannahill said...

Yes, you do. Emulators are a wonderful thing but they just don't quite capture the full magic of playing this with two friends.

Plus - and I know you're a Dreamcast fan - if I were you I would fully expect to see some Dreamcast support coming to the VC at some point in the next year, probably after Nintendo implements their boot-from-the-SD-card patch.

Grant said...

Ah, but I pretty much have every Dreamcast game and a working Dreamcast, so that doesn't appeal so much. Also I'm pretty bitter about people constantly telling me how good these games like Soul Calibur and Sambo Di Amigo are, and I'm all like "Yeah... they were great back in the late 1990s too, when you didn't support the Dreamcast you dick!"

I do find it intriguing that my aged pensioner mother now owns a Wii, yet I - apparently a hard-core gamer - still have not bothered.

Nick Novitski said...

Do you mean to say that it has online multiplayer? That's pretty schway, if so.

I don't see why you can't play cooperative with an emulator. You'd just need enough controllers and usb ports for everyone. I've played Secret of Mana with other folks on my computer before, and it worked out great. Plus, you get the fast-forward button, to skip past every boring pause and utterly destroy any carefully arranged sense of pacing! Woo!

Greg Tannahill said...

Online multiplayer Secret of Mana on the Wii? Not likely. Even if they had it, you'd need, like, a World War II code book to actually enter all the 16-digit passcodes necessary to find other humans and connect to them.

No, the co-op is local only. You'll need to have actual real people in your lounge room, which means either friends, kidnap victims, or sex workers.

And Grant, I'm sorry I didn't have a Dreamcast when they were actually around, but this is at a time when I was still finishing school (as opposed to "working for money") and those things may as well have been frikkin' gold plated considering how much they were going for. They were like the Lost Gaming Console of Croesus or suchlike; to get one from a store you'd need a fedora and a whip, and after you got it you'd probably get chased by Nazis.

And when I tell you how good SoulCalibur is, and you tell me how you were there first on your Dreamcast, I tell you you're a latecomer and that SoulEdge was where it was at. The Dreamcast got the sequel.

Grant said...

Oh I had Soul Edge/Soulblade beforehand, and liked it a bunch, but Soul Calibur was simply so much better. And it was not only incredibly fun to play, it was gorgeous.

Greg Tannahill said...

I tip my hat to you, sir; you have weathered my gaming elitism with applomb.

Yes, SoulCalibur was better. And I do miss playing it with the Dreamcast controllers where those little sprites of your character would pop up on the controller screen. Little chibi Kilik was the greatest.

In fact, what I really miss is the concept of controller screens. Oh, the local multiplayer you can do when you're able to hand out player-specific info.

Grant said...

I always find it interesting with long-running gaming franchises to determine where they hit their peak.

I'd argue Sonic the Hedgehog peaked with game #2, for example, and Mario with Super Mario 64. Doom's best iteration was the original. And so on.

Greg Tannahill said...

Doom 2 edged out Doom 1 simply by being the same game with more features and better level design. I loved Super Mario 64 but the DS remake of it is clearly superior to the original in every conceivable way.

With SoulCalibur all my best time was spent with SoulCalibur 2, largely by dint of it having the best fleshed-out single player experience and a finely balanced multiplayer. SC4 has, to my mind, better multiplayer but the single player experience is deeply lackluster.