Countdown To Inside Pulse V3 – Retrograding Preview

Like most of you, we’re waiting for the WII. Not just for the wackiness of the control and the hope for originality and innovation up the wazoo, but also because of the promise of downloadable 8 and 16 bit games for the system. Sega Master System and Genesis, Turbo-Grafx, and of course the NES and Super Nintendo systems will all have classic games revived in their original form on the Wii. If you’re a retrogamer, the Wii is shaping up to be the system for you.

To kick off the launch of Retrograding, six of our staff decided to list five games that we would adore being able to download on the system. No more blowing into old carts or going “Where the hell do I hook up the RF switch on these new fangled TV’s.” Take a look at our personal picks, and enjoy this first of many trips down memory lane.

Publisher: Tecmo
System: NES

Seriously, do I have to explain why playing Tecmo Bowl on the Wii will be a blast? Singletary, Taylor, Payton, dude, this is football. Madden might get the hype, but Tecmo Bowl is the truth. No other sports game has captured my imagination or fired my competitive spirit the way Tecmo Bowl did and does. So, here’s another question: Would you play any old Madden when you don’t have to? Me, neither.

System: NES

If River City Ransom and Final Fight had a cute little NES baby, Mighty Final Fight is what it would look like. A super deformed take on my favorite genre, the side scrolling beat’em up, MFF is a great little diversion. Sure, I might have bought it at the time so that I could finally play as Guy at home, but now I have come to realize that the two button control and big head/ little body art style make MFF the best beat’em up of the 8 and 16 bit eras, only eclipsed by Three Dirty Dwarves and Guardian Heroes on the Saturn.

In a world full of falling piece puzzle games, Yoshi’s Cookie is a different animal. Starting with a small block of differently shaped cookies, the player has to manipulate them by column and row in order to match them up and make the cookies disappear before new cookies come in from the top and side. Unique, simple, and fun, Yoshi’s Cookie was an overlooked classic when it was originally released. Don’t overlook Yoshi’s Cookie again.

Admit it, you have wasted hours upon hours on this relatively simple adventure, trying to advance through its treacherous stages. I know it’s not the cool thing to say, but I always liked Lolo more than Zelda. The little blue puffball might not be as “cosplayable”, but the beeping soundtrack and devilishly clever stages made me desperate to traverse Lolo’s depths… er, heights. Anyway, While everyone else is throwing LoZ’s boomerang and burning bushes, I’ll be looking for that last heart with my boy Lolo.

Capcom’s best Little Nemo game was this NES gem, although the arcade game did look better. A classic platformer on the classic platformer system, Little Nemo might not seem like the kind of game someone would be in a rush to play again, but there was something beautiful and pure about Little Nemo for the NES, something that is sadly lacking in most games. The music and graphics were good for their time, but it was most definitely the gameplay that made Little Nemo one of my favorite platformers of all time. By tossing sweet, sweet candy to certain critters, most notably the swank frog, you could make them fall asleep so that you could take control of them. This simple mechanic has been a platform staple ever since, most notably in the equally swank Kirby games.

Publisher: Taxan
System: NES

I can’t remember the last title Kid developer that made it stateside, but I can certainly remember the first game they ever made. Same too with Taxan, although they went out of business long ago, they gave us Burai Fighter, Mystery Quest and Fist of the North Star. Out of both companies games. G.I. Joe remains my favorite.

G.I. Joe remains one of the greatest 8 bit video games ever made. Hawk, Duke, Snake Eyes, Blizzard, Captain Grid-Iron and Rock N’ Roll are sent on a six stage mission to stop Cobra: a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world. Each character played quite differently from one another, and you were able to take out some very familiar enemies from weekday afternoon TV. Gone are the days of the classic 2-D side scrolling shoot ’em ups, which is too bad because even as late as 1996, I was still popping this cartridge into my venerable Nintendo Entertainment System and plugging away on Cobra Buzz Boars, Road Pig, and even Cobra Commander himself. Simple gameplay that still manages to be challenging even today. Damn that Destro! G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero proved that a licensed game could still be exceptionally well made and fun to boot. Kid would eventually get their follow up, G.I. Joe: The Atlantis Factor published by Capcom. Alas, it wasn’t as good as the original, but at least Storm Shadow was a playable character.

Release Date: 11/88
System: NES

Castlevania II still remains my favorite of all Castlevania games. It was long, it was difficult, and it arguably the most open ended game for the beloved 8 bit system, seeing as Zelda still forced you to complete most dungeons in order and only gave you one ending.

Simon’s Quest gave you the chance to play as Simon Belmont once again. Whip, boomerang and flaming holy water in hand, Simon set forth to find the pieces of Dracula he has scattered to the four winds after slaying him in the first game. But wait? Why would a vampire hunter WANT to bring Dracula back? Well, before dying, the lord of the undead placed a curse on Simon, forcing him to spend every evening fending off horrible monsters and gruesome beasties. The only way to rid himself of the curse is to reassemble Dracula and slay him for a second time.

Until Symphony of the Night, Simon’s Quest was the longest and most intense out of the Castlevania games. It’s amazing it took nearly a decade for Konami to recapture the same magic it had with C2. Simon’s Quest is also one of the few games where the unhappy ending is considered canon for the continuity of the series, for Simon Belmont dies at the end of the game in two of the three endings. This was a huge deal for gamers at the time for the good guys always came through unscathed and got the girl. Here Simon just got a coffin and some worms. Sure if you got the “best” ending, Simon lived, but the best ending in the original Shadow Hearts isn’t considered canon for the series either.

We’re going to ignore the very censored version that would eventually make it to the NES. Instead, we’re focused on the original and far beyond its time version only available on computers way back when I was just barely hitting the double digits category in age.

Maniac Mansion is one of the very first point and click games and it still remains arguably the best. It is bizarre, funny, depraved, and has one of the greatest plots in the entire history of video gaming.

Twenty years ago a strange meteor crashed into the house of the Edison family. Now the inhabitants, Dr. Fred, Nurse Edna, Weird Ed, and Dead Ted have become slaves (and just slightly batty) to the twisted tentacle that was trapped inside. In order to appease the murderous meteor, the Edison family must kidnap innocent teenagers and feed their brains to the alien rock currently on the intergalactic most wanted list via the handy dandy Zom-B-Matic. Dr. Fred made one fatal mistake though: he kidnapped alround popular diva Sandy, girlfriend of one Dave Miller. Now Dave, and two of his friends that you choose from a cadre of allies at the beginning, must brave the Edison household and free Sandy and thwart the schemes of the Meteor via numerous means, including such acts as blowing up a hamster in a microwave, finding your way past a deadly sentient purple tentacle, and/or forming a rock band with a more emo and certainly less psychotic tentacle, and editing the Meteor’s very poorly written novel so that publishers will touch it.

I told you it was a weird game.

Highly opened ended, Maniac Mansion never plays the same way twice. With a bevy of teenagers to choose from, each with their own personal strengths and weaknesses, saving Sandy never gets old or boring. Maniac Mansion remains one of the greatest games ever made, and the Revolution NEEDS to offer it as a downloadable so that future generations of gamers can experience and fall in love with it all over again.

Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release Date: 1993
System: Sega Genesis

I can count the number of well-made games that EA developed on one hand. One finger actually. And this it. Granted though, EA took this bizarre concept and made it into the best American style football game I’ve ever played. How sad is it that 13 years later, EA has yet to make a sequel for it and instead churns out poorly made game after poorly made game like people would actually buy something due to a marketing blitz instead of focusing on quality. Oh wait…

Mutant League Football is just like any other football game. Except for the aliens as players. And the skeletons. And the trolls. And Robots. And genetically modified humans. Of course, we have those now via roids and various other enhancing compounds, but I digress.

The game is played like any other football game. You have two teams and you try to score touchdowns. Except in Mutant League, often people are brutally slaughtered. Or maybe they are knocked onto a mine or into deep space. Or maybe you’ll go for an interception and it’ll turn out the offensive team stuck a bomb in the ball and your plays dies horribly.

MLF managed to be funny yet playable. This was not a one trick pony that you’d laugh at once or twice and then grow amazingly bored with like a lot of satire games of the 16 bit era. If you wanted to play it without the killing farts or the ability to bribe the referee into calling crazy penalties against your opponent, you could. it could be played just like a normal football game. Just your quarterback would still look like it popped out of Ripley’s chest or something.

I was always best with the all alien team, managing to kick a ball and have one of my teammates get it before the opponent could. Speed speed speed. Ah good times, watching my alien plow through a skeletal opponent, or have a pack of my guys sack a troll quarterback and devour him. This my friends, was a good sports game and is probably my second favorite football title after the NES Tecmo Bowl.

Without any room for debate, Baseball Stars is the greatest baseball video game ever made. It wasn’t until just a few years ago that EA, Sega, 989 and the like were even touching on some of the ideas first put into this game, and SNK made Baseball stars 17 years ago!

Baseball stars allowed you to create entire new teams from scratch. You could hire new players, but first you had to earn money. You earned money by winning games. Your characters could also become better players as the season went on. You could even make and play an entire team of ladies!

For its day, Baseball Stars had amazing graphics, and some fun computer generated teams to play against. There was everyone from the MLB’s most famous players all grouped onto one team to Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff being the stand outs of the all monster team. The controls, music, and atmosphere of the game was pure and simple fun. You could tell SNK put their heart and soul into this game and I’ve yet to see anyone who has picked it up not fall completely in love with it. It’s amazing that a venerable sports game like Baseball Stars still holds up against the modern franchises of today. That says something about the quality of today’s stuff or the quality of yesteryear’s gaming experience… maybe both.

Publisher: Nintendo
System: SNES

Out of all of the games that the Wii may offer right out of the gate, none has me more excited then Uniracers. Uniracers was a fantastic racing game where you took unicycles around a track racing around a cyclical track. This, if I recall correctly, was the first racing game to introduce any type of tricks or stunts you could perform for points. The tricks not only gave you points, they also gave you a speed boost too.

Speaking of which, my god this game is fast. Even though there’s never more then two unicycles on the course at a time (16 total to choose from, each with varying stats) it’s an incredibly intense experience. Furthermore, unlike other racing games (*coughMarioKart*) Uniracers rewards you for beating the pants off of an opponent whether it be the computer or another human as there’s no cheap catch ups or items. If you get passed, it’s because you screwed up.

The other fantastic part of Uniracers is the 40 different tracks. Each track has subtle changes to it offering different ways to balance your unicycle while offering tons of different opportunities to pull off tricks to speed ahead. The original game was way ahead of its time offering a ghost mode, four different difficulties, trick levels, and tons of replay value. This is one of the most entertaining multiplayer games out there. Here’s hoping Nintendo puts it out day one with the console.

Original Release Date: 12/91
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
System: SNES

Super Castlevania IV was my first non-bundled Super Nintendo game. To say that it’s an utterly sick game is a bit of an understatement. Super Castlevania IV is a beautiful game that is probably my favorite of the traditional Castlevania games (never played any of the apparently super awesome Castlevania games that never made it to the US). I miss Castlevania IV. I miss the simplicity of the series. I miss the joy of a simple life bar. I miss the fact that you used to play with a whip and didn’t have to worry about equipping armor or collecting souls. Super Castlevania IV is a must have game for the Wii on day one.

Developer: Sega
Publisher: Capcom
System: Sega Genesis

Columns is my favorite puzzle game, no exceptions. As great as Tetris is, Columns is just that much better. I sincerely believe that Columns is really the first game that can legitimately be considered a work of art. There really isn’t too much to talk about with Columns. Jewels fall, and you’ve got to connect three in a row of the same color. As you break jewels more fall and they begin to combo.

A stand alone version of Columns hasn’t been released since the GBA’s Columns Crown which is by no means a bad game, but it’s a tad muddled with all of the new stuff. Columns is a perfect game to me. It’s the type of game I could play for hours on end and never get sick of. Bring it out.

Original Release Date: 9/1/00
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
System: Nintendo 64

It figures that it isn’t Lucard or Williams writing about how awesome Pokémon Game X is. Pokémon Puzzle League is Tetris Attack/Panel de Pon with all of those cute little monsters that fit in your pocket, and their various anime counterparts. Everyone is there including Team Rocket, Ash, Brock, Misty, and a bunch of trainers I don’t remember. The real draw of this game is the utterly awesome 3D version of Panel de Pon. It’s absurdly entertaining and adds a whole new dimension to the game.

I’m not going to lie. I’ve found myself getting back into Pokémon for the first time since the Red/Blue days. Bringing Pokémon Puzzle League out with the Wii (with maybe some redubbed voices since they were a tad garbled on the N64 cart) wouldn’t be a smart idea. It’d be a really smart idea.

Original Release Date: 6/1/98
Developer: Imagineer
Publisher: THQ
System: Nintendo 64

Poor Quest 64. You were a pretty awful RPG back in the day. Why am I bringing you on to the Wii though? Well for one, you were the first (and only) RPG for the N64 for a long time. Secondly, even though you were billed as the next Legend of Zelda and disappointed pretty much every person who played you, I enjoyed you a lot more then Ocarina of Time. Plus, you might have the single goofiest hero of all time in Bryan. Bryan had a reverse rat tail that bobbed when you ran around. So yeah, I hope I can see this game on the Wii as it’s my favorite “bad game” probably of all time.

Publisher: Nintendo
System: SNES

Alright, lemme break it down for you. All of those RPG’s you’ve been playing for the past several years? Crap, all of them. No originality, no sense of humor, all about serious, medieval or futuristic bullshit, all of them thoroughly lame. You want a REAL RPG? You’re talking Earthbound.

Dig this: your main character, Ness, is a kid in the town of Eagleland who watches a meteor crash land near his house. For some reason, this causes the local wildlife to become hideously (yet humorously) deformed, not to mention hostile. So, after meeting a prophet from the future (who’s the size of an insect), and fighting off an evil alien invader, your future buddy gets squashed like… um, a bug, leaving you and your Cracked Bat to save the world alone.

Sound silly? Damn right it is. And that’s just the beginning.

Now, while I don’t think it’s entirely fair to say Earthbound is the greatest RPG ever created or anything, I DO think it’s fair to say that by missing it, you’re doing yourself a great disservice. See, Earthbound plays like just about every RPG around, it looks retro and out of date, and it’s not super-high on the innovation scale, but there is one thing that can be said about it that is undeniable: you’ve never played anything that treats the subject matter as ridiculously as it does. And that’s Earthbound’s claim to fame: it’s flat-out disrespectful to itself and the genre, it’s absolutely hysterical at points, and from a pure presentation standpoint, few games are as lovingly crafted as it is.

In short, if you’ve not played Earthbound, you owe it to yourself to do so, and more importantly, Nintendo owes it to you as well.

Human Entertainment. For those that know, the name is well respected, and for good reason: while they were in business, they gave us some of the most interesting games around. Wrestling game fans will immediately recognize the name Fire Pro Wrestling, and horror fanatics can immediately name Human as the makers of Clock Tower. But they’ve made a lot more than just games from those franchises, and while a good portion of those games never made it stateside, those that did were certainly interesting.

Which brings us to S.O.S. The concept is certainly something different: you’re one of several people on a boat (you’re given a choice of character in the beginning of the game) that has just suddenly had an accident, and has tipped over. It’s now up to you to find a way to escape this predicament before the boat sinks.

What makes the game interesting is the fact that the game isn’t presented in the way most would expect. Not only are you on a time limit, but the game acts independently of whatever you’re doing to tip the boat in various directions. In other words, while some games will basically modify the environment to assist in your progress, S.O.S. modifies the environment however it sees fit, so you may well find yourself stuck somewhere until the boat rocks again in a few minutes. Annoying? Absolutely. Realistic? You bet. Also, you can’t die until the time limit runs out; instead of dying from large falls, you simply lose some time recovering, which is actually MORE of a motivation not to die; losing a life sucks, but losing twenty minutes off of your time to escape REALLY hurts.

Hopefully Capcom will see fit to send this our way as soon as possible (seeing as how they basically bought Human out and all). Frankly, I can almost guarantee you’ve never played a game like this (the closest concept I can think of is Disaster Report), and you really should. For all you “games as art” fans out there, this is definitely something for you, and even if you’re just looking for something different, S.O.S. is just what the doctor ordered.

Publisher: Enix
System: SNES

God bless Enix. Long before they became the second half of a hyphenated name, they were one of the greatest developers/publishers of video games people didn’t play. With the exception of the Dragon Quest/Warrior franchise, most of their titles that saw stateside release were oddball titles that were hard to pin down, either because they were incredibly cross-pollinated genre-wise, or because they were really weird conceptually.

EVO falls into the second category.

Basically, the idea goes like this: you start out the game as a fish, and you evolve from there by eating other animals and upgrading your body parts. So it’s kind of an action/RPG, but I can’t honestly recall ever playing a game where you could upgrade your own body parts as you saw fit (unless you count Seventh Cross Evolution, and you really shouldn’t). Want bigger jaws? Eat some animals, then buy them. Want a horn? It’s right there in the evolutionary soup. How your creature evolves is entirely up to you, whether on land or in the sea, and the fact that you could completely evolve whatever you wanted however you wanted made this one of my personal favorites for a long, long time.

It’s certainly a shame a sequel never saw the light of day, but that doesn’t mean this is out of your reach. EVO is definitely a title that should find its way into the consoles and hearts of gamers upon re-release. Don’t let it pass you by again.

Ever want to play God? Now you can! Shame it’s such hard work.

I know I said it before during the E.V.O. screed, but I’mma say it again: for those of you who totally missed out, back in the day, Enix was the maker of some the greatest games no one has ever played. If the write-up of E.V.O. didn’t prove this, well, maybe this one will. See, while E.V.O. was a great game, it had limited appeal. How many people want to play as a fish through the stages of evolution? I’d imagine not too many. So, yeah, I can understand if you might be put off by such a concept.

But with Actraiser, this is not the case. Actraiser combines two great concepts (micromanagement ALA Populous and platforming goodness) into one fantastic game. What’s not to love?

Basically, you control… uh, you, only you’re a God. An evil demon has sealed all of your power, and your people have been driven from their land, so it’s up to you to take it back, kicking ass all the way. Half of the game is set up as a side-scrolling platformer, where you run around in demon lairs beating the crap out of various enemies, so as to clear out said lairs so your people may live on the land these demons inhabit. The other half of the game sees you playing God, dictating where your people should build their land, creating miracles to help them out, and killing demons that try to hurt them. You’re also able to fly your angelic assistant around to shoot down the various demons, sort of like an overhead shooter. This continues until you wipe out all of the demon summoning circles across the land, and then you dive into another monster lair to repeat the process. By properly managing your people, you also go up in levels, which makes you stronger when it’s time to fight through the various dungeons (the more people who have faith in you, the stronger you become as a God). Faith is a powerful thing, man.

So, micromanagement ALA Populous, side-scrolling action ALA Zelda II, some overhead shooting for laughs, all in one game. What’s not to love? Do yourself a favor and give this puppy (and the sequel, too!) the love is deserves when the opportunity first presents itself. You’ll be glad you did.

Publisher: Capcom
System: SNES

Many many years ago, Capcom came up with one of their more amusing ideas: Ghouls and Ghosts. Essentially, you played as Sir Arthur, a guy in an easily destroyed suit of armor, who was on a quest to save his girlfriend from… Satan or something, if I remember right. Not important, never mind. Anyway, throughout your quest, you are bedeviled by, among other things, flying demons who are out to kill you. These demons are completely unimportant to the main quest, and really mean next to nothing in the grand scheme of things; they’re just there to annoy you, nothing more.

So leave it to Capcom to take one of these uninspiring monsters and turn him into the hero of a platformer. Genius, says I.

Demon’s Crest was the story of Firebrand, a demon with the desire to retake his place as demon supreme (more or less), and his adventures in getting to this point. Now, for those that missed the title the first time around (and I’d assume there would be a lot of you, as the game didn’t sell too well as I recall), this might sound like nothing new or exciting, but back in the Genesis/SNES days, playing as a villain was a rare thing, as most of your player characters were either heroes or eventually BECAME heroes. Firebrand was a great character because he was evil, and unapologetically so. Playing as the bad guy was a pretty neat concept, and even if the guys you were fighting were bad guys too, it didn’t matter so much because hey, YOU’RE still evil.

This was really impressive when I was a kid, I swear.

The other thing that made Demon’s Crest a great game was that it was incredibly challenging. Not “hard” or “impossible” or “cheap”, challenging. There were patterns to memorize, and items to use, but you REALLY had to buckle down and learn the game to make progress, and the game felt all the better for it. In addition, Demon’s Crest has all sorts of RPG elements, lending to it a pre-dated “Castleroid” feel, as DC predates SOTN by several years.

In short, if you’re a fan of old-school Metroid or modern Castlevania, Demon’s Crest is the game for you. If you’re a fan of highly challenging platformers, Demon’s Crest is the game for you. And if you’re a fan of Capcom back before they were all “RESIDENTEVILRESIDENTEVILrehashed2DfighterRESIDENTEVIL”, then Demon’s Crest is the game for you. What else needs to be said?

Publisher: Hudson
System: TurboGrafx 16

Bonk’s Adventure is one of the earliest games I can remember being obsessed about, but not in the typical way. When I was a young lad, I used to buy video game magazines from the UK, as I found them witty, and was weird like that. Also, they often came with demo discs, something US magazines didn’t start until way later, but I digress. In one issue of GamesMaster, I remember seeing a side-scroller called PC Kid. Dodgy name aside, I was fascinated with the concept. A little cave-boy who bashes dinosaurs with his skull? Sweet! Over time, I learned that this game was released in North America with the rather-obvious name of Bonk’s Adventure. However, I never owned a TurboGrafx, and as my closest encounter with one was staring at the box in the display case at the local Towers, we were not fated to meet, yet.

Fast forward about a decade or so, and I’m working in the back room of a well-known chain of “thrift” stores. In the back one day I spy a TG-16 and a stack of games. I see Bonk! I decide, corporate policy be damned, I’m not going to let this slip my grasp. A quick discussion with one of the drivers and it’s stashed in the electronics section for my retrieval after work. I was vibrating on the bus ride home, I do declare.

The game itself, while simple in execution, is a marvel of a platformer. You have two basic moves, jump, and headbutt. With these two basic functions, one must travel through five worlds to face the final boss, King Drool, and save the Princess. Yes, another princess, hush. Power-ups were limited to meat, vegetables, and hearts. Veggies give points, and nothing more, hearts refill your energy, and eating meat allows you to go buck wild and kill everything. Not that you don’t usually, but you’re faster! In essence, Bonk is one of those near-perfect platformrs, which has sadly been confined to an almost forgotten system. With the announcement of Hudson’s participation in Nintendo’s download service, it may finally achieve the stature it deserves in video game history.

Original Release Date: 10/19/94
Developer: Sonic Team
Publisher: Sega
System: Sega Genesis

I’d heard about the Shining Force games for years from friends and loved ones, but it wasn’t until I found the first two games in a used bin at a major video rental chain that I had a chance to try them out. The first game, I really liked. I’d been a fan of turn-based strategy ever since I first played X-Com, and this fantasy variation on it was a real treat. After beating it, I popped in the second, expecting more of the same.

I never would have thought how much better it was.

Some of the best graphics I’ve ever seen on a 16-bit system, and better than some of the 2D stuff seen in the 32-bit gen. Wonderful music, creative scenarios, and a deep storyline. It’s truly one of the pinnacles of the Sega Genesis, a unique, powerful game. An RPG to show people that there’s more to the genre than Shitty Game Series. It’ll be a treasure to have a whole new generation exposed to it.

I knew nothing about this game when I bought it, except that there were big robots in it. To this day it is one of my favorite games ever, and one of the main reasons I keep an SNES within reach at all times.

The storyline was simple and hackneyed. You’re a futuristic Marine, caught in a war over materials that no one’s sure which side is right, or who even started it. But the game, oh the game surpassed itself, truly proving that good gameplay doesn’t need a complex storyline. Bold, beautiful sprites, aim-able weapons (it was a treat not to have to shoot dead ahead, once upon a time), and tight controls make this one of the true hidden gems of the SNES. There were two Japan-only sequels, but I doubt we’ll ever see them over here, so it’s up to Cybernator to stand proud and represent.

Now, this is one game I want above almost anything else for download; the last game Treasure made for the N64, never released in North America, and supposedly one of the best on-rails shooters ever made. I know it’s cheating a bit to list a game that I’ve never played, but this one looks just too fine.

Finally, we come to an acknowledged classic. Secret of Mana should be high on the list of favourites for anyone who loves action-RPGs. Made by Square in their Super Nintendo heyday, there’s not a single thing about this game that doesn’t impress. From the moving storyline and likeable characters to the beautiful graphics and fast-paced action, this game is a true master piece.

However, none of these facts are the reason why it should be on the Wii’s download service. What is that reason, you may ask? Secret of Mana had a unique and extremely fun multiplayer component, which allowed a second and third player to join in at any time, taking control of one of your AI-powered partners. Having Secret of Mana with on-line multiplayer will be enough to sell the system to some people. As a game, it’s a masterpiece. As a marketing device, it’s genius.