Remember opening up your first copy of Secret Of Mana? Those memories are probably quite different, depending on if you lived in Japan, North America, or Europe.

Hazelnut Bastille is a retro-looking RPG with beautiful pixel art. It’s something we’ve been seeing a lot of recently, but Bastille has one thing those other games don’t: Secret of Mana composer Hiroki Kikuta.

Secret of Mana is a broken game that I will always love. Playing through the recent remake forced me to reckon with why that is.

Credited with having some of the best box art of all time, Secret of Mana deserves a remake directly inspired by its original packaging.

When Secret of Mana came out in 1993, it was rightfully praised as one of the Super Nintendo’s best action games thanks to a lovely soundtrack, beautiful spritework, and fun hack-n-slash gameplay. The 2018 remake has ruined all three of these things.

Here’s the Japanese special edition for Secret of Mana. As you can see, it is pretty hot shit. You got your game, your soundtrack, figurines of the three characters, and then a freaking pop-up book with the Mana tree, so you can set the figures next to the tree and recreate the game’s iconic cover art. (And we don’t…

Much like the game’s Mad Mallard, a soldier helmet-wearing waterfowl who lays exploding eggs, the upcoming remake of Secret of Mana is an odd duck.

Today’s announcement of a Secret of Mana remake (out February 15, 2018 for PS4, Vita, and Steam) was welcome news to at least two of us here at Kotaku. To explain why Square’s classic action-role-playing game is so special, we had an impromptu VGCHAT.

Square Enix is remaking Secret of Mana. The beloved role-playing game will be released in North America on February 15, 2018.

When the Seiken Densetsu Collection, the first three games in the Mana series, was released earlier this month in Japan, it did not come with instruction manuals. So Square Enix has decided to change that by releasing them online.

I’ve been playing Super Nintendo games on my Switch all week, and it is a glorious thing.

Some games capture the spirit of this verdant time of year in a way that can’t be matched. The April blossoms, holiday weekend, and unusually warm weather has me thinking of some of my favorite spring time games.

I’m nuts for Secret of Mana. That blend of Final Fantasy RPG gameplay with Zelda-style action combat was the game that made me a fan of what we used to call “Squaresoft” back in the day.

There are few things more satisfying than watching someone tear apart one of your favorite childhood video games.

Hey music/JRPG geeks: Hiroki Kikuta, the composer for Secret of Mana, is doing an AMA over on Reddit right now. "I wanted the song of whales to be almost like a crying voice for the undying mana tree."

Secret of Mana illustrator Hiro Isono recently passed away due to heart failure. May he rest in peace.