The name of seiken densetsu 3 may not say anything to most old school gamers who have had a Super NES in their house. But ultimately the title of Secret of Mana will mean something to them, especially if they are lovers of the good RPGs of yesteryear.
The Super Famicom, the name by which the Super Nintendo was known in Japan, has a huge catalog of games in this genre that is much broader than the one we knew on this side of the planet.
This console, being originally from Japan, enjoyed many more releases than we saw officially here in America and other continents.
So there is a considerable number of titles that, in theory, never left the Japanese island and where the language barrier made it impossible for many to enjoy these games.
With the advancement of technology and the development of the internet along with emulation techniques it was possible to test some titles with local translations made by and for the fans.
But the reality is that a good part of the RPGs marketed in Japan, many of them produced by Square Soft, never had an official release for Western countries.
However, curiously it is only now, several decades later, that we begin to see some games gradually arrive in the most unexpected ways.
Seiken Densetsu 3 from the Super NES comes to PlayStation Plus as Trials of Mana in the form of a remake
Originally the game was developed by Square Soft, with the creator of the series Koichi Ishii as a team, directed by the legendary Hiromichi Tanaka and produced by Tetsuhisa Tsuruzono, using as a base a series of works by the respected mangaka Nobuteru Yūki, with music by Hiroki Kikuta.
Although the game was only published in Japan in 1995, under the title of Seiken Densetsu 3, four years later the first unofficial translation for the community dedicated to the use of emulators emerged. This conjunction of factors ended up turning the title into an original cult classic for the Super Famicom that gained a strong reputation among RPG fans.
Time passed and finally in 2017, the game had its first official release as part of the Seiken Densetsu Collection compilation for Nintendo Switch, finally arriving in America in 2019 under the name Collection of Mana.
Trials of Mana, as the game was called, began to be released for different platforms now as a 3D remake around 2020 as a separate game for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4.
Now PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium subscribers can enjoy this game at no extra cost. Now that they know the story behind it, they have an extra reason to play it.