Everything I Remember About That Sword

Secret of Mana is one of my favorite Super Nintendo games. The story of the boy, the princess, and the sprite—this weird, epic triangle held together by a sword that shouldn’t have been pulled from its stone—burned itself into my brain in a way most games from that era didn’t. Hiroki Kikuta’s score especially. That music can still locate something specific in my chest if it comes on unexpectedly.

So when Square Enix announced a full 3D remake for PS4, the skeptic in me immediately started making noise. These pixel-era classics carry so much of their power in their limitations—the compression of detail that forces your imagination to complete the image—and there’s always a risk that adding polygons and lighting and proper character models makes explicit what was better left suggested. The remake of a game you love is almost always a referendum on whether nostalgia can survive resolution.

There’s a comparison video running the opening scenes of both versions side by side. The new one has the same soft, rounded 3D look Square Enix has been applying across their recent back-catalogue revisits—somewhere between the Final Fantasy remasters and games like I Am Setsuna or Bravely Default. It’s not surprising and it’s not revolutionary, but it’s good enough. The skeptic went quiet. I’m ready to go back in.