Secret of Mana was originally released as a Super Famicom/SNES title in 1993. In Japan, it is known as Seiken Densetsu 2, but it comes with quite a story, including classic regional confusion and localization nightmares. The first game in the series, Seiken Densetsu, was released for the Game Boy in 1991. When it was brought to North America, they thought giving it a more familiar title would help sales, and it became Final Fantasy Adventure here. Of course, the European release mixed things up even further, retitling it Mystic Quest. A few years later, Square would use that title in North America for a separate Final Fantasy release, but that’s a story for a different game (and one I covered last year in Retro Game Zine 007, available now!).

This was, of course, an era when the world wasn’t instantly connected to each other via the internet. Localization wasn’t quick, it wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t always guaranteed. Beyond just localizing a game’s content, the name of the game itself often saw odd changes when coming and going between regions around the world. Before we get into the specifics of Secret of Mana, let’s walkthrough the general localization process most companies followed in that era.

In the early 90s, many Japanese game companies had US offices to help them handle their business overseas. While it may seem simple to just make a game, send it over, translate it, and be done, it was never quite that easy. There were layers and layers of complications to cut through, and relationships between North American offices and Japanese headquarters weren't always positive or cordial with some companies. Part of the issues came from communication. Heads of offices often needed translators to serve as intermediaries in communication. You couldn’t just pick up the phone in your workday to ask a question, check in on a project, or confirm a little detail. On top of all that, there was the little issue with the significant time zone difference between territories. Before the era of the internet, business was slow, complicated, and almost isolated from each other. The Japanese HQs were the decision-makers. The US offices were subsidiaries trying to take more power and make more decisions, but essentially controlling very little of the creative decisions.

US offices would assess a game’s potential for success in North America during development, considering any changes needed to assets or in-game artwork from a cultural viewpoint, and then determine the likely player interest in its gameplay and difficulty. These would be changes and asks that the original development team could handle, but some teams had artists and designers on the US side who could also handle some of these duties. The problem was that they often didn’t have a say in whether the game would be released, as the decision-makers in Japan had already decided what would be released in the early years. Eventually, companies would have dedicated teams that helped curate which games would be brought over, and they would have multiple in-house translators.

The biggest challenge in localizing a game, especially an RPG, is the game’s story, especially the in-game text. To overly simplify it, Japanese text can convey more information with less space, so when converting those characters into English, you’d need to drastically increase the game’s memory if you tried to convert the language 100%. This is where specialized translators would earn their keep, like Ted Woolsey, who would come in, try to capture the “spirit” of the text, modify the necessary information, and even omit or alter plot points to get it all to fit.

Now, that all seems doable on paper, but there were more difficulties in the standard process. First, developers of the original Japanese games would often wrap up their work, ship the game, then take a vacation and/or move on to their next project. By the time US teams began translating and localizing the game for a new audience, beyond the communication and time zone barriers, planners and producers wouldn’t be as open or excited to revisit old data to answer questions or take on additional work when they were focused on what was ahead. Companies would also want these games ready to go as soon as they could get them done in other territories, so they could begin selling games and making money, which makes sense. So, all of these things created a post-Japanese development crunch that compressed the translation window to just a handful of weeks.

I mentioned Ted Woolsey earlier. He is a video game translator and producer who worked for Square during the localization of Secret of Mana. His first project with the company was Final Fantasy Legend III for the Game Boy, and he would famously be the translator on major games like Final Fantasy VI (III), Chrono Trigger, and Super Mario RPG. His work has been covered in many books, but in both “Chrono Trigger” and “Final Fantasy V,” published by Boss Fight Books, Ted’s work is discussed, and it’s shared that he had just a couple of weeks to complete each project.

For Secret of Mana, the game began life as Seiken Densetsu 2 in Japan, the sequel to Seiken Densetsu for the Game Boy. Seiken Densetsu was Koichi Ishii’s project after Final Fantasy III. While Ishii had originally come up with the concept for the game years before, it wasn’t until 1990 that Square gave him the green light to develop it as a spin-off of Final Fantasy. The game was released as Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden, and even featured the iconic chocobos in its original release. When Square brought the game over to North America, it was rebranded to Final Fantasy Adventure, and when it hit Europe, it was Mystic Quest. The names being different in North America and Europe was not that common an occurrence. It would make things really weird when Final Fantasy Mystic Quest came a few years later, forcing additional regional name changes. Seiken Densetsu’s regional changes mostly removed obvious references to death and religious themes, as was Nintendo of America's normal practice.

Seiken Densetsu 2 would shed the “Final Fantasy” connection and establish itself as its own series, being retitled Secret of Mana in both North America and Europe. Though there was a moment when the US press received previews of the game under the title “Final Fantasy Adventure 2.” So between these two games, worldwide there would be six different titles: Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden, Final Fantasy Adventure, Mystic Quest, Seiken Densetsu 2, Final Fantasy Adventure 2, and Secret of Mana. Once Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was released in North America, it was retitled Mystic Quest Legend in Europe and Final Fantasy USA: Mystic Quest in Japan, muddying up these series’ connections even more. Let’s not worry ourselves about the Final Fantasy Legend series, which had three releases on the Game Boy from 89-91, but were actually the first games in an entirely different franchise, the SaGa series.

Nowadays, game development is a more global process. Localization teams work hand in hand with developers throughout development, and there are entire studios that act as outsourced localization specialists for other companies. A game can see its original vision and identity more accurately translated across Europe and North America, and even in reverse. Many of these classic games have also been retranslated with more accurate scripts, and there are no concerns about memory usage as they are ported to newer hardware. They get to just be the games they were meant to be. These localization hiccups were just growing pains of an industry, and even with the opportunities, I don’t think you could find a single gamer from the early 90s who wasn’t enthralled with these adventures as they were released. It just makes for an interesting history to tell.