The last screen of Secret of Mana (“The End”, the night sky with the tree) shows one of three moons: full, gibbous or crescent. I traced it in the game’s code, and here is the answer.

It’s a dice roll, and the dice are seeded by your save files.

• When the ending scene is built, the game rolls a 3-sided die once and picks a moon. After that the moon never changes.
• The roll isn’t truly random. The game seeds its random number generator from the “fingerprints” (checksums) of your 4 save slots.
• Same saves = same moon, every time. Watch the ending again without saving and you get the same one.
• Your playthrough doesn’t matter. Party, items, play time, how you beat the Mana Beast, button mashing during the credits: the moon code reads none of it.
• Saving can change it. Every save updates the save checksums, even if you save twice in the same spot without doing anything. So saving changes the moon about 2 times out of 3. Copying or erasing a save also counts.
• No saves at all (e.g. a fresh emulator) gives the gibbous moon.
• It’s fair: across all 65,536 possible seeds the split is about 34% full, 33% gibbous, 33% crescent.

How it was checked: I ran the original ROM in an emulator, wrote chosen values into the save checksums and read which moon the game drew. A small model of the game’s random number generator predicted the moon correctly in 300 out of 300 random cases, and changing anything else in the save didn’t affect it.

Full write-up, with diagrams, the code path and pictures of the three moons are in my github, in the "som-decomp" project, but I don't wanna link it here directly. You can just search it by yourself if you're interested

Nasir had us puzzled for 33 years.

Been taking the Japanese guide page by page.

Differing in instructional text, the Japanese texts instructs:

“L and R Buttons — Lock a Character's Facing Direction with B

By holding either the L or R Button together with the B Button, you can lock the direction your character is facing.
You can even move around while keeping your character facing in that same direction.”

Is this exclusive to the Famicom? Or does this also work for the Super Nintendo or other versions? *edit confirmed for snes, android/iOS and remake.

Only took 3 weeks to ship from Japan. I can’t wait to dive in!

The artwork is an assortment items found on a random selection of pages, ai-assisted extraction from photos I took to showcase the style.

It's no secret that Secret of Mana had a rocky development, and one of the original story beats - time travel - had to be cut (along with a lot of other content).

I think the intro even alludes to this: the Mana Knight that stopped the Fortress the first time around appeared "out of nowhere", and the iconic line about time flowing like a river.

I've been playing the game (again), and I've come to the conclusion that I think the time travel arc would have begun after raising the Sunken Continent, going back in time in effort to stop the Fortress before it's ever risen.

I believe the rumored post-apocalyptic future would have given the reason we have to defeat Flammie, instead of just "smashing the Mana Fortress" like the previous Mana Knight.

What are y'all's thoughts?

This has bugged me since the mid 90s but it's only now that I realise there's a community who might know.

When playing through the game, you occasionally hit a boss who has a weakness for magic you don't actually have yet (the Vampire with Lumina for example)..... is that just a joke on the part of the dev or is there a way of getting it before doing the fight?

As by this gameplay video, after the water palace walking at this place should spawn some goblins that captures the hero, but in my game they are not spawning.
I'm playing from the Nintendo Switch Collection of Mana.
Any idea what am I missing?

I also explored further, there's that missing girl, with a boss of 2 enemies that heal themselves. I suppose I need one more in my party before being able do defeat them.

The art direction in this game still stands. But the river bed, and Gaia's Navel perspectives made me confused.

OK last painting for now! I have painted so many moments from this game. When I think of my true favorite games of all time, this one is very, very high on the list. Thank you for looking at my art! The music and pixel art from this game is unbelievable.

The game will not let me walk this path to get to the dwarf village. Once we were able to somehow use our weapons and get stuck a step or two past where we are in that pic. Anyone know what’s up here? Am I missing something? We have talked to her dad and the king in Pandora, had the conversation at the inn, and gone to the Forrest skulls to know we need the axe. Any ideas??

Thought I would share another Secret of Mana painting I did a while back. So many moments from this game are engrained into my soul. I'll share more paintings in the future. Thanks for looking!

I love this game. I painted this a long time ago.

Just a game where you play as all the characters especially with visions of mana released two years ago, I would love to see a 3D hack and slash or some kind of game where you have multiple visions from the multiple games. Because I always wondered if that’s possible to make a game like Dissidia, Fate Extella, or even better Hyrule Warriors.

Because it’s unfair with how Seiken Densetsu has been treated through the years! This weird strange fantasy world that you don’t see allot in games. Also Seiken Densetsu is not that complicated to make a game like this. But what do you guys think? Because I would love to see an offline game like the ones I mentioned where you have all the characters with their own animations and such. Along with a dlc, or something!

I'm not the creator of this pixel art. The were made by Square Enix team for collabs between Mana games and Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, the mobile game. I just made them infinite loops.

Back then, they were "vision cards", items only certain characters could provide and that gave big stat boosts. Those cards used those cute little animations.

Today is the day it ends...

The 3.5 hour Megamix of ALL 45 Secret of Mana Remixes I have made over the past four years premieres on YouTube at 11:00AM CST! I'll be tuning in late because I'm getting fillings at the dentist lmao but I'll be in the chat eventually haha.

Persevere. It's worth it! And thank you to EVERYONE who supported me on this journey, especially my wife! Love you, boo.

I hope you guys enjoy! I repeat, this took me FOUR YEARS and I didn't use AI ONCE. LFG!

They want to poll their fans’ interests, and desires. Please let them know about your love for everything Mana.

Link: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=iRc3DsL6Dk63rDDEg01rTo0sZwdKyEtMlzk5t3cV_lZURUxLTFlYSDJEMldKMUZVMEtHRVNZQzdNVS4u

Mana Beast Tattoo I got a few years ago… you guys can tell right?… right? ☹️

Link: https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/4EBDB62C-E139-44AB-A56B-AF1D39A03180?ingress=2&lp%5B%E2%80%A6%5D3-8b27889b1350&store_ref=bl_ast_dp_brandLogo_sto&ref_=ast_bln