Secret of Evermore
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| Secret of Evermore | |
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| Developer(s) | Square USA |
| Publisher(s) | Squaresoft |
| Designer(s) | Doug Smith |
| Release date(s) | September 18, 1995 (N.America) February 22, 1996 (Europe) |
| Genre(s) | Action Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: K-A (Kids to Adults) |
| Platform(s) | Super Nintendo Entertainment System |
| Media | 24-megabit SNES cartridge |
Secret of Evermore, released in North America on September 18, 1995, is a role playing video game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game console. The game was created by Square Co., Ltd.'s new development house, Square USA. Evermore was not met warmly, because many believed it to have been the reason why Seiken Densetsu 3 was not translated or released to the stateside market.
Secret of Evermore's creation was Square, Co. Ltd.'s primary reason for opening Square USA. This new team of developers was responsible for working on the game while their existing American subsidiary Squaresoft operated as normal, handling the translation of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars among other tasks. Squaresoft was also responsible for the marketing of Secret of Evermore.
In February 1996 the game saw release in the PAL territories of Australia and Europe. For the non-English-speaking market, it was translated into the French, German, and Spanish languages.
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[edit] Gameplay
The game shares two major surface similarities with Secret of Mana: It uses a freshly-coded interpretation of that game's ring-based menu system, and it requires the player to control multiple characters one-at-a-time. The player guides both the boy and his apparently shapeshifting dog through Evermore, free to switch between characters and sometimes forced to do so to solve various puzzles.
A unique element to Secret of Evermore is its system of magic. Rather than using a traditional system of collecting magic points and using them to cast learned spells, the boy must, with the help of his trusty dog's nose, find various ingredients that may be used to perform alchemic formulas which the alchemists across Evermore teach him; the rarer the ingredient, the fewer times a particular spell may be cast. Some ingredients are rarer than others, making players turn back to previous areas to collect them in order to cast various spells. With repeated use, alchemy spells go up in level, enhancing their curative, offensive, or support abilities, depending on their use. Spells begin at level zero and can reach a maximum level of nine, and up to eight spells can be equipped at a time. Furthermore, items known as Call Beads can be utilized to summon the various powers of each of Evermore's leaders, usually in the form of a strong offensive spell.
The boy wields four different styles of weapons throughout the game: sword, spear, axe, and bazooka. His Bone Crusher is roughly categorized as the first sword. Each type of weapon has different characteristics; for instance, the spears at a high enough level may be thrown at an enemy across the screen, while the swords and axes can cut swaths of destruction around the boy's vicinity. With the exception of the Bone Crusher, all swords, axes, and spears may cut through vegetation. The boy operates the bazooka for the first battle of the game, but abruptly loses it and only receives it again at Ebon Keep to utilize against the deadliest monsters near the end of the game. Each category of weapon has four versions (one for each world the boy visits), and repeated use of them can increase their levels to a maximum of three, unlocking a new charged attack move with each level. The bazooka has three types of ammunition, each more destructive than the last; no charged attacks are possible, and when ammo runs dry, the bazooka can be swung as a weak club.
Although both the boy and his dog are playable characters for the majority of the game, Secret of Evermore is a single-player game. To remedy that, a member of the emulation community created a patch file that allows for two players to play the game at the same time, one controlling each character à la Secret of Mana.
[edit] Story
The story of Secret of Evermore revolves around an anonymous teenage boy and his dog, whom the player may assign names of up to fifteen characters each (a tremendous amount at the time, when names were typically six characters or shorter). In the beginning of the game, the boy, who has a penchant for B-movies, is leaving with his dog from a matinee in a small town called Podunk, USA. Upon leaving the theatre, the dog begins to chase after a cat in the street. The boy hurriedly follows his best friend, finally reaching a large, abandoned mansion. When the dog begins to chew on some wires in a hidden laboratory, the pair soon find themselves transported to the mysterious world of Evermore.
Throughout the course of the game, the player explores Evermore's main areas, many corresponding to different epochs of Earth's history: Prehistoria is an area with dense jungle and primitive men; Crustacia is a land of pirates; Nobilia remembers the Roman Empire and Ancient Egypt; Gothica draws on the Middle Ages; and Omnitopia is a futuristic space station.
Searching the world of Evermore, the dog's body transforms in a manner that corresponds to the theme of the area in which players find themselves. For example, in the world of Prehistoria, the formerly friendly mutt is transformed into a feral wolf, in the Crustacian/Nobilian region he becomes a jackal, in Gothica he takes the form of a fancy poodle, and in Omnitopia he becomes a robotic toaster dog capable of shooting lasers.
In each of the four areas, the boy will encounter a citizen of Podunk involved in the original experiment gone awry 30 years ago in the same mansion where the boy and his dog were transported to Evermore. The player will learn that the regions are manifestations of those citizens' personal Utopias. The boy's ultimate goal is to escape from this fantasy world and return to his hometown of Podunk.
The game's central themes of a boy and his dog and campy B-movies were dictated from overseas and fleshed out by Square USA, resulting in dialogue and themes uncharacteristically American for any previous console RPG. Due to copyright issues, all of the boy's references to B-movies had to be imaginary (the writers often poked fun at B-movie titles, such as when the boy observes that a gladiator battle reminds him of a scene from Blood, Dirt, Sweat, and Togas). Puns are another common source of humor in the game, such as a fight with a living stained-glass window in Gothica whom the boy calls a "pane in the glass".
[edit] Music
The Game Music was composed by Jeremy Soule and released as an official soundtrack 1995. Particularly of note is the score composed by the revered video game composer Jeremy Soule of Icewind Dale and Morrowind fame. Secret of Evermore's score differed greatly from all previous Squaresoft games by incorporating organic environmental sounds like wind blowing and rain falling into the music utilizing a more mellow tune for an orchestral score that contrasted completely the epic scores of Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy VI.
Because of the limited success of Secret of Evermore Squaresoft produced only a small number of albums, making it to this day the rarest Squaresoft album produced and is highly sought after by collectors.
[edit] Controversy and Seiken Densetsu 3
There is an unfortunately strong misconception among video game fans that this game was released in lieu of an English language version of Seiken Densetsu 3, the follow-up to Secret of Mana. These ill feelings probably stem from titular and mechanical similarities.
The reality is that Secret of Evermore did not have any effect on any translations of Square's Japanese titles. The decision of its parent company, Square, Co. Ltd., to add a new development team to its existing Squaresoft office in Redmond had absolutely no effect on any such translations and did not tie up any of the people involved in translation. It was the parent company's decision not to continue translating titles, including the sequel to Secret of Mana.
Furthermore, Secret of Evermore was not made instead of any new titles in any existing series: Its team was specifically hired to create it and they would not have been assembled otherwise.
On the other hand, one could argue that the release of Secret of Evermore could easily have filled up a release slot that may otherwise have been used by Secret of Mana's sequel. This scenario is what prevented the release of the original Mother title.
[edit] Miscellanea
- The "Secret of" prefix was tacked on shortly prior to the game's release. Until then, it was known simply as "Evermore." It was rumored that Jeremy Soule had written the word on a whiteboard and the team took a liking to it and eventually made "Evermore" the game's name. It was the marketing department's suggestion that the title be tweaked, perhaps to take advantage of those hoping that it was the sequel to Secret of Mana. [citation needed]
- Some of the cast of Final Fantasy VI — namely Terra, Locke, Strago, Mog and Umaro — makes a cameo appearance in the coliseum audience in Nobilia.
- In Ebon Keep, one of the store owners is Cecil Harvey from Final Fantasy IV. As can been seen in the game's soundtrack listing, Ebon Keep's theme is even titled "Cecil's Town." Cecil makes reference to his adventures on the moon, his becoming a Paladin, and his fight against Zeromus in the hopes the player will have heard of him.
- In the same store as Cecil, there are four swords sitting on a table which resemble the four stages of Link's sword in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
- The player can collect the egg of a chocobo, a fictional bird from the Final Fantasy series. It functions as a relic which boosts the boy's hit points.
- In Omnitopia, the hero's dog resembles a toaster oven. If the player stands still for a certain amount of time, toast pops out of the dog's back. Many fans believe that the dog looks very similar to a K-9 from the Doctor Who series.
- At the beginning of the game, when investigating the Professor's deserted mansion, the boy says that he finds "a mummy ... a chainsaw ... and a balloon animal!" This could be an obscure reference to the LucasArts adventure game Maniac Mansion, which contained both a mummy (Dead Cousin Ted) and a chainsaw (hanging in the kitchen among other utensils). Or, this could refer in a roundabout way to the other characters involved in the experiment.
- The protagonist mentions several science fiction films throughout his journey including "It Came from the Swamp" and "Mars Needs Lumberjacks." These are most likely a references to the real films It Came from Outer Space and Mars Needs Women respectively.
