It’s St. Patrick’s Day, so why not celebrate with a look back at one of the most verdant games ever, Seiken Densetsu 3? The Mana series has always been the gaming embodiment of the color green — well, except for Final Fantasy Adventure, which was fairly grey for unavoidable reasons — so now I don’t have to worry about people pinching GameSpite today. Although I guess there might be a rumble with some dudes dressed in orange.
This article was credited to Jake Alley in the print edition, and I regret the error. This is entirely the work of Ben Elgin, and don’t you forget it.
P.S., I really can’t believe I have never played this game. What is wrong with me?
Seiken 3 is my equivalent the song that a boyfriend and girlfriend hear when they first date because back in 1996 I became AOL chatroom pals with a girl in the Bay Area over it. A year later my parents and I took a summer vacation there and she and I met in a coffee shop and continued to talk about game and anime stuff. She works in Japan now so to her SD3 is probably just a drop in the bucket, but it’ll always be special to me.
I didn’t even know about this up until about 2003 or so when a friend from school introduced me to emulation (*gasp!*) on PC.
Still, I haven’t gotten around to playing the fan translation … I hope I’ll find the time soon.
Actually… it was quite green if you were playing on an original Game Boy. ;)
Seiken Densetsu 3 is one of those games that was always fun, and it was disappointing that we never got it Stateside. You’d think Square Enix would at least track down the folks that did the excellent translation, give them some money for their work, and put it up on the various download services.
Not-so-interesting sidenote: I found my old save state from ten years prior, and finally finished the game not too long ago. Talk about taking a hiatus from a game…
This has always been right up there with Resident Evil 2 as one of the best pure sequels I’ve ever seen. It’s also interesting to think about how early and mid nineties importers eventually came to inform how the RPG market was viewed and eventually spread to us getting things like, say Thousand Arms, though it’s easy to assign all the credit to FF7. An article for 1up someday, perhaps? Hope yer feeling better Parish.
“well, except for Final Fantasy Adventure, which was fairly grey for unavoidable reasons”
Not if you played it on an original Gameboy! :D
This site couldn’t get any greener if you tried, man.
Unless you cut out physically producing the books or something, which would be bad, carbon footprint be dammed.