I don’t know how I missed the fact that the release date for the Secret of Mana remake is the 15th of this month, but I did. Today I happened to see a post on Twitter about it being available on Steam upon release.

Image: Square-Enix

I loved this game, partly because there were elements that reminded me of Crystalis. Mostly though, unlike Crystalis, the story was richer and more defined. I already posted earlier how I feel about the music. I look forward to hearing the new soundtrack from the remake.

And I happen to be one of those weird gamers that finds enjoyment in the grind to level up and skill up characters. Why? No idea. It’s just cathartic for me in some way. Having said that, I don’t recall this game requiring it. It’s just something I did.

The downside (for me) is that it’s $40 to pre-order it. Now keep in mind that’s $20 LESS than what I paid for the original SNES cartridge when it hit the shelves for the first time. I realize that’s not a lot of money, but I find it difficult dropping that much on myself – particularly with all what I have going on in the family medically right now. But I would love to binge grind levels on a classic game like this one. Last time I checked, my SNES still worked, but the controllers didn’t.

I did buy the Wii port for this game awhile back, for real cheap – like $10 or less – but shortly after that the gamepad died and I couldn’t find another one. THEN that particularly Wii started to over heat. I’m not sure you’re able to re-download and install a game onto a different Wii.

So I don’t know if I’ll get it right when it comes out. It’s tempting. It doesn’t stop me from being excited about it.

I’m happy to hear that it will still have couch co-op as a feature, so if I do get the game the boys could play with me if they wanted to. You know… that alone may be worth the $40. It’s hard to find games we all like that can be played together rather than solo or online only.

What games do you like to play and what are you looking forward to seeing?