Secret of Mana’s Deleted Path

February 28, 2021

One of the biggest discoveries is a vast area excised from the Gaia Lowlands. In the final game, traveling north of Neko’s takes you directly to the Water Palace, but it seems that originally there was a much longer journey. Furthermore, it seems that the path continued to the west and then south to Gaia’s Navel. The final game does not have a direct path between the Water Palace and Gaia’s Navel, though this makes for more compelling game design. Also, leaving such a long area would have given the early game even more weight than it already has. We’ll explore this deleted path below:

First, there’s the square river circled above. We saw an overhead view of this on the First Areas page. Screenshots exits of what appears to be two phases of development:

From this point it’s less certain, but the best candidate for the next area is here. It appeared in both print and video promotions.

The island at the top is this one:

The island to its right; note the different whip mechanic, similar to Final Fantasy Adventure:

This is the only shot I’ve seen area of this area. It could be on the way back to the square river:

Same thing here:

Next is an area west of here (we think) that also showed up in a many promotional shots:

The game was like supposed to have a means of water travel, as evidenced by beaches throughout the world.  If so, I imagine this was a place to launch:

Queue mentions this bird’s resemblance to the Garuda from Final Fantasy Adventure:

Sheexy from the Seikens followed up with this art from the Final Fantasy Adventure manual:

We’re least confident in this one, but we have to try…