Posted in: Games, Square Enix, Video Games | Tagged: Legend Of Mana, Square Enix, Yoko Shimomura

Composer Yoko Shimomura Talks 30 Years On The Mana Series

Square Enix has posted a new retrospective piece with composer Yoko Shimomura as they discuss working on the Mana series. Shimomura has been working on the series for three decades, providing a lot of the music for several titles, including the remastered release of Legend Of Mana that happened last month. You can read the full blog at this link as we have a snippet of the interview below to give you an idea of what they chat about.

What do you remember most about working on this soundtrack?

There are quite a few things I remember about working on Legend of Mana. For example, it was the first time in my life that I'd had to write combat songs that sound like the songs that play when a wrestler comes into the ring. One day, when I went to the office, there was a mountain of wrestler theme songs sat waiting on my desk and I thought to myself, "Wait, does this mean they want me to listen to all these?" That day, I listened to those songs all day long.

Then there was also the time we went to Stockholm, Sweden. It was around when it would have Golden Week in Japan – so it would have been May. It was dawn by the time we finished recording, and even though it was May, it was snowing when we left the studio! I remember thinking to myself how incredible it was that it had started snowing just at that moment!

If you could go back in time, what would you change about your work on the Mana games?

I don't think there's anything I'd like to change…probably. It might be a bit much to say this about my own songs, but I don't think I could change the songs to make them better, even if I was to change the melody or make a completely different song.

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