Secret of Mana
The scores for 1993's "Secret of Mana", originally released as "Seiken Densetsu 2" in Japan, and 1995's "Trials of Mana", originally released as "Seiken Densetsu 3" in Japan, were both composed by Hiroki Kikuta. Kikuta was originally chosen for "Secret of Mana" after Kenji Ito, who was originally slated for the project, was forced to drop it due to other demands on his time such as the soundtrack to "Romancing SaGa". It was Kikuta's first video game score. Both games were produced for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Despite difficulties in dealing with the hardware limitations, Kikuta tried to express in the music of "Secret of Mana" two "contrasting styles", namely himself and the game. The purpose of this was to create an original score which would be neither pop music nor standard game music. Kikuta worked on the music for the two games mostly by himself, spending nearly 24 hours a day in his office, alternating between composing and editing to create an immersive three-dimensional sound. Rather than create MIDI versions of his compositions and rely on the sound engineers to create the sampled instruments (like most game music composers of the time), Kikuta made his own samples that matched the hardware capabilities of the Super NES so that he would know exactly how the pieces would sound on the system's hardware instead of having to deal with audio hardware differences between the original composition and the Super NES. Kikuta considers the score for "Secret of Mana" his favorite creation. His compositions for "Secret of Mana" and "Trials of Mana" were partly inspired by natural landscapes, as well as music from Bali. In addition to the soundtrack albums for the two games, 1995, Kikuta released an experimental album of arranged music from the two installments, titled "Secret of Mana +", which features one 50-minute-long track.