Magical Vacation

If the screenshots of this game look familiar, that’s because their style bears an uncanny resemblance to the SNES RPG, Secret Of Mana. From the pastel hues to the character design, Magical Vacation smacks of the Squaresoft hit. The reason for this? It’s being developed for Nintendo by none other the Squaresoft off-shoot team, Browny Brown. You may remember, that a couple of issues ago, we brought you the first shots of this title along with the news that a team had broken away from Squaresoft and was developing its first title for the GBA.

By some small miracle, the graphics are on a par with (if not better than) Secret of Mana 2. You can expect a great storyline to complement the action, but Nintendo hasn’t said what sort of combat system it’s using. You would expect the battle sequences to follow the real-time system of Secret of Mana, after all, most of Browny Brown was closely involved with that series’ coding and development.

The only other thing that we definitely know, is that the playable characters take the form of magician’s kids, who are plunged into a parallel dimension against their will. They must work together and combine their magical powers to get back home. As soon as we get more news on this exciting development, you can be sure that we’ll pass it on.

From new developers Brownie Brown, made up of ex-Square employees who previously worked on the Secret of Mana series, comes the action RPG Magical Vacation (to be published by Nintendo). After being attacked by monsters, three magic school students are transported to a different world called the Plain of Light. There they'll hone their magic skills while battling evil. It's due this year in Japan.