Secret of Mana music question

[vnisanian2001]

As most everyone knows, the game was initially planned for the aborted SNES CD-ROM add-on. My question is, do any of the original demos by Hiroki Kikuta exist, which presumably would have been for said aborted add-on?

I wanna hear those demos, if they exist. As beautiful as the soundtrack is, I can only imagine the demos sounded just as beautiful, if not more so.

[Snake]

Nothing that I've heard of or seen. The closest possible thing would be the Secret of Mana + release.  It's a straight, one-track CD release. Continuous, that transitions from one melody to the next, with real instruments, synth, and ambient animal sounds and touch tone phone.  Half of the music is recognizable to me, while the other half feels like unused or reinterpretations of existing tracks.  Some melodies seem to have gotten re-used for Seiken Densetsu 3/Trials of Mana. 

[Chezni]

Hiroki Kikuta probably didn't start work on the soundtrack until after the decision was made to release the game on cartridge. According to this interview Kikuta started work on the soundtrack about a year before the game was released in August of 1993, but the relationship between Nintendo and Sony started to sour in June of 1991, after Nintendo announced their partnership with Philips at 1991's CES show. I suspect Squaresoft decided to release the game on cartridge in late 1991, or early 1992, as they would have tried to give Nintendo and Sony time to reconcile their differences before adjusting their development schedule. And according to this interview initial development on the game probably started in 1990 or early 1991, so it could very well have taken more than a year to edit, and transfer all the pre-existing non-musical content for a cartridge release.

[vnisanian2001]

Sept 2, 2020 11:31:40 GMT -5 Chezni said:

Hiroki Kikuta probably didn't start work on the soundtrack until after the decision was made to release the game on cartridge. According to this interview Kikuta started work on the soundtrack about a year before the game was released in August of 1993, but the relationship between Nintendo and Sony started to sour in June of 1991, after Nintendo announced their partnership with Philips at 1991's CES show. I suspect Squaresoft decided to release the game on cartridge in late 1991, or early 1992, as they would have tried to give Nintendo and Sony time to reconcile their differences before adjusting their development schedule. And according to this interview initial development on the game probably started in 1990 or early 1991, so it could very well have taken more than a year to edit, and transfer all the pre-existing non-musical content for a cartridge release.

Thanks for these interviews. When I posted this question almost a year ago, I had in mind past demo tapes that had resurfaced (Sonic 1 & 2, Return of Double Dragon, Sonic 3D Blast, as some examples). I always find it fascinating to hear VG BGM in their original demo form, before they were transferred to cartridge.