One snowy weekend I rented and played
The Secret of Evermore for SNES start to finish. A fan of its quasi-predecessor
The Secret of Mana (unawares Nintendo of America
screwed the pooch in deciding not to localize
Seiken Densetsu 3), I played Evermore with a ravenous appetite for its every-boy protagonist and film-inspired levels. Battling through the prehistoric past, early civilization and the future, my sidekick ever-changing, seemed such a novel game.
 |
| No big deal, just attacking a bug with a bone. |
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Like a beta-test for
the Secret of Evermore. |
Little did I know Konami had beaten SquareSoft to the punch by three whole years, releasing a little-heralded Action-RPG for the Famicom entitled Esper Dream 2 (エスパードリーム2 新たなる戦い) 1n 1993. Again a victim of Nintendo of America's asinine North American localization, Esper Dream 2 never saw release outside Japan. The plot-- boy travels through varied, book-inspired worlds, his companion ever-changing -- makes Secret of Evermore seem redundant. Obviously, being a Famicom title, the Esper Dream/Evermore ratio isn't 1:1 (Esper Dream's battle mechanics aren't as smooth as Evermore's), but a 11-year-old me (
NERD!) would have much preferred Esper Dream's Library setting over Evermore's B-Movie bonanza.
