Trivia / Secret of Evermore

• Dummied Out:
  • Try using a Game Genie code (with a cartridge or an emulator) to no-clip through walls at the beginning. It is possible to walk back through the closed iris, ready the bazooka, and blow up Carltron. Doing so awards you with 10 EXP and 15 Talons. Omnitopia doesn't trade in Talons; presumably the game considers you to be in Prehistoria during the prologue, despite the graphics, since the developers never expected you to handle any money during it.
  • Judging by the game's code, the Cameilla robot has an attack animation which wasn't used. She hurls herself at the player E. Honda-style, just like she does in the cutscene when you defeat Mungola.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: An SNES cartridge or an emulator is the only way you can play this game. It's never been re-released on any of Nintendo's Virtual Consoles or other online services.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": The appearances of Cecil and several Final Fantasy VI characters for Europeans, since PAL releases of Final Fantasy games were held back for years until VII in '97.
• No Export for You: This game was never released in Japan; it was developed specifically in America for an American audience. However, this led to a long-standing Urban Legend of Zelda that Americans got this game instead of Trials of Mana. In truth, Trials wasn't ported over to America for reasons that had nothing to do with this game's development.
• Stillborn Franchise: Ted Woolsey wasn't involved in this game, but he did meet with the developers and assist with the marketing. Square hated the finished product so much, they fired the whole dev team. According to Woolsey, the team were actually grateful for being laid off, since they had already cut their teeth on a big Square game and could create their own franchises.
  Woolsey: "Unfortunately Evermore does not live up to the vision in Tokyo. They had hoped for a US-flavored, role playing-style game that would sell a million units. A million was really the catchphrase. If it wasn't a million it was a failure."
• Urban Legend of Zelda: The many glitches, coupled with the abundance of missable content, has resulted in many theories about the game: Stuff that wasn't properly documented, items that can't be accessed properly, and others that are very difficult to find.
  • The Magic Gourd, according to Word of God, does nothing. Theories still abound though about what it was intended to do, or whether it does something but the developers just can't remember. The most common theory is that it boosts the power of offensive alchemy, as Magic Attack is the one stat which doesn't have a matching Charm to boost it; the problem with this theory is there is no Magic Attack stat.
  • There are only two alchemy ingredients in the game you can't buy normally: Dry Ice and Meteorites. Meteorites can be purchased in small quantities in a roundabout way, but Dry Ice cannot. (They are used for precisely one formula, Call Up.) Cue rumors about the game having a hidden Dry Ice merchant, with the most widespread one being that there's a hidden alchemist in Ruffleburg's lab, but he only spawns under precise circumstances.
  • The Oracle Bone is rumored to change what certain NPCs say to you. Only one confirmed instance of this occurs in the game, and it's just to make an alchemist give you a formula at the end of the game. Given how arbitrary this seems, cue speculation on other dialogue changes that haven't been documented yet.
  • There was a rumor that the Secret of Evermore story was intended to be much darker than what was released, and that an author named Ed Kann was part of the writing team for the game until he was eventually let go for wanting to make things too dark. An examination of the dates involved (contained in the preceding article) however reveal that it's doubtful that Ed Kann even existed and that the whole story is likely a minor Creepypasta. Additionally, in comments on this article, Secret of Evermore producer Alan Weiss states that if the supposed Ed Kann ever worked for their team, he would have known, as he personally hired every member and there was no such person among them.
  • This game has never been released in Japan; it was developed specifically in America for an American audience. However, this led to a long-standing rumor that Americans got this game instead of Trials of Mana, which was released in Japan just one day before Evermore was released in America. In truth, Trials wasn't ported over to America at the time for reasons that had nothing to do with Evermore or its development. The SNES was already on the way out at the time that Trials and Evermore were released, with the announcement of the Nintendo 64 just a few weeks away. And Trials had so many glitches which needed to be fixed before Square could even think of porting it to the West that they decided it just wasn't worth the trouble.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Pre-production materials and commercials imply that the game was supposed to be moodier than the final product, but this was changed near the end of development.
  • According to Brian Fehdrau, they limited the number of playable characters to reduce complexity, as they felt discouraged by instances in Secret of Mana where they had to reload old saves due to characters getting fatally stuck behind scenery! Looking back, Brian considers it a failure on Square USA's part that they didn't roll the dice and work out the bugs for two AI support characters.
  • In a Nintendo Life interview with Fehdrau, he stated that a sequel was briefly considered upon release, but corporate suits shot it down because the SNES was declining.
  • According to the March 1995 issue of GamePro, there was a planned Japanese release that was supposed to push through a few months after the North American release, but that got cancelled.
  • In the official art and commercial, Omnitopia is depicted as a giant ring-shaped space station that encircles the world of Evermore. But due to time constraints and memory limitations, Omnitopia was simplified to a modest-sized moon colony.

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