Secret of Mana 2.1: the rom hack adds six difficulty modes

The Secret of Mana rom hack, which overhauls Square's action-RPG classic released on the Super Nintendo in 1993, received a major update on July 20, 2026 on romhacking.net. The project's biggest addition is a choice between six distinct difficulty modes, a first for this hack, which until now offered only a single reworked experience.

Players can now pick between Easy (more money and experience against slightly weaker monsters), Normal (as close as possible to the original experience), Hard (tougher monsters for a harsher challenge), Impossible (for those who enjoy pain), Turbo (removing stamina recovery time to chain attacks), and Turbo: Hard, combining the two most extreme modes.

Beyond the difficulty modes, this 2.1 version also brings boss AI improvements, a reworked Speed Up spell, and above all the ability to name characters using nine letters with mixed case and symbols, a feature fans of the original game had been requesting for years.

The full patch, in the usual format for SNES rom hacks, is available for direct download on the project's romhacking.net page; players who have never applied a patch to a ROM before can follow this step-by-step guide to get started without any trouble.

Source: RomHacking.net