"Circle of Mana" is trademarked by Square-Enix

Just when we thought all hope was lost for the Mana series, Square-Enix surprises everyone and trademarks "Circle of Mana." It seemed like after the debacle that was the World of Mana project (Children of Mana, Dawn of Mana, Heroes of Mana), after which series creator Koichi Iishi left Square-Enix to found his own game design studio Grezzo. It seemed like that was the final nail in the coffin for Mana. Yet here Square-Enix is: trademarking a new title for the series.

Just what exactly could this trademarked title refer to? At this time, nothing is known. However it seems likely that this could be one of three things. Firstly: finally an English localization of Seiken Densetsu 3. The beloved title has never officially seen the light of day outside of Japan and with Secret of Mana seeing release on the Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console and then a graphically-updated version for the iPhone and Android, it would make financial sense to finally give the people what they want and bring that hidden gem out of Japan. It would make more sense for this to be an app for the iPhone, but it also seems plausible that Square-Enix might instead release it on the Nintendo 3DS's Virtual Console. Or perhaps a remake from the ground up of the title, fully taking advantage of the handheld's capabilities. Who knows, maybe even Koichi Ishii's Grezzo could head up the effort as they'd been entrusted with and had done such a spectacular job on Nintendo's own Ocarina of Time 3D remake of the Zelda title.

Another possibility is that this is a localization of the Japanese-only mobile game Friends of Mana with a release for the iPhone/Android app stores. However, this seems a bit unlikely as there is no need to change the title from "Friends of" to "Circle of".

A much more likely scenario is that this could be a brand new title built especially for the Nintendo 3DS or perhaps the iPhone/Android market. Square-Enix has been devoting much of their energy in both of those arenas as of late, creating "retro" styled offerings for each (Final Fantasy Dimensions for smartphones and Bravely Default for the 3DS) so it would make sense that their title in the Mana series would be built for one of those platforms.

What do you think? Could this just be a long overdue localization of Seiken Densetsu 3, or could we finally be getting a brand new Mana game?

Source: Seikens