After more than a decade of popularity and toping many a player's list of favorite JRPGs, one might wonder why Square-Enix, of all companies, still hasn't released Seiken Densetsu 3 outside of Japan. We are talking about a company which is about to release the eighth incarnation of Final Fantasy IV. The eighth! And still, no Seiken Densetsu 3. Not on the GBA, DS or PSP. This isn't some random-ass game that only a few crazy people want some remake or rerelease. This is a very popular game from a very popular franchise. Instead of releasing all those remakes of past Final Fantasy games, they could at least have the decency of giving the game a proper, official release outside of its native land. And it's not like it was some kind of big risk for them to invest in such a venture; they would absolutely recoup the development costs in no time. 
 
Or am I crazy?

Just play the translated version on an emulator.

I don't think modern audiences would buy it. I mean, I would, but that's only because I already know it's good. Average Joe will see a 15 year old game.

Would be awesome if they did but they probably won't.

Maybe if Nomura's team worked on it or if it had the words Fantasy and Final.  

You want them to mess it up? I sure don't.

If somehow magically they did a remake for some reason and it was like ridiculously perfect, then yes. Otherwise no, probably never. Which is too bad because the game fucking fantastic and everyone should play it.

I have never even heard of this franchise nor game before. Maybe I'm crazy.

@Azteck: I can understand not having heard of Seiken Densetsu 3, but you've never heard of Secret of Mana? This game is sort of the successor to that one.

@TheFreeMan: Nope, never. Then again I never really played games until halfway though the original Xbox's cycle, so that might be indicative of why that is.

Outside a remake? Hell no! It was already difficult to make a fan translation for it, given how disagreeable the menus can be, stretching the screen and whatnot.

@Azteck: Yeah, that's probably why. This franchise goes a pretty ways back and hasn't made much of a splash in recent years.

If you've ever got an inclination for an old-timey action RPG, you could do a lot worse than SD3 or Secret of Mana. They've got full-on co op, and that's pretty cool. I'm not sure how well the aging process has been, though.

Without it being remade into a modern version first with "enhanced" features? Nope.

@TheFreeMan: I've tried getting into older games that people say are fantastic, and I don't doubt they are indeed fantastic, but I simply can't get into them because of the lack of refinement that we find in modern games. Even something as FF7 or Grim Fandango are problematic for me to go through, although I got pretty far in Grim Fandango before my save got corrupt and I gave up.

The mid 90s were a long time ago. No one really knows what Secret of Mana is these days. People aren't probably even aware the more recent mana games are part of a classic franchise. Just one of many reasons squeenix probably won't want to localize the game.

I played through Seiken Densetsu 3 co-op with a friend about a year or so ago. Quite a neat game indeed and the fan-translation is better than most Square '90s translations. Recommend to anyone who liked Secret of Mana.

As to why Square hasn't done anything with it, it probably just comes down to that they don't think they would sell enough copies to justify doing their own translation work (they are probably right). It's a shame for sure. I think a PSN/XBLA/Steam version with online co-op would be awesome, but for that they would need to re-code large parts of it as well since they can't just emulate the SNES. A nice art HD version that is switchable to the old look would be even better... one can only dream :P

This one is weird, and I can only speculate.

• The obvious, boring reason is that Square is lazy and they don't want to spend resources on something that might not sell.
• The fun reason is that this franchise is caught up in some sort of weird licensing mess, putting it in the same weird state as Robotech.

It shouldn't be too difficult for Square to get an emulator and ROM working together (like Chrono Trigger). Then pay for the fan translation, which is what was done for the recent Ys Steam releases. But that would make sense. Making sense isn't fun.

But wild speculation is fun.

If they did, that would be awesome. If they didn't, I can always lean on that fan translated rom I have somewhere on my hard drive.