 Kikuta worked on the music for the two games mostly by himself, spending nearly 24 hours a day in his office, alternating between composing and editing to create an immersive three-dimensional sound.Rather than create MIDI versions of his compositions and rely on the sound engineers to create the sampled instruments (like most game music composers of the time), Kikuta made his own samples that matched the hardware capabilities of the Super NES so that he would know exactly how the pieces would sound on the system's hardware instead of having to deal with audio hardware differences between the original composition and the Super NES.Kikuta considers the score for "Secret of Mana" his favorite creation.