Exactly 20 years ago today, one of the best – I would argue, the best – video game(s) of all time was released: Chrono Trigger. This Gamastura article from 2012 gives a lot of fantastic insights into the game’s complex, modular story.
From Mass Effect to Skyrim, modern RPGs go to great lengths to merge linear, carefully crafted narrative with dynamic, emergent gameplay. Hundreds of thousands of man-hours are poured into these incredibly complex works, all in the effort to create a believable, cohesive story while giving players a sense of freedom in the way they play their game. The results of these efforts have been best-loved play experiences video games have offered.
But the goal of marrying linear narrative to dynamic gameplay is not out of reach for developers that don’t have the resources to create such complex systems. No game shows this better than the classic RPG Chrono Trigger. Crafted by Square’s “Dream Team” of RPG developers, Chrono Trigger balances developer control with player freedom using carefully-designed mechanics and a modular approach to narrative.
Chrono Trigger is something special, something one-of-a-kind that cannot be replicated. You see its influence in so many games today, and even on its own, despite its age, it can still hold itself up very well next to all the Quadruple Turbo HD Mega Graphics games of today. While Marle (or Nadia in the Japanese version) is my favourite character, it’s hard to deny that as far as storyarcs go, Glenn’s story is the most heartbreaking and emotional story ever told in 16 bits – and beyond (well – almost beyond).
While originally a SNES game, Chrono Trigger is currently available for both iOS and Android.
I am still waiting for a remake or a sequel(chrono cross is a different stuff), every six months I google about a possible successor, my heart knows, some day…
Chrono Cross is still a hell of a good game and have something to say about non-linear gaming, too.
Reading the comments on the Play store, it appears the game is nearly unplayable because of DRM. It requires always on internet to play a game that can be easily downloaded and run in an emulator. Looking at the iTunes store, it appears this extra DRM is only on Android.
…which makes me very glad that I picked up the PSX remake as part of the Final Fantasy Chronicles set.
(Especially given that, ironically, after years of leaving them packed away, I’m just now finishing the process of dusting off, sorting, and racking all my PC and PSX CD-ROMs right next to my desk.)
Heh, I almost bought it for iOS based on this article… but then I read your comment and I’ll stay away from both versions.
But out of curiosity: is it actually playable on a touch screen? Virtual joysticks don’t count as playable.
I hope you don’t mind me butting in, but I totally hate playing things on a touchscreen and games that weren’t even designed for one are even worse than games that were. I do play classic SNES – and Genesis – games on my phone via emulators, but I use http://www.dx.com/p/ipega-pg-9017-wireless-bluetooth-3-0-controller… for it.
There are plenty of controllers on DX that can be attached to phones, but I specifically chose this one because of the digital pad is placed prominently; the others place more emphasis on the analog pads instead and thus they’re less ideal for NES/SNES/Genesis/et.al. games. If I were to play, say, PSOne-games I would have chosen a different controller.
Just saying this in case someone here would also like to play emulated classics, but hadn’t realized that an actual controller is also an option. The one I linked to is miniscule and really light, so it’s easy to stuff away when not needed, but it’s not so miniscule as to making it hard to play with it.
Thanks
Let me me just put this here…
http://www.romhacking.net/?page=hacks&genre=&platform=&game=268&cat…
Makes me want to fire up the dusty DS and play it one more time.
Final Fantasy III (VI in Japan) is also wonderful.
However, for Chrono Trigger, there is this:
http://geigercount.net/crypt/
It’s called Temporal Flux, and it is a full-on editor for Chrono Trigger. It lets you edit sprites, maps, music, text, even events, allowing you to easily create a whole new game using the Chrono Trigger engine.
It’s really awesome.
This is the best game EVER!
I lost account for many times I have ended
No game have Magus, a powerful and magnetic character.
It’s sad that Square only did ports and not a decent continuation after Chrono Cross or a complete remake
I logged into OSNews again only to comment here
These days ago I have found in my old gaming magazines here a review about the new game Chrono Trigger… 20 years is a long time.
And how many hours in my life I have spent playing that? No one have more fun factor like that
Edited 2015-03-12 03:16 UTC
I never played Chrono Trigger so I can’t comment on how good it was or not but when I hear comments about flexibility, non-linear narratives and emergent behavior my mind goes immediately to the Ultima series and especially Ultima VII. On this topic I suggest reading this particular walkthrough of it which goes by the title “Fear and loathing in Forge-Of-Virtue”:
http://www.it-he.org/fear.htm
This lets you finish the game practically by not doing even a single section of the game as it’s supposed to be done. Rather the author used various quirks in the game and the emergent behavior they cause to go through the entire story in unpredictable and sometimes hilarious ways.
I would have to agree with you, I haven’t ever played Chrono Trigger either, and never cut my teeth on the console RPGs because they all seemed so linear. Ultima 4 is still my favorite RPG. Second favorite, and I think is sadly usually forgotten in lists of ‘most awesome game ever’ is Alternate Reality. If it had actually been completed as per the original scope, it would have been epic.
It’s the usual stuff: console gamers being ignorant of computer games. Western cRPGs had much deeper stories and were much more varied and technically advanced than jRPGs. This is also the case for linear + dynamic gameplay: you mentioned the Ultimas; I could add Wizardry VII (NPCs roaming the world freely!), Magic Candle or, if we leave the RPG genre, Star Control II, etc.
I think what jRPGs got right was the more character-centric approach: it helps a lot with immersion. If you can relate to members of your party, you will find it easier to be drawn into the world and the story as well. Also, they managed to put that “anime cool” into RPGs.
Disclaimer: Chrono Trigger is one of my favourites, too.
This!! I’ve played many of the Ultima games, and as much as I enjoyed them (personally preferred the Ultima Underworld series though) none of them ever made me feel for the characters. The closest a western RPG has gone in that respect, for me, was Planescape Torment.
I think this depends a lot on where your gaming background comes from. Personally I come from actual pen-and-paper RPGs and always found cRPGs with pre-defined characters uninspiring as they effectively removed my ability to chose my alter ego and his path. This in turn detracted from the experience.
One of the things that’s really a shame is how selective the translations were back then. A lot of games did a fantastic job of bridging the style between western and japanese rpgs. They just seldom received english translations. Japan had what I consider the definitive versions of Might and Magic 1, and the first four Wizardry games.
And the Shin Megami Tensei games did a great job of combining a jrpg style to more Might and Magic style first person dungeon crawls. And while flawed, the SFC SaGa games were an interesting experiment in taking square’s Final Fantasy style to a more open environment.
At least fan translations have opened up a lot of them to western audiences. It’s still a shame that it couldn’t have happened earlier though. I think we might have seen a more organic melding of styles if there’d been more back and forth with games back then.
In the last black-friday (yeah, Brazil now have one) here, I bought a Retron 5 so I could play several platforms on a single console because I don’t have space to put them all on my TV.
I didn’t open it until Christmas, because it was a present from me to myself. My wife then surprised me in the Christmas night, and got me a Chrono Trigger cartridge for Super Nintendo. It was the first game I’ve played and finished on the console. It was probably the 10th time I finished the game, and it was simply a joy once again. You are right, this can’t be replicated, it is a master jewelry that have not another equal neither will, but it is a bit sad that I can’t get to experience one more time the joy to play such a singular JRPG.
Nowadays games could learn several things from Chrono: fun and light-headed story, well-developed characters, don’t ever make the player enter fights just to get experience points and create better interactions in-battle between players.
First played it when the snes emulation gave us access all the classics that non (lucky) snes owners missed out on. Pure magic… all the plot twists and intertwining stories… to the “new game +” for that… “It’s done, now what ?” feeling …
One of those games that i hope to share with my children one day …
Bought the android version … And returned it 15 minutes later… after trying it in severall devices.
It refused to start in my nexus 7…
The sequel “Chrono Cross” is also an amazing game
Sure, 20 years is a long time for a great game. I loved Chrono Trigger, and was lucky enough to own it as a child on the original SNES hardware. But, also keep in mind how different game design was back then. Developers and artists really took their game design seriously back then, or they were left in the dust. Chrono Trigger is a great example of a turn-based RPG with great music, and a rich story. Other good examples from the era (not necessarily the genre) would be Zelda: A Link To The Past, Final Fantasy IV, Super Castlevania 4, Contra 3, etc…
Anyway, my point is that it seems that back in that time period, video games just didn’t seem as boring as they are now on modern hardware. It’s difficult to find a game and say ‘damn, that whole experience was awesome’. The last time I did that, was when I played through Skies of Arcadia on the Dreamcast, maybe Half Life 2, as well… Now, the industry has been so overloaded with just the overhead of the project, that the main goal is to just make it at least profitable. It seems that a fun experience is secondary. The new Final Fantasy game sure looks pretty, but I wonder if it’ll be fun?
I love this game, I have it on the DS, and it is such a blast to play even now. There is not other game that comes to its caliber, even though there are plenty of other RPG. It added so many possibility of moves, truly a awesome game, that was a great collaboration Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest creators, and Dragon Ball animator.
So THIS is responsible for the $%^%$! linear dungeons in otherwise non-linear games..
#$%#$%#$!~!!
Go to $@#%@!
https://archive.org/details/chronotrigger-tas-herooftheday