Corridors of Time: A Chrono Trigger Retrospective
Image Credit: Square Enix, Akira Toriyama
What do you say about a piece of work that everyone agrees is a masterpiece? Something that almost everyone has experienced; every aspect of it analyzed and scrutinized under a microscope that there’s virtually no new perspectives left to have on it. Chrono Trigger is one of those pieces of media. If you’ve played it, then you already know why it’s earned the reputation that it has. And if you haven’t played it, odds are that you’ve at least heard of it. And if somehow you’ve never heard of it, then hopefully this article can convince you to give it a try at some point.
Released on the Super Nintendo way back in 1995, Chrono Trigger was Square’s magnum opus on a console that they already dominated, and arguably the best game on the SNES as a whole. I still remember the first time that I played it.
It was February 2013. I was a freshman in high school, and I needed something to play over my winter break. After browsing the Wii’s Virtual Console, I found this game that I heard was good, but never did any research on through watching let’s plays or anything online. As a kid with no money, this is how I digested video games. That’s also how I learned about Persona 3 way earlier in my life than I should have. Thank you, SuperJeenius!
I remember playing Chrono Trigger and being blown away by the sheer quality. This game was oozing with charm and personality. From the expressive character sprites, to the masterfully crafted environments, to the music. Chrono Trigger is not perfect, but every part of it works incredibly well.
Now, assuming that I managed my time correctly, this article should be going up on Chrono Trigger’s 30th release anniversary in Japan. Today I want to look at this game. What did it set out to do, and how much of an impact did it have on the future of not just JRPGs, but gaming as a whole.
If you’ve somehow never played Chrono Trigger before, consider this your sign from the universe to finally get on it. You’re truly missing out on one of the most important and well made games of all time.
History
Image Credit: Square Enix, Akira Toriyama
The idea for Chrono Trigger came to us from the minds of Hironobu Sakaguchi (creator of Final Fantasy), Yuji Horii (creator of Dragon Quest), and character designs being handled by the late manga artist Akira Toriyama (creator of Dragon Ball, and character designer for Dragon Quest). This is an insanely powerful trio that would eventually become known as “The Dream Team”. Getting this kind of talent together nowadays would be unheard of.
In addition to those three at the helm, they had just as much talent behind them. The script was written by Masato Kato, who would later go on to be a scenario writer for games like Baten Kaitos and Final Fantasy 11 [1]. Remember him. He’ll be important later.
Music was handled by Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda. Uematsu is a longtime composer for Square who has been with them since the original Final Fantasy, and still shows up to make new songs for Final Fantasy 14, as well as “No Promises to Keep”, the theme song of FF7 Rebirth [2]. Mitsuda was a new composer, but has grown into a household name, working on the music for the “Xenoblade Chronicles” series (sans Xenoblade X), “Sea of Stars”, and even the original “Mario Party” [3].
Yoshinori Katase was the game’s director. He is currently the head of Square Enix’s Creative and Business Division 1, and acts primarily as a producer, working on games like “Kingdom Hearts” and the “Final Fantasy VII Remake” trilogy [4]. Kitase also took cues from Chrono Trigger’s time travel mechanics during the development of Final Fantasy 13-2, using it as a sort of jumping off point [11].
Beyond Akira Toriyama, other notable designers included graphic designer Tetsuya Takahashi (founder of Monolith Soft, “Xeno” series, Baten Kaitos). Field graphic designers were Tetsuya Nomura (Final Fantasy XV, Kingdom Hearts), Yasuyuki Honne (Xenoblade Chronicles 1 & 2), and Yusuke Naora (Final Fantasy 7, 8, 10, Type-0, 15).
Finally, the english translation was handled by Ted Woolsey. He was one of the main translators for Square in the 90s, and worked on “Secret of Mana”, “Final Fantasy VI”, and “Super Mario RPG”. In an interview with the Player One Podcast back in 2007, Woolsey had this to say about Chrono Trigger. “As far as other games for the Square stuff, I liked Chrono Trigger. That’s still one of my favorite games…it just never attained the legend status that Final Fantasy did, even though I personally find that one of the most satisfying games I ever worked on or played.” [5]
Needless to say, there was an unreal amount of star power on this team. This staff list was jam-packed with people who would go on to become industry elites for the RPG genre. And with the introductions out of the way, let’s take a look at the game.
Story
Image Credit: Square Enix, Akira Toriyama
Taking place in the year 1000 A.D. Chrono Trigger opens up with Crono (the game’s silent protagonist) going to the Millennial Fair in the Kingdom of Guardia. At the fair, he meets a young woman named Marle, and the two go to watch a demonstration of new technology put on by Crono’s friend Lucca. This new invention is a teleporter system. Marle volunteers to try it out, but due to a reaction from her pendant, Marle is sent back in time to the middle ages of 600 A.D. As a fearless protagonist, Crono follows behind her to bring her back home to the present age.
Chrono Trigger wastes no time getting to its inciting incident, as well as introducing the central premise of the game: time travel. After bringing Marle back home, the gang finds another time gate that sends them forward to the year 2300, where they end up in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. While here, they end up finding an old recording showing how their world ended up like this.
In the year 1999, an ancient monster sleeping inside of the Earth’s core known as Lavos awakens, causing destruction to rain from the heavens and eradicating all life on Earth. Lavos is this extraterrestrial monster that descended on the Earth all the way back in the prehistoric times, burrowing inside the core, slowly absorbing the energy from the planet and making itself stronger.
With this newfound knowledge in hand, our heroes set out to do all that they can to stop Lavos and prevent the apocalypse from happening. I think that what makes Chrono Trigger’s story work so well is that everything that you do is ultimately in service of the goal of stopping Lavos. The game changes villains with every different story arc with characters like Magus, Ozzie and Darius. But they are just stepping stones on your way to Lavos.
I also love that you can go and fight Lavos anytime you want to. You have access to time travel, and you know when the apocalypse is going to happen. The game does not stop you from going to fight Lavos to see what exactly you’re going up against. You can use that as a benchmark to see where your party is at.
Speaking of the party, let’s take a look at our squad. By the end of the game you’ll have a group of seven characters to shuffle around in your three member party. I’m only going to talk about six of the characters to avoid spoilers.
Crono is our silent protagonist, and specializes in lightning. Crono is locked in your party for most of the game, and he specializes in dealing fast physical damage, but also has access to lightning magic. He might be a silent protag, but he does still have his own arc in the story.
Marle is a rebellious princess whom Crono meets during the Millennial Fair. She’s very standoffish and not afraid to speak her mind. She views herself as a person first, and a princess second. In combat she acts as a Red Mage, focusing on magical ice DPS and healing.
Lucca is Crono’s childhood friend, and inventor of the machine that causes the plot to happen. She’s a bit awkward around people besides Crono, but she is every bit the genius the game props her up to be. All of her Techs do fire damage, and she has the highest magic stat of the entire party.
During your first trip to the middle ages, you meet with an amphibious swordsman going by the name Frog. He has a long story arc about reforging the legendary Masamune sword that ties in with Magus and Ozzie. He does a little bit of everything in battle. He’s got water magic, strong physical Techs, and a couple of healing moves if you need.
While in the distant future, Lucca manages to find and repair a broken down robot, who the party gives the name Robo. He’s essentially the tank of the party, and acts as a good slot filler if you’re not sure who to bring. He doesn’t focus on any specific element, but has access to shadow, fire, and lightning damage.
Finally, after venturing to the prehistoric past of 65 million years ago, you’re introduced to the cavewoman Ayla. Given that she’s from the era before magic, she is a pure physical DPS option. That said, she’s a beast, and I’ll always use her alongside Crono. She has the highest speed (tied with Crono) and she doesn’t use a weapon. Instead her fists level up with her, increasing both her raw damage, crit rate, and crit damage, making sure that she stays on par with the rest of your team.
This game has such a diverse cast of characters, and it’s great to see how they all interact with each other, not just in the story, but also in combat. Your characters are able to learn unique moves called Techs. If a pair of characters each have a certain Tech unlocked, they can team up for a Dual Tech, dealing even more damage, or providing extra utility with party-wide heals.This can go even further in the late game with Triple Techs. And these are just a thing of beauty. I honestly can’t say enough good things about this game’s sprite work. It’s the best the SNES ever looked.
Before we move on, I want to give proper attention to Lavos, and why I think he works so well. A very commonplace complaint about JRPGs (especially in the western world) is that they all end with God coming out of nowhere and that God was the secret real big bad the whole time and then you have to kill God. But Lavos isn’t that. Everything the game does is in service of building up Lavos as a threat.
By the end of the first three hours of the game, you’re transported into the distant future where you find a recording that shows Lavos’s destructive capability. Later on you learn that Lavos was summoned by the wizard Magus to destroy humankind so you venture back to the middle ages to confront Magus, only to learn that Magus had other intentions. But before you can learn that, your group is sucked through time to the prehistoric age where you see Lavos crash land and wipe out the reptile people, sending the world into an ice age.
During the Age of Antiquity (12,000 B.C. (also known as the Dark Ages in the SNES/PS1 translation)) you see that the citizens of Zeal have essentially sold their souls to Lavos in exchange for magic power. However there are also those who didn’t choose to do this, and they have been banished to the land below, rather than on the floating Kingdom of Zeal.
It’s here that you’re finally forced to confront Lavos for the first time, and it’s not even close. He decimates your party without a second thought. That’s what Lavos is. He’s an extraterrestrial force with powers that are far beyond human understanding. And all that he can do with his power is destroy. You also learn that Magus was trying to summon Lavos so that he could defeat him when he was “weaker”.
This is a fantastic display of both foreshadowing, and knowing what information to give to the player and when. It never ruins the mystery by giving you a massive text dump of what Lavos is, or why it came into being, like what would be seen in a modern JRPG. We don’t know where Lavos came from, and that helps to further sell the mystery. And all of this is done without massive hour-long expositions (See any modern Atlus game). It all feels like a natural unraveling of Lavos.
After you put down Lavos for good, and the credits roll, you aren’t quite finished yet. Chrono Trigger offers the player not one, but twelve different endings for you to see (thirteen if you’re on DS, Steam, or Mobile). Depending on when in your playthrough you fight and defeat Lavos, you’ll roll a different ending scene. Obviously this is hard to do on a first playthrough, but we’ll talk about how you do that a little later.
Legacy & Follow-Ups
Image Credit: Square Enix, Nobuteru Yuuki
Now, “Chrono” as a series never really got to take off. Chrono Trigger was a phenomenal one-shot, but there was no way that you could get lightning to strike twice. You had some of the best talent in the industry at the time working on this. However this didn’t stop Square from attempting two follow up games.
First off was a Super Famicom exclusive game for the Satellaview peripheral called “Radical Dreamers”. This is an obscure, text-based adventure game where you and your team explore a mansion in search of a treasure known as the Frozen Flame. Your crew of thieves consists of Serge (the player character), Kid (a young, rambunctious girl), and Magil (a masked man with great magical expertise).
I don’t really have a lot to say about this game. It was “lost media” for a while. The only way to play it was via a SNES emulator, and even then you had to find an English patch for the ROM because it was Japan-exclusive. However, with the release of the “Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers” collection back in 2022, this game was brought back from the dead, finally giving fans in the western world an official way to play it.
The most notable thing about this game is that it acted like a prototype for “Chrono Cross”. This exact scenario plays out in the early parts of that game. I think that it’s a cool piece of history, and a fun relic of the times, but there’s no reason to revisit it nowadays, outside of the novelty of playing a SFC text-based adventure game. And, I’ve brought it up enough. Let’s finally talk about it.
The true follow up game to Chrono Trigger. A game known as Chrono Cross was released on the Playstation 1 in Japan in November 1999, and North America in August 2000. Chrono Cross is a very different game from Chrono Trigger, and I think that’s what put a lot of people off of it on launch.
Fans of the SNES classic didn’t like how far of a departure that it took from the original, but this was the direction that Masato Kato (Chrono Cross’s director & writer) wanted the game to take. “We didn't want to directly extend Chrono Trigger into a sequel, but create a new Chrono with links to the original… When Radical Dreamers was finished, we did Xenogears, and when talk turned to what to do after that, we decided to redo Radical Dreamers properly. That's why we didn't give the new project the name ‘Chrono Trigger 2’.” [6]
Rather than focusing on adventuring through different time periods, Cross has you exploring parallel worlds, noting the differences between the two, and utilizing both of them to complete the story. Rather than a small cast of characters, Cross opts for a massive pool of 45 potential party members. This game is the antithesis of what Chrono Trigger set out to do, and that rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way.
However, the court of public opinion has largely mellowed out on this game in recent years. Maybe they finally saw the good in Chrono Cross, or maybe they just stopped caring. Personally, I loved Chrono Cross from the first time I played it.
Summer 2014. I just finished my sophomore year of high school, and an old online friend of mine told me to get this game as it was one of his favorites. I got it for my birthday and I spent the entire summer streaming my playthrough to him over Skype. It’s honestly one of the best memories that I have playing a game. To this day, I still get chills when I boot up my PS1 copy and watch the opening FMV. Hearing those first few notes of “Time’s Scar”. There’s nothing quite like it. Listening to Chrono Cross’s OST makes me nostalgic for that time, wanting to go back. But time marches on, and people drift apart.
On the off chance that you’re reading this, I hope you’re doing well, Alex. Thanks for the memories.
The series has also had its fair share of re-releases over the years. Chrono Trigger has been brought to PS1, the Nintendo DS, and also Steam and Mobile. The PS1 version added in some spiffy Toriyama-styled anime cutscenes, but is bogged down by abysmal loading times. The Steam version was riddled with glitches on launch, but those have since been patched out.
For my money, the DS version is the best way to play the game. You get the quick loads from the SNES version and the FMVs from the PS1 version. There’s also a bit of new content added in, as well as an updated translation.
Chrono Cross on the other hand has continued to be on the short end of the stick. It’s seen one re-release since its original launch, and it was atrocious! “Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition” was a complete bust. As mentioned earlier, it came bundled with Chrono Cross, and Radical Dreamers, and it was awesome to see that be officially brought back.
But when you booted up Chrono Cross, the game was unplayable. It ran like a slideshow, struggling to run at a consistent 30 FPS. And this wasn’t console exclusive. It was like this on every version of the game [7].
This game came out in April 2022, and it took Square Enix until February 2023 to release a patch for this game to fix the framerate and get it running at a consistent 60 FPS [8]. This game came out in the life of the podcast. If you want to hear the thoughts of a disappointed Chrono Cross fan, here it is.
Impact
Image Credit: Square Enix, Toi8, Jun Suzuki
In my eyes, Chrono Trigger is still the pinnacle of the JRPG genre (in case I haven’t made that clear yet). There are so many features and gameplay choices that were introduced in this game that are still seen in RPGs to this day. Let’s rewind a bit.
Earlier when I talked about getting different endings depending on when you beat Lavos. To the unaware, that sounds like you’d need to do a lot of grinding to see these different endings. However, after you beat the game for the first time, you’re given a new option on the title screen. New Game+.
This is the game that coined the phrase New Game+, letting you start a brand new playthrough with everything that you finished the game with. All of your levels, items, equipment, Techs, everything but the full party. And unlike a lot of other games from the time where you beat a game and the credits rolled, the game would just stop and you reload your last save. Chrono Trigger lets you run it all back with an endgame build. Such a staple feature of modern games, let alone RPGs, was started all the way back in 1995.
I haven’t talked about Chrono Trigger’s combat yet, so let’s fix that. Chrono Trigger uses ATB, much like Final Fantasy 5 and 6 at the time, as well as live action combat. Enemies will move around the field, while your party members are stationary in preset locations. In order to get the most out of your party members’ Techs, you need to pay attention to enemy positions. Crono’s Cyclone move hits in an AoE circle around him. Lucca’s Flame Toss hits enemies that are lined up. Robo’s Proximity Bomb is an AoE move that can only be used if enemies are around him.
Looking at this from a 2025 perspective, this is very similar to how Action RPGs implement their extra combat options. Take Kingdom Hearts 2 for example. Sora has three base magic spells that he can use: Fire, Thunder, and Blizzard. Thunder hits in a circular AoE, dealing splash damage to other enemies. Blizzard passes through enemies, hitting them on a line. And Fire is an AoE move that only hits enemies around Sora.
Or how about the Dual and Triple Tech system for combat? Well, let’s take a look at Atlus. In “Metaphor: Refantazio” there are the Synthesis Attacks; special team up moves that you can get based on what Archetypes your characters are. The Showtime Attacks in “Persona 5: Royal”. Or what about the Fusion Spells in Persona 2 and Persona 3 FES? Unique moves that require certain party members or Personas to be in your deck.
Let’s go one step further. Limits in “Kingdom Hearts 2” could be seen as Dual Techs. “Tales of Berseria” has Dual Mystic Artes that can be used if two compatible party members are in battle. Synergy Abilities from “Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth”. The examples could go on.
The point that I’m trying to get at is that Chrono Trigger’s DNA can be felt all throughout the RPG genre. This can be seen by the indie game developers who list Chrono Trigger as one of their major influences.
Sabotage Studios, the group behind “Sea of Stars” cites Chrono Trigger as an influence, along with other classic RPGS like Lufia 2, Suikoden, Illusion of Gaia, and the Breath of Fire games [9]. Matthias Linda, the developer of “Chained Echoes” was influenced by Chrono Trigger, as well as Xenogears, Trials of Mana, and Terranigma [10]. Finally, 2016’s “I Am Setsuna” quite literally has Chrono Trigger’s exact battle system. From ATB, to Dual Techs, to positional based single Techs. In some regards, it’s the Chrono Trigger sequel that everyone was expecting to get back in 2000 when Chrono Cross released.
Closing
Image Credit: Square Enix, Akira Toriyama
And there we have it. Honestly, I was a bit intimidated when I came up with this idea. I’ve always found it a lot more difficult to write about games like Chrono Trigger. Like I said at the start, everyone knows that this game is fantastic, so what’s left to say about it? I decided that it would be best to talk about its legacy, and the impact that it left on me. And if nothing else, maybe I inspired someone who hasn’t played this game to give it a try.
One of the original ideas for this article was arguing that I don’t think Chrono Trigger needs a remake. That was an idea that never went beyond the initial brainstorming stages, but maybe I’ll try and revisit that one day.
I still believe that Chrono Trigger is a very approachable game, even 30 years later. The game never throws a challenge at you that you aren’t ready to fight. It keeps you properly leveled, so there’s no need to stop and grind for anything. The music is fantastic with standout songs like “Wind Scene”, “Corridors of Time”, and “Battle with Magus”. The sprite work is the best on the SNES. I purposefully only scratched the surface of the story in this article so as to not spoil the game for any potential newcomers.
Anyway, come back next month for another article. Something a lot more low-key that doesn’t involve doing a lot of research (hopefully). I love doing stuff like this, but right now I’m eight pages deep in a Google Doc, and this takes a lot out of you. Here’s hoping that next month’s article will be more “stream of consciousness”, and less “do your homework and double check your sources”. I know that I’m complaining, but I quite literally did this to myself.