Chrono Trigger was released for the SNES in 1992 by Squaresoft (now Square Enix). Little did they know this one game would be praised for almost every aspect it put in its time and development.
The game became a phenomenon thanks to the hard work of Squaresoft’s Dream Team. The Dream Team would later return to update Chrono Trigger again in 2008 with additional content and animated cutscenes for the Nintendo DS. The game stuck around long enough to have its own Steam store page.
So, what made Chrono Trigger stand out from other JRPGs? Let’s dive in and find out!
The Dream Team Behind Chrono Trigger
Who’s this Dream Team Square Enix mentioned? The Dream Team consists of 6 people from Squaresoft and Enix.
From Squaresoft, we have Final Fantasy creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Takashi Tokita, Parasite Eve and Live-A-Live director, Ninja Gaiden Trilogy original animator and sequence director, Masato Kato, and Final Fantasy game designer, Kazuhiko Aoki. These four focused on designing Chrono Trigger’s gameplay, story, and production.
Enix joins the Dream Team with the duo behind Dragon Quest, creator Yuji Horii as Chrono Trigger’s supervisor, and the late Dragonball mangaka and character designer Akira Toriyama. Together, they made Chrono Trigger’s memorable and expressive character cast.
Save A Lost Future with Time Travel
The story of Chrono Trigger starts in 1000 AD in the village of Truce. Your main character, Crono, is awakened by his mother and cat. Today is the annual Millenial Fair where your best friend, the tech geek Lucca, is hosting the special event of her and her father’s newest invention.
Crono heads off to see her until he bumps into a girl named Marle. She drops her pendant, which he picks up and hands it to her. Marle thanks him, then asks you to show her around the fair. He agrees before checking on Lucca.
Lucca says the invention is currently being set up, so Crono and Marle are participating in the festivities together. They spend time together, including beating up the giant battle cat called Gato. Lucca is now ready to show off the invention, the Telepod. This machine will make a person’s body into particles and transport them to the next pod.
The Telepod succeeds as Crono transports from the first to the second pod. On the other hand, Marle had her pendant react to the Telepod’s energy, opening a portal for her to be sent to 600 AD. Her pendant is left behind after the portal takes her.
Crono, determined to rescue Marle, demands Lucca and her dad, Taban, to use the Telepod to send him wherever she is. Crono ends up on a mountain fighting monsters until he arrives at Guardia Castle. Crono finds Marle, who is mistaken as the missing queen, Leene. She privately meets Crono in her bedroom telling him how thankful she is to meet him and wants to tell him her secret.
Suddenly, Marle dissolves into thin air with Crono unable to do anything. Afterward, Lucca finds him and reveals that Marle is Princess Nadia, a descendant of the Guardia family bloodline. If she disappeared, it’s related to Queen Leene’s disappearance as the timeline in their present means she was never found, ending the bloodline.
For Marle to return, Crono and Lucca must find the real queen. They track her down to Manolia Cathedral, a monster hideout disguised as a church. Almost ambushed by a Lamia, the humanoid frog rescues them with his broadsword. He has no name so the party is forced to call him Frog, or Kero in Japanese.
Together, they rescue Queen Leene from the monster chancellor, Yakkra. As the party returns to Guardia Castle, Frog leaves despite Queen Leene wanting him to stay and Marle returns to exist in the world, fixing the present. They return to the mountain Crono came from to find a small orb.
Lucca initially calls these orbs Gates. Now that he knows they transport people through time, Lucca prepares the Gate Key so the Gates can be used at will. Unfortunately for Crono, he would be mistaken for a criminal. He’s charged with kidnapping the princess because Marle snuck out of Present-Day Guardia Castle.
Depending on how Crono escapes, whether by force or awaiting execution in 3 days, Lucca will come after him. The Chancellor sends out the Dragon Tank as the castle’s last defense to stop Crono. After its defeat, Marle leaves the castle to show the failure of King Guardia XXXIII’s parenthood as she feels trapped in the castle.
The Chancellor continues to chase them down with Guardia’s guards. During their escape, the party finds a Gate in Guardia Forest. Frustrated, Marle wants Lucca to use it to get away from home for a while.
They ended up in a desolate wasteland. The world around them is filled with ash, modern building ruins, and mutated creatures. The party finds survivors in the Arris Dome, who want someone to go to the refrigeration unit to gather food as long as they don’t trigger the security (they do).
After destroying security, they learned the fridges had failed long ago, causing the food to spoil. There’s a corpse against the wall holding a letter and what appears to be a seed. The letter says:
“…That rat is no statue. It knows something. Catch it by its tail.”
The rat was last seen on the walkway. When Crono captures it, it will give a passcode to put on the control console. This passcode led them to a computer room holding the record from 1999 AD, the day of the world-destroyer, Lavos.
Lucca deduces and informs Crono and Marle that this is their future. Since they have the Gate Key and learn they can change time, Marle is determined to save the world, leading the party on a grand adventure.
I consider this part of the story the prologue despite Chrono Trigger splitting it into 6 chapters. I don’t mind length as it serves its purpose of understanding time travel.
Chrono Trigger’s Use of Time Travel
Time-traveling plays an important in Chrono Trigger. Remember how Marle’s existence got erased because the real Queen Leene wasn’t found? That’s what is known as an anomaly. Anything you do in the past, you create changes to your present and future.
This varies on how you progress the story and which story quests you play. The Dream Team took advantage of this by creating 12 endings you could land on. Then they added a New Game Plus ending in Chrono Trigger DS with an additional 13th ending to show an alternate ending that could happen after the main story.
Time-traveling is how you travel the world, as there’s something new to discover through each period. Aside from using the Gate Key on Gates, the player will soon have access to Epoch. The Epoch will later have wings for you to travel areas beyond the world map’s oceans.
It’s convenient if you need to travel without a Gate. There is also the End of Time, where any Gate you discover, awaits you on a platform. There is also a platform to access the Epoch and where it returns in case you leave it on the world map.
How Chrono Trigger Revolutionized Turn-Based Combat
Chrono Trigger’s combat system became more than turn-based. See this strange bar next to your health points? This is the active time bar, tracking the speed of the party member to fill the bar. Once the bar is filled, you can execute the party member’s actions.
Active-Time Turn Combat later became essential for future Final Fantasy titles such as Final Fantasy VI and VII. While there is an option to use the classic turn-based combat, you will have more fun using Active-Time to practice and test your strategy while opponents attack you before and after you execute an action.
Your character will later have Magic from the sorcerer teacher, Spekkio. There will be certain party members that can’t use it but will use special techniques, or Tech, as a replacement. Not only do they upgrade over time, but you can combine party member Magic and Tech to create Specials.
Take Chrono and Lucca for example. Crono, before he could use magic, relied on his sword techniques. His sword spin tech, Cyclone can attack all surrounding enemies. Lucca carries a Flamethrower that can attack enemies in a straight line.
If you combine these techniques, they become Fire Whirl. Crono will jump into the middle of the battlefield, spinning his blade. Then, Lucca will heat the sword until it’s hot enough to burn and slash enemies. The Dream Team did a wonderful job creating animations and effects for each of these Specials.
Items are here to stay as character equipment, stat boosts, and recovery items. You can use Magic and Tech to help with recovery and status effects as long as you carry Ethers, Revives, and Potions at your side.
Translating Chrono Trigger’s Writing through Sprite Expressions
Hironobu Sakaguchi and Akira Toriyama have done a fantastic job on the characters’ sprite designs. Each sprite has numerous expressions for every story sequence, mini-game, and battle. There’s rarely a neutral sprite shown unless you are standing in the middle of an area, even the world map sprites have unique idle animations.
Squaresoft loved these sprite designs so much that they inspired their later games, Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy VI. In Chrono Trigger DS, some of these scenes would be reanimated in Akira Toriyama’s style in traditional 2-D.
Without these expressions, I definitely would have felt different on this game, even it had good gameplay. These expressions show all the NPCs and the main cast’s personalities. Lucca’s and Frog’s sprites are my top two.
Animating Lucca’s glasses is a specific detail Dream Team didn’t need to add but needed to animate certain emotions. When she’s surprised, they jump off her face to reveal her eyes. Her laugh animation looks maniacal as a genius should have.
Frog’s expressions are very corny and heartfelt. He looks away in distraught with half-opened eyes and faces the ground. When he’s happy, he ribbits, stretching his cheeks repeatedly. Nothing would ever beat his victory pose flexing his muscles on one arm.
Chrono Trigger Made A Soundtrack of Many Ages
Another aspect Chrono Trigger succeeded is its music. Composers Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu worked together to create songs for each era, area, and character. As you play through Chrono Trigger, you can’t help but nod your head through their melodies.
There’s the joyous 1000 AD Theme, Peaceful Days to remind you to enjoy what’s around you. Frog’s Theme is the best character theme that makes you feel brave and ready to face anything. And finally, the community’s favorite song, Corridors of Time from 12,000 BC.
Corridors of Time is seen as special because of how beautiful it sounds with its combinations of instrument sound fonts from the synthesizer. The sitar strums created a harmonic melody that sounded like singing.
The subtle drumming and somber bells send you into a zen state that you can sleep to, and the choir voices in the background are a great filler when the sitar leaves the song until it loops.
This track alone represents 12,000 BC. The people who lived in the sky were known as the Enlightened, created technological advancements, and wielded magic. Down below their islands are the Earthbound Ones who live in caves with no warmth and fending for themselves against monsters.
Plants vs. Zombies composer Laura Shigihara has recreated this Corridors of TIme for the official Square Enix Chrono Arrange Album for Chrono Trigger’s 20th anniversary in 2015. Chrono Trigger is one of Shigihara’s inspirations for game music composing.
What is the Best Version of Chrono Trigger?
Chrono Trigger SNES is a classic, for sure. It functions well, and the graphics look terrific. There is nothing wrong with playing the original, especially on an SNES emulator. I highly recommend SNES9x and ZSNES, for they preserve the graphics despite resolution and will operate with most USB controllers.
For me, it’s the Chrono Trigger DS. New Game Plus has an added 13th ending and a red Gate called the Dimensional Vortex. It will lead you to a boss called the Dream Devourer to get it.
A multiplayer mode is also added for local play, Arena of the Ages. You can access it once a save file is made and the End of Time is unlocked. You can train monsters and evolve them into strong monsters to challenge players. The monsters themselves have their own stats and attacks.
When you have no second player, you can fight monsters the game will randomly generate for you based on your monster’s level. At last, there is the Lost Sanctum where you fight bonus enemies that are masters of their realm. You can start this mission by heading into a cave near Ozzie’s Fort in 600 AD or 65,000,000 BC.
A race of reptile people known as the Reptites are under attack by monsters. After you save them, they will send you out on special quests to face these monsters. You will be rewarded each time and at the end, you will earn the Champion’s Badge.
It’s also in the Steam version. However, the Chrono Trigger community says this version is missing some features the DS has. You have the original base game and New Game Plus. However, the 13th ending and certain animated cutscenes are missing.
Chrono Trigger is Timeless
Chrono Trigger is a game made with heart and soul from beginning to end. Its gameplay and character design inspired games to innovate in presentation, interaction, and storytelling. It’s a treasure to JRPG fans and JRPG game developers.
On March 4th, 2024, in a published interview with Kotaku, Yoshinori Kitase, the game designer and producer of the Final Fantasy VII Remake Trilogy, discussed the possibility of a Chrono Trigger remake. Unfortunately, that may not happened since the passing of Akira Toriyama whose designs gave this game part of its identity.
As a member of Squaresoft’s Dream Team, this struck a blow to Yuji Hori as he previously lost Dragon Quest composer, Koichi Sugiyama, three years prior. In all versions of Chrono Trigger, there is a dedicated developers room with everyone from the Dream Team.
To find it, you can fight Lavos immediately by going to the bin at the End of Time or to the Undersea Palace in 12,000 BC. After defeating it, you are rewarded with Dream Team, ending with all the developers, including Toriyama, in his iconic mask, hat, and sunglasses.
May Chrono Trigger be a part of his legacy forever and revisit this game to find this ending as a tribute.
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