Chrono Trigger
- This article is about the game. For series information, see Chrono (Series). For other uses, see Chrono Trigger (Disambiguation).
| Chrono Trigger | |
|---|---|
 North American box art (SNES version). | |
| Developer(s) | Square TOSE (PS and DS) |
| Publisher(s) | SNES JP Square NA Square Soft, Inc. PlayStation JP Square NA Square Electronic Arts Nintendo DS Square Enix |
| Designer(s) | Takashi Tokita Yoshinori Kitase Akihiko Matsui Yūji Horii Hironobu Sakaguchi |
| Platform(s) | SNES, PlayStation, Nintendo DS, Mobile Phone, Virtual Console |
| Release date | Super Nintendo Entertainment System JP March 11, 1995 NA August 22, 1995 PlayStation JP November 2, 1999 NA June 29, 2001 Nintendo DS JP November 20, 2008 NA November 25, 2008 PAL February 6, 2009 Mobile Phones JP April 25, 2011 Virtual Console JP April 2011 PAL Q2 2011 |
| Genre(s) | Console role-playing game |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Rating(s) | SNES ESRB: K-A PlayStation CERO: A ESRB: T Nintendo DS CERO: A ESRB: E10+ PEGI: 12+ |
| Media | 32-megabit cartridge (SNES), 1 CD-ROM (PS), 1 cartridge (Nintendo DS) |
| Input methods | SNES Gamepad PlayStation Gamepad |
Chrono Trigger (クロノ・トリガー Kurono Torigā?) is a console role-playing game developed and published by Square for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in 1995. The game's story follows a group of adventurers who travel through time to prevent a global catastrophe. Square re-released a ported version by TOSE in Japan for the Sony PlayStation in 1999, later repackaged with a Final Fantasy IV port as Final Fantasy Chronicles in 2001. A slightly enhanced Chrono Trigger was released for the Nintendo DS on November 25, 2008 in North America and Japan, and went on sale in Europe on February 6, 2009. The SNES version was released on PAL territories in the second quarter of the year 2011 via the Wii's Virtual Console service.
The development team of Chrono Trigger was headed by three designers that Square dubbed the "Dream Team", consisting of Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series; Yūji Horii and Akira Toriyama, two freelance designers known for their work on Enix's Dragon Quest series; Nobuo Uematsu, a composer for the Final Fantasy series; and Kazuhiko Aoki, who produced the game. Masato Kato wrote most of the plot, while composer Yasunori Mitsuda scored most of the game before falling ill and deferring remaining tracks to Nobuo Uematsu.
Chrono Trigger was well-received by reviewers and commercially successful. Nintendo Power described certain aspects of Chrono Trigger as revolutionary, including its multiple endings, plot-related sidequests focusing on character development, unique battle system, and detailed graphics.
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Development history
Chrono Trigger was produced by Kazuhiko Aoki while director credits were attributed to Akihiko Matsui, Yoshinori Kitase and Takashi Tokita. Supervisors included Hironobu Sakaguchi, producer and creator of the Final Fantasy series, and Yūji Horii, director and creator of the Dragon Quest series. The game was originally developed without involvement from Tokita and Kitase, the latter being busy directing Final Fantasy VII.
A fan of time travel fiction, Horii fostered the theme of time travel in his general outline of Chrono Trigger with input from Akira Toriyama. Masato Kato subsequently edited and completed the outline by writing the majority of the game's story, including all the events of the 12000 BC era. Kato devised the system of multiple endings because he could not branch the story out to different paths. Yoshinori Kitase and Takashi Tokita then wrote various subplots. The characters of Chrono Trigger were designed by Akira Toriyama, creator of the manga Dragon Ball and a longtime contributor to the Dragon Quest series. Other notable designers include Tetsuya Takahashi, the graphic director, and Yasuyuki Honne, Tetsuya Nomura, and Yusuke Naora, who worked as field graphic artists.
Early alpha versions of Chrono Trigger were demonstrated at the 1994 and 1995 V-Jump festivals in Japan. A few months prior to the game's release, Square shipped a beta version to magazine reviewers and game stores for review. An unfinished build of the game, it contained unused music tracks, locations, and other features changed or removed from the final release—such as a dungeon named "Chanting Mountains", and its eponymous song entitled "Singing Mountain". The ROM image was uploaded to the internet, prompting fans to explore and document the game's differences, including two unused world maps, several character sprites, and presumed additional sprites for certain non-player characters. Rumors of a planned eighth character exist, but are wholly unsubstantiated.
Chrono Trigger used a 32-megabit cartridge with battery-backed RAM for saved games, lacking special on-cartridge coprocessors. The Japanese release of Chrono Trigger included art for the game's ending and running counts of items in the player's status menu. Developers created the North American version before adding these features to the original build, inadvertently leaving in vestiges of Chrono Trigger 's early development such as the song "Singing Mountain". Hironobu Sakaguchi asked translator Ted Woolsey to localize Chrono Trigger for English audiences and gave him roughly thirty days to work. Lacking the help of a modern translation team, he memorized scenarios and looked at drafts of commercial player's guides to put dialogue in context. Woolsey later reflected that he would have preferred two-and-a-half months, and blames his rushed schedule on the prevailing attitude in Japan that games were child's toys rather than serious works. Some of his work was cut due to space constraints, though he still considered the game "one of the most satisfying games I ever worked on or played." Nintendo of America censored certain dialogue, including references to breastfeeding, consumption of alcohol, and religion. Square shipped the game with two world maps, and Japanese buyers who pre-ordered received holographic foil cards.
A Nintendo Power reader poll conducted in April 2008 identified Chrono Trigger as the third-most wanted game for the Virtual Console. There have been two notable attempts by Chrono Trigger fans to unofficially remake parts of the game for the PC with a 3D graphics engine. Chrono Resurrection, an attempt at remaking ten small interactive cut scenes from Chrono Trigger, and Chrono Trigger Remake Project, which sought to remake the entire game, were forcibly terminated by Square Enix by way of a cease and desist order.
PlayStation release
Square released an enhanced port of Chrono Trigger developed by TOSE in Japan for the Sony PlayStation in 1999. Square timed its release before that of Chrono Cross, the 1999 sequel to Chrono Trigger, to familiarize new players with story to leading up to it. This version included anime cut scenes created by original character designer Akira Toriyama's Bird Studio and animated by Toei Animation, as well as several bonus features, accessible after achieving various endings in the game. Scenarist Masato Kato attended planning meetings at Bird Studio to discuss how the ending cut scenes would illustrate subtle ties to Chrono Cross. The port was later released in North America in 2001—along with a remastered version of Final Fantasy IV under the package title Final Fantasy Chronicles. Reviewers criticized Chronicles for lengthy load times and an absence of new in-game features.
Nintendo DS release
- Main article: Chrono Trigger (DS)
On July 2, 2008, Square Enix announced that they were officially planning to bring Chrono Trigger to the Nintendo DS. Composer Yasunori Mitsuda was pleased with the project, exclaiming "finally!" after receiving the news from Square Enix and maintaining, "it's still a very deep, very high-quality game even when you play it today. I'm very interested in seeing what kids today think about it when they play it." Square Enix touted the game by displaying Akira Toriyama's original art at the 2008 Tokyo Game Show.
Music
- See also: Chrono Trigger Original Sound Version and Chrono Trigger Arranged Version: The Brink of Time
Chrono Trigger was scored by Yasunori Mitsuda and veteran Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu, with one track composed by both Uematsu and Noriko Matsueda. A sound programmer at the time, Mitsuda was unhappy with his pay and threatened to leave Square if he could not compose music. Hironobu Sakaguchi suggested he score Chrono Trigger, remarking, "Maybe your salary will go up." Mitsuda reflected, "I wanted to create music that wouldn't fit into any established genre...music of an imaginary world. The game's director, Masato Kato, was my close friend, and so I'd always talk with him about the setting and the scene before going into writing." Mitsuda slept in his studio several nights, and attributed certain songs, such as "Outskirts of Time", to inspiring dreams. He also suffered a hard drive crash that lost around forty in-progress tracks. After Mitsuda contracted stomach ulcers, Uematsu joined the project to compose ten songs and finish the score. Mitsuda returned to watch the ending with the staff before the game's release, crying upon seeing the finished scene.
At the time of the game's release, the number of tracks and sound effects was unprecedented. The soundtrack spanned three discs in its 1995 commercial pressing. Square also released a one-disc acid jazz arrangement called "Chrono Trigger Arranged Version: The Brink of Time" by Guido that year. In 1999, Square produced another one-disc soundtrack to complement the PlayStation release of the game, featuring orchestral tracks used in cut scenes. Yasunori Mitsuda also composed four new pieces for the game's bonus features which weren't included on the soundtrack.
Recently, Mitsuda arranged versions of music from the Chrono series for Play! A Video Game Symphony video game music concerts, presenting the main theme, "Frog's Theme", and "Outskirts of Time". He worked with Square Enix to ensure that the Nintendo DS port's music would sound close to the Super Nintendo version's.
Fans have heavily remixed the soundtrack, producing over 600 tributes and several cover performance albums released over the internet or sold at retail. These include Time & Space - A Tribute to Yasunori Mitsuda and Chrono Symphonic, the latter released by the remix website OverClocked ReMix. Japanese fans often sell their remix work in compilation albums popularly called "Dōjin" by Western fans. The soundtrack continues to appear in the set lists of video game concert groups such as the Eminence Orchestra and Video Games Live.
Reception
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Chrono Trigger shipped more than 2.36 million copies in Japan and 290,000 abroad. The first two million copies sold in Japan were delivered in only two months. The game was met with substantial success upon release in North America, and its re-release on the PlayStation as part of the Final Fantasy Chronicles package topped the NPD TRSTS PlayStation sales charts for over six weeks. This version was later re-released again in 2003 as part of Sony's Greatest Hits line. Chrono Trigger has recently placed highly on all five of multimedia website IGN's "top 100 games of all time" lists—4th in 2002, 6th in early 2005, 13th in late 2005, 2nd in 2006, 18th in 2007, and 2nd in 2008. GameSpot included Chrono Trigger in "The Greatest Games of All Time" list released in April 2006, and it also appeared as 28th on an "All Time Top 100" list in a poll conducted by Japanese magazine Famitsu the same year. In 2004, Chrono Trigger finished runner up to Final Fantasy VII in the inaugural GameFAQs video game battle. In 2008, readers of Dengeki Online voted it the eighth best game ever made. Nintendo Power's twentieth anniversary issue named it the fifth best SNES game.
Chrono Trigger garnered much critical praise in addition to its brisk sales. Nintendo Power called it Square's "biggest game ever", citing improved graphics, sound, and gameplay over past RPG titles. Chrono Trigger won multiple awards from Electronic Gaming Monthly's 1995 video game awards, including Best Role-Playing Game, Best Music in a Cartridge-Based Game, and Best Super NES Game. Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine described the game as "original and extremely captivating", singling out its graphics, sound and story as particularly impressive. IGN commented that "it may be filled with every imaginable console RPG cliché, but Chrono Trigger manages to stand out among the pack" with "a [captivating] story that doesn't take itself too serious" and "one of the best videogame soundtracks ever produced". Other reviewers have criticized the game's short length and relative ease compared to its peers. Overall, critics lauded Chrono Trigger for its "fantastic yet not overly complex" story, simple but innovative gameplay, and high replay value afforded by multiple endings.
Related media
Chrono Trigger inspired several sequels and expansion packs or add-ons; the first were three titles released for the Satellaview in 1995. They included Chrono Trigger: Jet Bike Special, a racing game based on a minigame from the original; Chrono Trigger: Character Library, featuring profiles on characters and monsters from the game; and Chrono Trigger: Music Library, a collection of music from the game's soundtrack. The contents of Character Library and Music Library were later included as extras in the PlayStation rerelease of Chrono Trigger. Production I.G created a 16-minute original video animation entitled "Dimensional Adventure Numa Monjar" broadcasted at the Japanese V-Jump Festival of July 31, 1996.
Sequels
Square released a fourth Satellaview game in 1996, named Radical Dreamers: Nusumenai Hōseki. Feeling that Chrono Trigger ended with "unfinished business", scenarist Masato Kato wrote and directed the game. Radical Dreamers functioned as a side story to Chrono Trigger, resolving a loose subplot from its predecessor. A short, text-based game relying on minimal graphics and atmospheric music, the game never received an official release outside Japan, though it was translated by fans to English in April 2003. Square planned to release Radical Dreamers as an easter egg in the PlayStation edition of Chrono Trigger, but Kato was unhappy with his work and halted its inclusion.
Square released Chrono Cross for the Sony PlayStation in 1999. Chrono Cross is a sequel to Chrono Trigger featuring a new setting and cast of characters. Presenting a theme of parallel worlds, the story followed the protagonist Serge, a teenage boy thrust into an alternate reality in which he died years earlier. With the help of a thief named Kid, Serge endeavors to discover the truth behind his apparent death and obtain the Frozen Flame, a mythical artifact. Regarded by writer and director Masato Kato as an effort to "redo Radical Dreamers properly", Chrono Cross borrowed certain themes, scenarios, characters, and settings from Radical Dreamers. Yasunori Mitsuda also adapted certain songs from Radical Dreamers while scoring Chrono Cross. Radical Dreamers was consequently removed from the series' main continuity, considered an alternate dimension. Chrono Cross shipped 1.5 million copies and was almost universally praised by critics.
There are no plans for a new title, despite a statement from Hironobu Sakaguchi in 2001 that the developers of Chrono Cross wanted to make a new Chrono game. The same year, Square applied for a trademark for the names Chrono Break in the United States and Chrono Brake in Japan. However, the United States trademark was dropped in 2003. Director Takashi Tokita mentioned "Chrono Trigger 2" in a 2003 interview which has not been translated to English. Yūji Horii expressed no interest in returning to the Chrono franchise in 2005, while Hironobu Sakaguchi remarked in April 2007 that his creation Blue Dragon was an "extension of [Chrono Trigger]." During a Cubed³ interview on February 1, 2007 Square Enix’s Senior Vice President Hiromichi Tanaka said that although no sequel is currently planned, some sort of sequel is still possible if the Chrono Cross developers can be reunited. Yasunori Mitsuda has expressed interest in scoring a new game, but warned that "there are a lot of politics involved" with the series. He stressed that Masato Kato should participate in development. The February 2008 issue of Game Informer ranked the Chrono series eighth among the "Top Ten Sequels in Demand", asking, "what's the damn holdup?!" In Electronic Gaming Monthly's June 2008 "Retro Issue", writer Jeremy Parish cited Chrono as the franchise video game fans would be most thrilled to see a sequel to.
Fan Projects
There have been numerous attempts at ROM hacks of Chrono Trigger, with the goal to either edit Chrono Trigger or create an entirely new game based on the same characters, worlds, etc. These fan games include, but are not limited to:
Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes A massive fan game set for release on May 31st, 2009 and done by Chrono Compedium. It was meant to be an interquel between Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, and was 5 years in the making. Unfortunately, Square Enix ordered a cease and desist on May 8th, 2009, at which point the game was 98% completed, with only a few bugs and glitches to fix before release. Currently, fans have flocked to YouTube to watch playthroughs of the game, during "The Month That Could Have Been".
Chrono Trigger: Prophet's Guile A complete hack that boasts considerable prowess, as it not only is a finished hack, but one with an entirely new game! Based on Magus's adventurous time in his return to Zeal, the player takes on the role of seeing how Magus adapted to become the Prophet, as well as the hardships he faced in Zeal. Explore Zeal like never before, here's the missing link!
Chrono Trigger Spoof #1 & #2 Two different hacks that change the dialogue of Chrono Trigger and fill it with jokes and humorous bits. Important plot points are still retained. Both are complete and can be downloaded for use.
Chrono Trigger Hard Type Made for those who thought Chrono Trigger was too easy! Enemies now have higher stats, and Playable Characters start out weaker, things are quite a challenge! That's not all, either. Levels can be reached quicker in the game due to added experience points to battles, as well as several other modifications.
Trivia
On the cover of both the SNES and DS release, Marle appears to be casting a Fire spell at a fiend resembling Heckran, although she is limited to Ice and Healing techniques in game. Only Lucca and Magus are among the recruit-able party members able to cast Fire magic. Also, interestingly enough, the scene depicts a snowy landscape similar to the Antiquity period, which Heckran never appear in.
The red spell could also represent the flashing red effect of the Triple Tech Arc Impulse which can only be used by Marle, Crono, and Frog, who are the team depicted on the cover.
Walkthrough
- The Millennial Fair
- The Queen Returns
- A Vanished Princess
- Homecoming
- The Trail
- Beyond The Ruins
- The Derelict Factory
- The End Of Time
- Fiendish Folk
- The Hero Appears
- Tata And The Frog
- The Rare Red Rock
- Footprints! Follow
- The Masamune
- The Fiendlord's Keep
- Forward To The Past
- Unnatural Selection
- The Magic Kingdom
- To Break The Seal
- The Guru Of Woe
- What Lies Beyond
- Lavos Beckons
- The New King
- The Time Egg
- The Fated Hour
- Dream's End
Gallery
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Alfador
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A Warp Portal.
External links
- Official Japanese Chrono Trigger for Nintendo DS website
- Official North American Chrono Trigger for Nintendo DS website
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This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Chrono Trigger. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with the Chrono Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. |