How Good Was… ChronoTrigger
Back in the nineties, the Japanese RPG was king. When arguments broke out about the depth of videogames, or how videogames could never truly tell a story, the JRPGs were always used to prop up the other side of the argument. The genre still plods on today, and has it’s core followers, but it has come to look a little…traditional.
This can make it easy to forget that those games that were used to extol the virtues of videogame storytelling really were quite phenomenal. The SNES had a clutch of really excellent RPGs, games like Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy VI and of course, Chrono Trigger.
Chrono Trigger was produced by Squaresoft with a team that was affectionately termed at the time, the Dream Team. Leading the team was Hironobu Sakaguchi, famed creator of the Final Fantasy series. On character design, Akira Toriyama, also of Final Fantasy fame and of course the creator of the wildly popular Dragonball series. There was also Yuji Horii, designer of Final Fantasy’s main rival series, Dragon Quest, and finally, music from Nubuo Uematsu, also from the Final Fantasy series. These names may be unfamiliar to many, but they really are the superstars of the genre, and to have them all work on one game got those in the industry very excited.
What resulted was a classic JRPG that allowed these talented superstars to jettison the shackles of their respective series’ and start afresh with ideas that they’d previously had no place for. The time travelling plot could have easily folded in on itself with paradoxes and what not but it was all injected with such a sense of fun, that you found that you didn’t even look out for them.
Chrono Trigger was also revolutionary in a number of respects, having multiple endings, multiple world maps, side-quests that meant something to the main plot and a unique battle system. The game has such a strong cult following that Square Enix have had to issue not one, but two cease and desist orders to fans attempting to remake the game. Chrono Trigger has been rereleased in several guises over the years, on the PlayStation and on the DS, so there is no excuse for not rediscovering this classic piece of videogaming.
Aye, it’s a good ‘un
aye. it is