I have to say – when my daughter first started telling me about Chrono Trigger years ago (2011), I wasn’t that intrigued. Coming from a gaming background where 16-bit still looked “bad” to me because of Super Metroid (another game I picked up because of my daughter – I got it a year before Chrono Trigger), I thought it was just another old RPG that I would never play. She mentioned it to me over and over, told me it was different (“Dad, this one has time travel that actually makes sense”), that “the music will make you cry”.
I doubted her – sure, games had made me feel strong emotions. But a VIDEO GAME was going to MAKE A 42-YEAR OLD CONSTRUCTION FOREMAN CRY? ?
…..Apparently I wasn’t going to be so lucky.
So finally, I broke down and picked up a copy at Gameboojurbler’s in Denver – dropped too much money on it ($50 for a loose cartridge probably), but the guy ringing me up smiled when I told him it was my first time playing it. “Man,” he said, “I wish I could play this for the first time again.” I get this from people ALL THE TIME when I tell them I get to play these classics for the first time. But something about the way he said it made me think – maybe THIS game was going to be different.
So a few weeks later, I popped it into my SNES I had bought probably six months earlier. Those opening notes started – that beautiful haunting melody that sounded both nostalgic, but new at the same time – and I knew. I KNEW that this would not be like the OTHER RPGs I had been playing lately. I had tried fooling around with Final Fantasy VI before and got lost in it. It was alright, but nothing really grabbed me – and the random encounters killed the experience for me. But Chrono Trigger clamped onto my skull like a vise from minute one and would not let go for the next 40 hours until I watched the credits.
For starters – how it handled time travel was ingenious. I’m a tactile person – I build homes for a living. Cause and effect? I live and breathe that. If you don’t lay a good foundation, the rest of your house is going to suffer. So when you show me that by planting that seed in 12000 BC, I can come back to 1000 AD and grow a forest to get to new treasure, THAT is logic that my brain can comprehend. It wasn’t “got to find the magic portal to another level!” It was TRULY time travel with understandable rules and mechanics behind it.
The thing that really amazed me though is how the game NEVER talked down to me. I knew going into older RPGs that they were going to feel dated compared to what I was used to seeing in modern RPGs. Chrono Trigger was leaps and bounds ahead of its contemporaries in SO MANY ways. The battle system was fantastic – a perfect blend of strategy and action. Characters could move around the battle arena, combos took real skill and timing to execute properly, enemies had positions and weaknesses you could actually strategize against. I was expecting to hate the combat for this sole reason, since I had never played a turn-based RPG before. Instead, I actually looked forward to battles just to see what new combo I could pull off.
And the characters… Jesus. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d grow to care about some computer-generated humans. Frog quickly became my favorite – cursed to live as a stupid teenager while yearning to atone for his previous life’s sins. I myself have made foolish mistakes in my life, so I understood Glenn’s struggle and the heartbreak he felt when deciding whether or not to take revenge on his brother’s killer, or to do what was right. His scene where he decides is heart-wrenching and powerful – considering this is a GAME on a 16-bit system.
And don’t even get me started on Robo. Alone for 400 years in a post-apocalyptic future where he slowly dies over time, watching the world he knew turn to shit… and yet he still finds it within himself to keep pushing on, stay strong. I was expecting cheesy science fiction when Robo starts talking about learning human emotions. What I got was a beautiful look into what makes us want to live, what makes us care about others despite how different we may seem from them. Christ, the scene where you find Robo all by his lonesome in the wilderness after he single-handedly reforested the planet with JUST HANDS???? Made me ugly cry.
And while were on the topic of music…
…I need to write about the music.
All day I’m out on a job site BUILDING THINGS. There’s always so much noise at my job – yelling, engines, etc. By the time I get home, I don’t want to hear anything but complete silence. But I found myself leaving Chrono Trigger on my TV just to listen to the soundtrack. There was this one track – “Wind Scene” – that played during one part of the game where you’re in the medieval period, and…it just fills you with peace. Made me understand how people buy video game soundtracks on vinyl collectors editions. THAT GOOD.
Each era of the world was also fantastic. Each region had a different feel to it – a different personality. They had unique struggles, themes, even art styles. Prehistoric era? Cheque. Throw in some dinosaurs and tribal warfare. Dark ages? Got it. Knights, kings, magic. And of course, future? Done. Post-apocalyptic genocide committed by robots….wait….
WHAT THEY LEFT OF HUMANITY’S FUTURE IS F@&%ING AMAZING. To see what little was left of our world after aliens try to murder every single last person was chilling. Knowing that you’re playing your part in preventing THIS from happening gave the game tremendous weight. You’re not just slaughtering pixels to “get the magic sword” or “save the princess”. NO – you’re doing it to SAVE HUMANITY.
Lavos was terrifying. Hell, for a SNES game I was expecting to be scared. Dude’s a FUCKING PARASITE FROM SPACE that flies around the universe blasting planets out of existence just so he can burrow under the surface, learn everything about their civilization and how technologically advanced they became, THEN EAT HIS WAY OUT OF THE GROUND destroying everything you know and love before hopping onto the next town over to do it all over again. Cosmic horror wrapped up in the body of a plant. I looked at each stop on your journey through time differently after learning about Lavos. It was THERE. Under everything you knew. Waiting.
But what really set this game apart for me was how much it respected my time and intelligence. No random encounters. No grinding necessary to beat the game. Endings that ACTUALLY changed based on your decisions and what point you chose to fight the true final boss. New Game Plus to progress your characters through other playthroughs to see how story choices affect your journey. Innovations that I didn’t know I was missing out on in RPGs until I played some that DIDN’T have them.
I played Chrono Trigger 4 times the first year I played it. I wanted to experience all of the endings, make different choices, see all of the character interactions I could. Each playthrough, I found new things I missed the previous playthroughs. It was content-rich but never once felt stuffed.
When I finally beat Chrono Trigger that first time, I called my daughter immediately. “So?? ?” she asked anxiously. “Uh..” I said. “Yeah,” she continued, “did you like it?? Is it as good as I said? !” I paused for a minute, thinking back on my adventure across time. “Yeah,” I told her. “You were right. It’s special.”
We talked for an hour about that game. Our favorite characters, our favorite scenes. Comparing theories on which ending was the “real” ending. It became a piece of media we could both relate to despite our age gap.
Chrono Trigger is still my goto when I’m talking someone new to JRPGs about what they should play. And sure, I’ve played some other classics since then that were absolutely amazing (Forever Royal, if you’re reading this…you know what you did). Some of them had fantastic journeys through time as well. None of them ever truly captured that special “Chrono Trigger” feeling – that perfect amalgamation of Akira Toriyama’s sprites and Yasunori Mitsuda’s timeless soundtrack.
I’ve played Chrono Trigger on DS, mobile, Steam. Each has their ups and downs but none lose the appeal of what made it great for me. Nowadays I have it on my phone and play it while I eat lunch at my job site. Sitting in my truck half-a-story off the ground listening to Crono and his pals save the world from an ancient space wizard while I munch on a sandwich. It’s always cool to think about. But those tracks hit me every time. Those characters continue to amaze me. And the time travel? STILL ingenious.
People often ask me if Chrono Trigger lives up to the hype for people who didn’t grow up with it. Is it as good as they say? Or are you just hearing that through rose-colored glasses of nostalgia? Here’s something I can tell you now that I know to be TRUE. Chrono Trigger is EVERYTHING they say it is.
AND THEN SOME.
Chrono Trigger is proof that video games can be art. That with the right minds behind a project, you can create something that will be enjoyed decades after its initial release. Games will never truly die because of classics like Chrono Trigger.
John grew up swapping floppy disks and reading Amiga Power cover to cover. Now an IT manager in Manchester, he writes about the glory days of British computer gaming—Sensible Soccer, Speedball 2, and why the Amiga deserved more love than it ever got.
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