Chrono Trigger

Chrono Trigger is a Japanese role-playing game developed and published by Square for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, first released in 1995 and widely regarded by critics as among the finest video games ever made.¹⁶²⁰ Its plot follows the young swordsman Crono and a party of companions who travel across several eras — from prehistory to a devastated future — to prevent the planet’s destruction at the hands of an extraterrestrial creature called Lavos.¹⁵¹⁶ The game distilled the mechanics and design philosophies of the 16-bit console generation and marked one of the last major console JRPGs in the style of the earlier Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games, before the genre’s transformation with Final Fantasy VII on the Sony PlayStation.¹⁶

Development and creators

Chrono Trigger emerged from a collaboration among figures associated with Square and Enix, a pairing facilitated through the involvement of Weekly Shōnen Jump editor Kazuhiko Torishima, who had earlier brought Dragon Quest artist Akira Toriyama into that series to strengthen the magazine’s visual appeal.⁹¹¹ Torishima recounted his combative first meeting with Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi? — arranged around the launch of V Jump — in which he lectured Sakaguchi on how poorly balanced Final Fantasy was, a rebuke Sakaguchi later said drove him to renewed effort.⁹¹¹ According to Torishima, Chrono Trigger was built outward from Toriyama’s illustrations.⁹¹¹

The game’s scenario drew on Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii and Sakaguchi, while Yoshinori Kitase? served as one of its directors.⁵ In an interview conducted for V Jump Books, Horii and Sakaguchi recalled that the project allowed a degree of freedom “never-before-seen in games,” with Sakaguchi noting that its playful touches — a robot battle, a fairground, characters bursting into song — “would be impossible with something like Final Fantasy”.⁵ Sakaguchi said he had felt some pressure to make the world resemble Toriyama’s style as much as possible, but found instead that “it was okay to play around with Toriyama’s universe” and that “anything was possible”.⁵ Horii, who described himself as involved only with the plot, credited the visual set-pieces — the scrolling backgrounds of the jail, the stained glass of the courtroom — to the graphics staff working from his brief descriptions.⁵

Sakaguchi described how the game deliberately opened up after the Ocean Palace sequence, giving the player far more freedom than the earlier linear story, so that optional time-paradox events — which testers found the most “Chrono-like” parts — could be enjoyed without derailing the plot.⁵ The developers created the Brink of Time, the game’s End of Time hub, so that players who became stuck could go there to receive hints and progress, an approach Sakaguchi contrasted with the more difficult, walkthrough-dependent structure of Final Fantasy.⁵

Setting and plot

The story begins at the Millennial Fair of 1000 A.D., a celebration marking a thousand years since the founding of the Kingdom of Guardia, held at Leene Square, where Crono meets a girl named Marle.¹⁵²¹ When Marle volunteers to demonstrate the Telepod, a teleportation device built by Crono’s inventor friend Lucca, a malfunction reacts with her pendant and sends her through a rift in time.¹³²¹ Crono follows and emerges four centuries in the past, where he finds Marle mistaken for the missing Queen Leene and learns that the death of Marle’s ancestor could erase her from existence.¹⁵

The party’s investigations set in motion a journey across eras: Prehistory (65,000,000 B.C.), where humans and reptilian Reptites war for survival; Antiquity (12,000 B.C.), an age divided between a snowbound continent and the advanced floating kingdom of Zeal; the Middle Ages (600 A.D.), a time of swords and sorcery under the armies of the Fiendlord; the Present (1000 A.D.), where Crono and his friends live; a devastated Future (2300 A.D.) ruled by rogue machines after an apocalypse in 1999 A.D.; and the timeless End of Time.¹³¹⁵ In the future the party discovers a recording of the world’s surface being destroyed by Lavos, a creature that had dwelt inside the planet siphoning its energy, and resolves to prevent the catastrophe.¹⁵ The group comes to include the amphibian knight Frog, wielder of the legendary sword Masamune; the robot Robo; the cavewoman Ayla; and the wizard Magus, initially an antagonist believed to have summoned Lavos.¹⁴¹⁵¹⁶

Gameplay

Chrono Trigger uses a menu-based combat system in which players explore towns and dungeons, battle enemies, and level up characters by collecting experience and ability points.¹⁶ Combat runs on a revised version of Square’s Active Time Battle (ATB) system, in which characters must wait for a gauge to charge before acting, making timing a strategic element.¹³²⁰ A distinctive feature is the Tech system, allowing two or three party members to combine their abilities into Double and Triple Tech attacks against multiple enemies, provided the player has procured the correct item.¹⁸ Unlike many contemporary RPGs, enemies are visible on the field rather than triggered by random encounters, and most can be avoided by a skillful player.¹⁸¹⁹ Battles play out with a three-character party whose dialogue varies with the situation.¹⁹

The game is noted for its replay value, offering multiple endings — reviewers counted ten in total — and a New Game Plus mode that lets players restart with the same levels, techs, and equipment after finishing, making the additional endings easier to reach.¹⁸¹⁹ RPGamer credited Chrono Trigger with defining what replay value should be in a game, rating its music and localization full marks in its review.¹⁸

Music

The soundtrack, praised as one of the most memorable in video-game history, has been performed in orchestral concerts such as Play! and Video Games Live and has generated more than 700 remixes, including the OverClocked ReMix album Chrono Symphonic.¹⁹ Reviewers singled out tracks such as “To Far Away Times,” “Frog’s Theme,” “Wind Scene,” and “Corridors of Time”.¹⁹

Re-releases and reception

Chrono Trigger has been re-released repeatedly across later platforms. A Nintendo DS version, published by Square Enix?, appeared on November 25, 2008, after a thirteen-year wait, adding a new script re-write, animated anime cutscenes, dual-screen presentation, and stylus controls while retaining the original’s visuals, music, character designs, and interface.¹³¹⁷ Reviewers described the DS edition as the definitive version, offering options for touch or button control, one- or two-screen display, and adjustable pacing and difficulty.¹⁷ The DS release holds a Metacritic score of 92 based on 57 critic reviews, with a user score of 9.2 from more than 1,100 ratings, and IGN’s review of a later Wii Virtual Console re-release called it “perhaps the very best video game ever made”.¹⁷²⁰

The game has since been made available on further platforms including Steam, Android, iOS, and Apple TV.⁸²¹ The Chrono Trigger world was continued in the 2000 sequel Chrono Cross, for which BradyGames published an official strategy guide covering its two worlds and side quests.³⁶

Chrono Trigger has repeatedly been named as a direct inspiration by later independent role-playing games, including Sea of Stars and Chained Echoes, which call back to it as a key influence.²²