Collection essentials #174: Chrono Trigger (SNES)

I’ve covered some RPGs in this series already, such as the two giants Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy that pioneered a certain variety of the genre and became the two biggest names in said genre. RPGs before the ‘90s can be hard to go back to in modern times, and not many people really want to go back and spend time on the original versions of the first Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy titles. However, in the early ‘90s, developers started figuring out what makes for a truly great and timeless RPG. And then, a “dream team” was assembled, the men who created Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, in addition to artist and character designer Akira Toriyama from Dragon Quest (not to mention the unrelated anime giant Dragon Ball) teamed up to create a magnum opus of the genre. And the result is Chrono Trigger, one of the most critically-acclaimed and highly-revered video games of all-time.

The main character of Chrono Trigger is named “Crono”, and there’s a reason why his name has no H in it. Japanese is a more concise language than English, able to fit more syllables with fewer symbols than we can with our letters in English. So when the Japanese developers made this game, they programmed a five-character limit on Character names. Rather than reprogram the game’s code, they opted to simply drop the “H” from Chrono to make his name fit!

Crono is a silent protagonist, something that is fairly common (but far from truly the norm) in RPGs, and video games in general. The game’s story is all about time travel, and the plot revolves around finding a way to stop a large evil being known as Lavos from causing a cataclysmic event in the year 1999 that destroys most of civilization. Chrono and two friends from his own time period jump across a wide variety of time periods, making new friends and thwarting various foes along the way. The wonderful character and world design is a big part of Chrono Trigger’s appeal. Time travel was an ingenious idea because it makes for such great variety, with every part of the game being quite distinct and memorable. In the earliest JRPGs, the player characters really weren’t a very big focus of the game’s story and narrative at all, but by this time the genre had evolved to where they’re one of the biggest draws. Chrono Trigger’s characters are not only very active in the story but they all have optional “side quests” that add to their depth. 

In terms of gameplay, Chrono Trigger has a turn-based battle system that’s not super unique, but still effective. It actually borrows the “active time” element from the recent Final Fantasy games, where you have to make your decisions quickly because enemies won’t wait for you to take your turn, but you can also choose to turn this feature off so it’s a little more like a traditional RPG. Most notably though, the game features cool team-up attacks that different combinations of party members can perform. This usually involves two specific characters combining their powers in certain ways, and some even involve all three (you can only have three characters total fighting at a given time). And a great thing about the game is that it features no random battles, as enemies are encountered as you’re walking around, and when you touch one you will simply arm yourself and start fighting then and there. The norm for RPGs at this time was that every step you take in a valid area had a certain chance to whisk you away to a separate battle screen against your will, which is something that can get really tedious.

One of the greatest things about Chrono Trigger is its incredible soundtrack. The composers took full advantage of the sound capabilities of the Super Nintendo to make a score that is truly beautiful and epic, music that can be recognized as great even for people who don’t know or care about video games. It’s probably not so obvious to non-gamers, but music is one of the biggest appeals of gaming, and Chrono Trigger is one of the chief examples.

Chrono Trigger is rather short by the genre’s standards. Most JRPGs take at the very last 20 hours for the average playthrough if not much more. If you’re fairly experienced with RPGs, you likely will see the game’s credits roll in under 20 hours. However, I don’t really count this as a flaw for a couple reasons. For one, less is sometimes more. It’s easy for RPGs to overstay their welcome and have pacing issues as they drag on for too long. Chrono Trigger is concise and not bloated at all. And the other reason lies in the new features that the game introduced to the genre: different endings, and “New Game Plus”. After a while, you will be free to choose to engage the final boss, and how and when you decide to do so determines which ending you’ll get. “New Game Plus” is a feature that lets you start from the beginning of the game with your characters at the same strength as when you last defeated the final boss, and this is the method by which you can access most of the game’s 12 endings. Many RPGs since have copied New Game Plus in some form. 

As for my personal history with Chrono Trigger, it’s a game that I believe I first became aware of as a kid seeing an advertisement for it in the back of a strategy guide I owned for a different game. It sounded epic. When we finally got the internet at home, it was one of the first games I bought on eBay, when I was 14. It quickly became one of my top RPGs. And I really fell in love with the soundtrack in particular. At that time I was taking piano lessons, so when I found video game sheet music I could print online, I was particularly excited to start playing some of my favorite Chrono Trigger tunes. I think I could still play “Frog’s Theme” from memory right now, even though I haven’t played the piano hardly at all in many years.

In 2011, Chrono Trigger helped inspire the biggest phase of my video game collecting. I had owned the cartridge for seven years at that point, but on Craigslist somebody local was selling their Super Nintendo collection, which consisted of many RPGs complete in their original packaging. He showcased Chrono Trigger as the most desirable piece, in almost perfect condition. Many people had contacted him with interest but I was the one who scored the lot, and for a great deal at that. It was absolutely exhilarating to have some of my favorite RPGs of all time now complete, and it sparked me to much more actively grow my collection to seek out all the great old school games and get the original packaging for the ones I cared about the most. 

Perhaps surprisingly, I haven’t played the game a ton in my life, I only got two of the endings in the original Super Nintendo version as a teenager, and I revisited a newer version of the game as an adult to get a couple more, but I still haven’t gotten the majority of them. This is largely because I got Chrono Trigger at the start of the era where I had tons of games to play, so I chose to generally not spend a ton of time on a single game like many people do. But even just playing it once is enough to leave a huge impression.

There’s so much that can be said about what makes Chrono Trigger great, there’s no way I was going to cover it all in one of these posts. But I think you can tell that it’s an exemplary essential, the cream of the crop, one of the finest pieces of entertainment the world of video games has to offer.