Chrono Trigger and why we love it (from EP267: Planetfall)

[Scattercat]

Chrono Trigger is win forever.  I have yet to play another game that truly exceeds it in the tightness of its construction.

[goatkeeper]

Other than Lavos reimagined as a bigger-than-planet predator rather than a relatively microscopic parasite, there was a lot of talky-talky and very little movement. 

Ooh, a Chrono Trigger reference!  (Unless there's a different Lavos somewhere).

Yah, scattercat bought some good geekcred with me there too

[mclea]

I suppose, given the general reaction, that I should be encouraged if anyone is passionate enough to want to argue further.  Not much interest in arguing myself, but if anyone has any questions or comments, about process, inspiration, symbolism, etc. I'm happy to respond.

Speaking of which, sorry to say, never heard of Chrono Trigger (video game?) and I have no idea what a Lavos is.  I know of the existence of Warhammer, but never played it or read any of the fiction.

Thanks again!

MCL

(mod note: oops, this one should probably have been left in the main thread. Sorry about that!)

[Unblinking]

And one more quick comment about Lavos, here's a picture of Lavos breaking through the Earth's crust and raining down destruction in the year 1999:


I highly recommend the game.  I should write up a review of it!  Okay, gaming rant over!

[Scattercat]

Plus, it's nearly as much fun to make the Lavos noise as it is to make the Murloc noise.

Srsly, Chrono Trigger is a brilliant story with an amazing amount packed into a 16-bit package.  I cannot recommend it highly enough, if you like RPGs at all.  Play it with a walkthrough and don't feel bad, because there are some nifty story bits you might miss otherwise.  (Not necessities, but cute scenes and one big twist that I will not reveal.)

(Avoid Chrono Cross, the sequel, as if it were made of hate and poison, because it basically is.  Chrono Trigger focused on six characters to an impressive depth, each with a completely unique personality and power set, which means that the game plays rather differently depending on who you have in your party.  Chrono Cross apparently decided to invert that and has 40 characters who are primarily differentiated by their goofy verbal tics and all play exactly the same.)

[stePH]

Srsly, Chrono Trigger is a brilliant story with an amazing amount packed into a 16-bit package.  I cannot recommend it highly enough, if you like RPGs at all.  Play it with a walkthrough and don't feel bad, because there are some nifty story bits you might miss otherwise.  (Not necessities, but cute scenes and one big twist that I will not reveal.)

I've been a "content tourist" on occasion. Frex, I ended up playing American McGee's Alice on the easiest skill setting so that I could finish it.

[eytanz]

So I split this topic off, partially because it was veering away from relevance to the Planetfall thread, but mostly because Chrono Trigger is awesome and it deserves a thread for itself.

Probably the easiest way to play it these days is with the Nintendo DS version - it involves some silly bonus content that doesn't add much, but the main gameplay is, as far as I am aware, untouched.

[goatkeeper]

Nice.  All this Chrono Trigger talk has inspired me to download the SNES emulator for my computer and begin a little trip down memory lane, starting CT from scratch.  If anyone else would like to embark on this holy pilgrimage of old-school RPG awesomeness feel free to do the same!  Perhaps both noobs and nostalgia-whores alike can share their experience here in this thread.

On a different note, Scatcat my friend, I think your Chrono Cross assessment is a bit harsh.  Is the game made up entirely of evil hate and poison?  
Sure.
But plenty of people thrive off of  hate, poison and evil!
Oh, and pizza, of course.

You see, CT and CC are basically like Predator 1 and 2.  One's got Ahnold and some hilarious helicopter jokes, the other is a little goofy and has Danny Glover.  Yes, of course the first one's way better on all accounts, but the second one is definitely still worth watching, even sanz Carl Weathers and whipped cream falling like waterfalls.

[eytanz]

But plenty of people thrive off of  hate, poison and evil!

Geesh. Advice to everyone - if you think the slowed down version is too creepy for you, by no means click the link to the full speed version. It's been a long time since I saw something this horrifying.

[ElectricPaladin]

To get this off topic thread back on topic...

I love Chrono Trigger's relative complexity, with characters who want different things than each other for real and genuine reasons having real and genuine conflict. I love the artistic use of the limited graphics capabilities available at the time - really, for a 2d console game from the distant past of modern graphic design, it's really beautiful. I love the story, with its ins and outs, ups and downs, and twists. I love that this dinky little video game managed to create a better and more coherent time travel plot than many novels and big budget movies I've experienced.

But most of all, I love the characters. Chrono, Marle, Frog, Robo, Magus, Lucca, Ayla... hell, Scala, Queen Zeal, Ayla's tribe mates, and others. They're really well written. Even Chrono, who never says a word, manages to evoke a personality. I've found the themes these people embody evolving and reemerging in my own writing.

Actually most of all, I love that Chrono Trigger is a good example of the force-of-nature villain done really well. Lavos isn't a person with a motivation and a secret history. He doesn't have good or understandable reasons for doing what he does. He doesn't have a point of view. Lavos is a force of nature who wants to eat everything. What's interesting in the story isn't Lavos, but how everyone else deals with his power and his inevitability.

Deals with, and heroically overcomes, of course.

[Unblinking]

ElectricPaladin, I would NEVER have guessed that you were a Chrono Trigger fan!   

Now I really want to play this again!  Among the things that impressed me about the game:
1.  It did a great job exploring the 6 characters in depth, as others have said.
2.  The swinging pendulum animation in the opening sequence was amazing at the time.  It had me drooling.
3.  Enemy attacks are not random and unexpected like they are in many RPG's.  Many are unavaoidable, sure, but you either see the enemy coming or it is a straight out ambush.
4.  I liked the area-of-effect types of attacks such as straight line of effect or circular area of effect, novel to me at the time, where the locations of people on the battlefield actually mattered.  This was novel to me after playing mostly Final Fantasy RPG's.
5.  The force of nature enemy was brilliant.
6.  An RPG game based around time travel?  Fantastic!  Mixing robots and swordfighters, and doing it well!
7.  But Most of all, I liked the replayability of it.  After you beat the game once, then you have a "New Game+" option, in which you can carry over all the character experience and weapons from the saved game where you mastered it.  You can find at least half a dozen alternate endings by jumping through the time portal at various points, and you can continually badass-ify your characters as you go, and collect all the +1 stat items as you go.  If you think Ayla kicked butt the first time through, wait until her strength is high enough to qualify her for, what was it, "iron fist" as her primary weapon? 

[ElectricPaladin]

ElectricPaladin, I would NEVER have guessed that you were a Chrono Trigger fan!   

Seriously, who'd a thought it?

Honestly, my whole ElectricPaladin online handle/nearly indecent desire to play a Warforged Paladin one of these days/fascination with themes of chosen-ness, calling, heroism, and free will (and the actual or merely perceived lack thereof) can all be traced back to the fact that Robo is awesome. I want him to be my character.

Maybe I should get that on a bumper sticker: "I want Robo to be my character."

[Unblinking]

ElectricPaladin, I would NEVER have guessed that you were a Chrono Trigger fan!   

Seriously, who'd a thought it?

Honestly, my whole ElectricPaladin online handle/nearly indecent desire to play a Warforged Paladin one of these days/fascination with themes of chosen-ness, calling, heroism, and free will (and the actual or merely perceived lack thereof) can all be traced back to the fact that Robo is awesome. I want him to be my character.

Maybe I should get that on a bumper sticker: "I want Robo to be my character."

Robo is indeed awesome, and worthy of avatar-ization.  I think my favorite of the group might've been Frog, at least when I last played it.  I like his antiquated speech, and really, how can you dislike the idea of a frog knight?

[ElectricPaladin]

ElectricPaladin, I would NEVER have guessed that you were a Chrono Trigger fan!   

Seriously, who'd a thought it?

Honestly, my whole ElectricPaladin online handle/nearly indecent desire to play a Warforged Paladin one of these days/fascination with themes of chosen-ness, calling, heroism, and free will (and the actual or merely perceived lack thereof) can all be traced back to the fact that Robo is awesome. I want him to be my character.

Maybe I should get that on a bumper sticker: "I want Robo to be my character."

Robo is indeed awesome, and worthy of avatar-ization.  I think my favorite of the group might've been Frog, at least when I last played it.  I like his antiquated speech, and really, how can you dislike the idea of a frog knight?

Yeah, Frog is probably my second favorite. But he's not second by a lot.

[stePH]

So I split this topic off, partially because it was veering away from relevance to the Planetfall thread, but mostly because Chrono Trigger is awesome and it deserves a thread for itself.

Probably the easiest way to play it these days is with the Nintendo DS version - it involves some silly bonus content that doesn't add much, but the main gameplay is, as far as I am aware, untouched.

There's also a PSX version that includes Final Fantasy II, I think. Or FF6.

[Unblinking]

So I split this topic off, partially because it was veering away from relevance to the Planetfall thread, but mostly because Chrono Trigger is awesome and it deserves a thread for itself.

Probably the easiest way to play it these days is with the Nintendo DS version - it involves some silly bonus content that doesn't add much, but the main gameplay is, as far as I am aware, untouched.

There's also a PSX version that includes Final Fantasy II, I think. Or FF6.

Yup, the two-game pack is called Final Fantasy Chronicles.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Chronicles
It includes FFIV, which is what we Americans originally knew as FFII.

[ElectricPaladin]

You can also get Chrono Trigger for the DS, which I plan to do presently.

[Scattercat]

I replayed CT on the DS and enjoyed it, but be warned that there are a couple of puzzles/games that were designed with the original hard-lined four-directional D-pad in mind, and the new eight-direction standard (or omnidirectional stylus) makes them very very hard.  I refer particularly to chasing the rat in Dome 11 (I think it's 11) and to trying to hide behind trees on Death Mountain.  Took me like a half hour on each of them because I kept getting hung up on corners or slipping around the tree when Crono tried to run NE or NW instead of just straight N.

[stePH]

Yup, the two-game pack is called Final Fantasy Chronicles.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Chronicles
It includes FFIV, which is what we Americans originally knew as FFII.

Ah, then the one I played was FF2 actual. The PSX release that has the first two FF games, no ChronoTrigger.

[Fenrix]

All this and no mention of the fantastic music?

[stePH]

Speaking of the music:
Chrono Tied

Chrono Tied is a 2009 mashup album produced by DJ Nerd42 that puts the vocals from Fort Minor's 2005 album "The Rising Tied" over beats created by sampling the Chrono Trigger original soundtrack. (1995) After a three year development cycle, this project features over an hour of music. It has several original sample-based beats, but nine of the tracks on Chrono Tied are based on instrumentals from "The Chrono Trigger Mixtape" by Compromised. All tracks on the album were produced by DJ Nerd42 except track 20 which is a remix by Theory.

Track list:
01. "Chrono Tied Premonition" (0:46)
02. "Remember the Wind Scene" (3:29) - 85 BPM - sample-based beat by Compromised, production by DJ Nerd42
03. "Right Now Time Circuits" (3:35) - 112 BPM - sample-based beat by Compromised, production by DJ Nerd42
04. "Petrified in the Underground Sewer" (3:30) - 110 BPM - sample-based beat by Compromised, production by DJ Nerd42
05. "Feel Like Kingdom Trial" (3:32) - 110 BPM - sample-based beat by Compromised, production by DJ Nerd42
06. "Where'd You Go on a Peaceful Day" (3:37) - 90 BPM - sample-based beat & production by DJ Nerd42
07. "Tyran In Stereo" (3:31) - 80 BPM - sample-based beat & production by DJ Nerd42
08. "Back Home with the Secret of the Forest" (3:37) - 90 BPM - sample-based beat by Compromised, production by DJ Nerd42
09. "Cigs In A Ruined World" (3:31) - 75 BPM or 150 BPM - sample-based beat & production by DJ Nerd42
10. "The Day the World Believed Me" (3:12) - 110 BPM - sample-based beat by Compromised, production by DJ Nerd42
11. "Get Me Gone At the Bottom of Night" (2:18) - 100 BPM - sample-based beat by Compromised, production by DJ Nerd42
12. "Johnny's High Road" (2:32) - 115 BPM - production by DJ Nerd42
13. "Kenji's Morning Sunlight" (3:32) - 103 BPM - sample-based beat & production by DJ Nerd42
14. "Magus Red to Black" (2:57) - 120 BPM in 3/4 time (drums in 6/4 time) - sample-based beat & production by DJ Nerd42
15. "Determination Like This" (1:07) - 130 BPM - sample-based beat and turntablism by DJ Nerd42
16. "Schala Out the Back" (3:44) - 90 BPM - sample-based beat by Compromised, production by DJ Nerd42
17. "Gato's Gonna Be Somebody" (3:12) - 100 BPM - sample-based beat by Compromised, production by DJ Nerd42
18. "There They Go to the Random Battle" (3:13) - 140 BPM - sample-based beat & production by DJ Nerd42
19. "The Hard Way to the Undersea Palace" (3:49) - 120 BPM in 3/4 time - sample-based beat & production by DJ Nerd42
20. "Schala Out the Back (Theory Remix)" (3:49) - 90 BPM - original beat and production by Theory

Total run time: 1:02:33 (1 hour, 2 minutes, 33 seconds)

[stePH]

...and it seems I can buy the game for my Wii for eight bucks! (800 points from the Wii store)

[NomadicScribe]

I went on a Chrono Trigger nostalgia trip earlier this year. Very few works of fiction, let alone videogames, have been able to match the sense of mystery, adventure, and fun of this game. The diving into the unknown, the forging of friendships, the amazing sights. And yes, the incredible music.

Ultimately, Chrono Trigger is just a unique experience.

[Scattercat]

I'd say Final Fantasy 3/6 is at least close in terms of quality narrative on a 16-bit game system.  Very different tone, though.

[Jonathan C. Gillespie]

Yeah, Final Fantasy III (USA) and Chrono Trigger both hold very dear places in my heart. The two of them managed to be as moving as many great works of literature, and that's a hell of an achievement for a 16-bit console game.