GAME OF THE MONTH COLLECTION!
CHRONO TRIGGER
(Squaresoft, 1995)
Chrono Trigger was one of Square's final games for the Super Nintendo back in 1995 so it didn't get a very wide release because of overall poor sales of video games that year. True, some can get the chance to play it on the Playstation too but even that game will set you back a few bucks on eBay. So why bother with this 2D Adventure/RPG anyways? The awesome artwork, the unforgettable music, and a cool new concept never before seen in a RPG, that's why! I know this next statement is going to suck but you'll definitely want to make time for this.
Chrono Trigger is the prequel to the popular Playstation game Chrono Cross but there are very little the two titles have in common other than some music bites and time travelling aspect. Some people may actually prefer the original to the newer 3D Cross title believe it or not, play them both to see if you agree?
Time traveling can get you into big trouble, eh?
The Earthbound ones
The story starts off with Crono, a young and skilled spiky haired samurai in 1000 AD and everyone is celebrating the new millennium with a huge party. Your genius friend Lucca just finished her weird new machine at a local fair as well and things go wrong when Crono's bumps into a strange girl with a mystical pendent named Marle. You see she wants to try
There are 7 playable characters in the game including the fore mentioned Crono,
What makes this RPG so different than other games of the genre like the Final Fantasy series or the less popular Dragon Warrior/Quest (that's bound to get some people mad, eh) series is that Chrono Trigger features a unique Combo attack system to combine characters attacks in powerful single blows like Lucca will shot fire at Crono's sword and he'll use the sword while it's burning or Robo's and Frog's rush attacks. Hell Ya! You can even combine three characters to attack at once as long as their meters are completely full to do something that's hopefully pretty devastating. The battle scenes also don't go to a new screen like most Role Playing Games and it's sometimes possible to avoid a battle altogether if the enemies don't see or hear you.
This is from the Playstation version which features bonus Anime cut scenes.
If you can't get find the Super Nintendo version than you can also get Chrono Trigger packaged with the Playstation game Final Fantasy Chronicles which also came with the acclaimed Final Fantasy IV. Unfortunately, because of the CD medium there are some annoying load times when ever the game goes into the battle scenes and both games are graphically unchanged from their 16-bit days other then the new opening and closing cinemas.
Unlike Final Fantasy IV though, Chrono Trigger has aged a lot better and still looks fairly decent even today so it looks like it actually belongs on a 32-bit machine. This game also includes character artwork by none other than the acclaimed Dragonaball Z artist; Akira Toriyama so you know that there are some great art in this game. Wait till you see the cool images like Magus's Castle for the first time or the giant bosses like a T. Rex in 65, 000, 000 B.C. Chrono Trigger was perhaps the first RPG where I actually enjoyed the graphics in the game.
If the awesome music of Final Fantasy II wasn't enough wait till you hear the music in Chrono Trigger too. You get over 30 beautifully made tracks with some even made, I think, by real orchestras. SquareSoft knows that game music is very important in a video game and it's time we recognize this fact like they do in Japan (you can even buy video game sound tracks for several different games over there). You'll hear intense and up beat music for a boss battle, and relaxing calm music when you're walking around on the main map. Again sound is another category wear Chrono Trigger excels in.
Why are the best SNES games so pricy?
The fact that you can time travel throughout the game in over 6 different periods really makes the game a very nonlinear experience. Chrono Trigger is a awesome RPG that's filled with excellent presentation, great imagery, fitting musical scores plus if all that wasn't enough Square even threw in 10 different endings in the + game (finish the game once to get the + game). The Playstation version has a bonus opening and ending Anime short movies so there is a bonus if you're one of the few people out there that want to experience this great game all over again. Although I did talk about earlier how Chrono Trigger wasn't that popular because of its limited release, that doesn't mean that people didn't like, in fact it still has a good cult following to this day. Just play it, trust me.