Back in the days of the SNES, gaming was on the rise, new ideas and companies began to break into the video gaming scene. It was a pivotal era in gaming history to say the least. Of the flood of the new games few tried to stand out from the rest, but those that did would shape the future of gaming and influence how we play games to this day. One of those few entrepreneur-like games of this time was Chrono Trigger. The story of Chrono Trigger is fairly simple. In the year 1000 A.D. a teenage boy named Crono goes off to the annual fair to find out what new invention his childhood friend Lucca has prepared for the occasion. Along the way to Lucca’s show Crono runs into a strange girl (Literally runs into her) who calls herself Marle. After the strange meeting, the two decide to go see the show together. Finally Lucca’s show starts and she reveals a weird machine that allows someone or something to be transported from one pad to the other. Unfortunately, the crowd is apprehensive of the idea. To help his friend out, Crono steps up to test out the machine. Everything works as Lucca said, Crono teleports and the crowd cheers. Then, Marle decides she wants too try it out as well. So Marle steps on the pad and Lucca and her father begin cranking up the teleporter for another go, but this time something goes sour. Huge bolts of electricity fly from the device and Marle is sucked 400 years into the past leaving only her mysterious necklace behind. Everyone freaks out. In the confusion Crono picks up the necklace and stands on the teleporter. After seeing this Lucca fires it up one final time to send Crono back in time after the girl. This is only the beginning of Crono’s time-traveling adventures. Chrono Trigger was in my opinion, the pinnacle of SNES rpg’s and SNES gaming in general. The game play in Chrono Trigger is standard rpg fare. You walk around, fight enemies, and level up; but this game threw some new twists into the tried and true formula to keep things interesting. All “random” encounters are anything but. In other rpg’s you walk around until the screen shakes and you are thrown into a battle with a random enemy. In Chrono Trigger all enemy’s can be seen moving around the area, touching them initiates a battle. What if you are bored with fighting pathetic enemies and you just wanna advance the storyline? You can evade your foes by just walking around them, it was a first for it’s time. Sometimes you can even set off environmental traps to clear the path, but stay alert as some switches are designed too bring enemy attention on to you and put the un-prepared in a sticky situation. Another game play first in Chrono Trigger was the ability to use tag-team spell casting. Say Crono has Cyclone which allows him too spin around and attack all enemies with a flurry of sword slashes and Lucca has Fire which lets her throw a tiny fireball at one foe. You could make them cast their spells separately, or combine their attacks to make Lucca enchant Crono’s blade with fire and then spin in circles cutting all enemies with a flaming sword! Testing out all the dual and triple techs is part of the fun. Crono Trigger is a masterpiece of graphical and musical design and great replay value doesn’t hurt either. All backgrounds and character models are highly detailed and just plain nice too look at. I still hear the musical score of the medieval age and the many attack sound effects ringing in my ear today. Of course a lot of people will read those last few statements and wonder what I’m smoking; to them I have only this to say. If you were born in the nineties or just 100% hate Nintendo, you have no credit in saying what games have great graphics and sound because you weren’t there when cut-scenes and musical scores weren’t a part of every single game. Chrono Trigger won’t appeal too the new gamers because they take everything they have for granted. Back to the subject at hand, Chrono Trigger may not have today’s graphics and sound, but there is one category that it even defeats a lot of recent games in… value. Chrono Trigger has twelve, that’s right, twelve endings to unlock by meeting certain hidden requirements. If you think that’s it you’re mistaken, the 12 endings are a ploy. You’ll play again (with your leveled up characters) to (hopefully) see a new ending, but you’ll eventually find yourself obsessed with finding Magus’s triple tech items, completing all the side quests and leveling up your entire party to level 99. You will let Chrono Trigger eat away all your time without even realizing it! Have you been paying attention to this review? Do you know what I’m gonna say in my conclusion? I’m gonna say Chrono Trigger is the best rpg/greatest game of all time and in my mind the only game worthy of a perfect score for doing what I believe is no less than putting rpg’s on the map and making them one of the most popular genres well into the future. For it’s many contributions to the world of video games, I give Chrono Trigger a ten out of ten and the highest possible recommendation.
Chrono Trigger is one of those games you would want to take with you if you could only choose a few games to accompany you on a deserted island. The storyline is captivating, the characters are memorable, the graphics (... Read Full Review
Chrono Trigger was the first RPG I've ever played. I still remember clear as I started playing this game. The image on the cover seemed appealing back then, and I just wondered what was that about. The story started r... Read Full Review
