This Week In Retro: Chrono Trigger

March 11, 1995: tick tock on the clock but the party don't stop, no

by Diamond Feit

Mankind will never come up with a greater invention than the concept of time. I love language—it keeps me employed for sure—but I do wish we had stopped making new ones once we had enough words to ask each other for the exact location of the nearest toilet. I'm grateful that currency exists so I don't have to gather precious stones in order to buy a large tub of peanut butter at Costco, but given the state of the world in 2025 I think we can all agree that money is doing far more harm than good at the moment.

Time, on the other hand, has managed to imbue every community on Earth such that even a child can understand the structure of our society in terms of years, days, hours, and even seconds. "Sun goes up, sun goes down, sleep" works well enough if you're a farmer, but we've managed to codify an international standard for counting our very existence—an incredible achievement on a planetary scale.

Of course, as soon as we came up with a system of numbers to map our history, we immediately wondered what it might be like if we could control that system. I don't mean "what if we rename 'minutes' as 'beefies,'" I'm talking about the power to alter the flow of time. It's the ultimate fantasy: A chance to visit places that no longer exist or an opportunity to glimpse a distant version of the world that we'd otherwise never see with our own eyes.

More than anything, we wish for time travel as a means to reflect on ourselves and our past regrets, big or small. It pains me that my father never got to know any of his grandchildren and each day I wish I could introduce them to him. On a much more trivial note, I would love to send a letter to my 20-year-old self and give him a list of online purchases to never, ever make.

Beyond our personal lamentations, we also yearn for time travel as a righteous force for good that pushes back against historical injustice. Every American alive today has experienced at least one presidential election that they wish they could retroactively overturn, and once you open that door you start to build an inventory of heinous acts that ought not to have occurred for any reason. Take your pick of humanity's many wars, genocides, and massacres and imagine what would you do if you had the power to annul them.

30 years ago this week, noted Japanese developer Square actually tied these primal desires together into a single role-playing game called Chrono Trigger, one that offered players the means to witness the birth and death of a world which they could explore one era at a time.

The adventure begins with our aptly-named hero Crono asleep in his bed, roused by his mother who urges him to wake up and enjoy the Millennial Fair. While "millennial" carries a different meaning today, in this case it's celebrating 1000 years in the kingdom of Guardia. Chrono Trigger displays the date on screen as 1000 A.D. and later identifies the past as B.C., implying that the birth of Jesus occurred in this realm but no one ever confirms that in the text.

Walking around town and heading over to the fair, Crono—and thus the player—will hear about the rich history of the kingdom and rumors of discord inside the royal family. Many celebrants will proudly speak of a victory won against the forces of Magus 400 years earlier, although at least one kid doesn't see why anyone would care about defeating some "wizard" centuries ago.

Besides playing carnival games and window shopping, Crono meets two women central to his future at the fair. The first literally runs into him, knocking them both to the ground; she introduces herself as Marle and wishes to stick with Crono while he mills about. While not a date, the two youngsters form a quick bond in a real meet-cute scenario.

The second lady is Crono's pal Lucca, an ambitious young inventor who claims to have developed transporter technology. Crono volunteers to test her prototype and safely makes the 20-foot leap from pod to pod but when Marle takes a turn, she triggers a malfunction and vanishes into the ether. Crono quickly follows her, leaving the fair behind and emerging in a forest populated with imps and other small critters.

Emerging from the woods, Crono sees the same Truce Village he calls home but nothing's quite right; the fairgrounds and his house are missing. Residents speak of King Guardia but express concerns about his missing queen and "battling Magus' army." No one knows of any Millennial Fair, instead insisting that it's the year 600. Somehow Lucca's gadget has transported Crono not spatially but temporally back to the past.

Still on the lookout for signs of Marle, Crono marches into Guardia Castle looking to the authorities for answers. The soldiers on duty roast his appearance but to their surprise, Queen Leene struts up and demands they admit the strange boy. In private, she admits to Crono that she's actually Marle, but as soon as she arrived everyone bowed and escorted her to the throne. Crono and Marle's reunion doesn't last long, however, for she disappears again—violently this time.

Fortunately for Crono, Lucca arrives from the future with both an explanation and a solution to their problems. The good news is she's figured out the basics of time travel and can bring them home via the forest. The bad news is Marle was actually Princess Nadia, making Queen Leene her ancestor. Marle's arrival mistakenly convinced the soldiers to stop looking for the real queen, creating a Back to the Future paradox that erased Marle from existence. Crono and Lucca have no choice but to locate and rescue Queen Leene to restore the timeline and return their new friend to life.

Crono's accidental jaunt into the Middle Ages is but the first chapter in a long series of unexpected journeys that make up the complex narrative of Chrono Trigger. In his first excursion to the far-flung future—2300 A.D.—he discovers the world in ruins. Advanced cities lie broken across the continent and the few human survivors struggle to feed themselves. A video record shows him that back in 1999, a massive fissure erupted and a subterranean being emerged, laying waste to the planet. Crono and his cohorts decide then and there that they must use their new-found time travel capabilities to ensure this so-called Day of Lavos never occurs.

Initially Crono makes random trips that send him forwards and backwards across time, trapping him there for story purposes before he can move on. Eventually he gains access to a dedicated vehicle that lets him fly wherever and whenever he wants, much like the airships seen in Square's Final Fantasy series. By that point, Crono has a half-dozen allies along for the ride, all from different backgrounds but all pursuing the same goal: Destroy Lavos and save the world.

I'm no stranger to the JRPG formula, but Chrono Trigger kept surprising me with its commitment to exploring the time travel concept to the fullest. The world map seen in this game pales in comparison to other RPGs, but since you get to visit the same places again and again throughout history, it creates a sense of familiarity. Land masses shift, cities rise and fall, but threads remain that tie the game's many eras together.

Take Magus, a name the player first hears in the year 1000. While the subjects of King Guardia consider Magus a great villain, the monsters of the world hail him as a hero. When Crono enters Medina Village, a modern community descended from Magus' followers, he sees them worship a statue of their idol in the town square. Once Crono personally ends Magus' campaign against the kingdom and returns to the present, Medina Village has replaced the statue with one of Ozzie, Magus' loyal lieutenant. Should Crono track down and defeat Ozzie, the statue is gone because humanity and the fae have become friends.

Another conceit Chrono Trigger makes in the name of time travel is the final boss, Lavos. Video games typically tease the existence of an uber-evil lying in wait in a hidden fortress, one the heroes can only reach after completing a grand quest that prepares them for the climactic battle. Yet since our protagonists know that Lavos attacks in 1999 and are no longer bound to the one-way flow of time, players can choose to face Lavos quite early—too early, frankly, which is why Chrono Trigger warns you repeatedly else you fly to 1999 expecting to catch The Matrix in theaters.

The story behind the development of Chrono Trigger rivals the game itself in terms of scope, for the project came about due to a chance encounter of creative luminaries in the early 90s. In a 1994 presentation, Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi spoke of meeting Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii and Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama while visiting the United States. The three men decided that they should collaborate on a new project, one that ended up taking over two years to come together. To put that in perspective, director Takashi Tokita and artist Tetsuya Nomura later said that during that same time period, Square managed to complete and release both Final Fantasy VI and Live A Live.

With Horii writing the scenario, Sakaguchi serving as producer, and Akira Toriyama designing all the characters and monsters, Chrono Trigger represented a true dream team of JRPG talent, to say nothing of future stars like Takashi Tokita (Parasite Eve), Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenogears/Xenosaga), and Yoshinori Kitase (Final Fantasy VII, VIII, & X). Yet perhaps the biggest standout of the bunch is composer Yasunori Mitsuda, then a new hire and just 21 years old when Chrono Trigger planning began. Dissatisfied with his early assignments and low salary, Mitsuda says he told Sakaguchi "If you're not going to let me create music, then I'm going to quit." Sakaguchi assigned him to Chrono Trigger and today his score stands as one of the finest in any video game, not just amongst JRPGs or Super Nintendo software.

Laying it out like this, I realize how it must sound when I describe Chrono Trigger in such hyperbolical terms, but in the 30 years since its release, gamers around the world have made their voices heard loud and clear on this matter. Numerous publications have ranked it highly when listing the greatest games of all time, including IGN, Game Informer, GameSpot and Rolling Stone. In a 2019 Japanese poll, Famitsu readers named Chrono Trigger as the best video game of the Heisei period (1989-2019), an incredible feat given how those three decades include the most noteworthy and influential titles of the modern game landscape as we know it.

In my case, I remember watching my friends play Chrono Trigger for months back in 1995, causing me to wonder how one RPG could hold their attention for so long. Turns out a big part of that replayability came from its New Game Plus mode that let Crono restart his adventure with all his equipment and levels intact. In fact, Square coined that term for Chrono Trigger before it became the common feature seen today as video games seek to retain player bases as long as possible.

Playing it myself for the first time for this anniversary, I found Chrono Trigger just as captivating as decades of hype promised it would be. I fully expected to sit down with it, spend a few hours clearing the first dungeon or whatever, and then start writing. Instead, I quickly got sucked into its world thanks in no small part to Square's exceptional pixel art. With larger sprites than the contemporary Final Fantasy games, the characters in Chrono Trigger read as incredibly expressive today even with their limited animation by modern standards.

Chrono Trigger's unique battle system also kept me playing for longer than I anticipated. Instead of a typical JRPG where enemies appear randomly, every encounter is purposefully planned in advance. Indeed, in most cases players can see the monsters on patrol and decide whether or not to engage them. Crono can only party up with two allies at a time, but Chrono Trigger makes up for that limitation with special combination techniques that have two or even three fighters act in unison. When wielded correctly, these cooperative moves can yield far greater effects than the sum of two individual maneuvers.

In a way it's funny how I came to discover Square's classic 16-bit JRPGs so many years after Final Fantasy VII left me feeling overwhelmed. I thought Cloud's globetrotting epic endeavor to save the planet represented the last word on the genre, but having played Final Fantasy IV, VI, and now Chrono Trigger 30 years after their debut, I feel more engaged and excited about RPGs than ever before. Some video games fail to stand the test of time, withering under modern scrutiny due to dated technology or gameplay systems. Chrono Trigger feels just as expansive in this millennium as it did in the last one.

Ultimately, Chrono Trigger succeeds because it makes you care about strangers. Obviously I forged an emotional bond with the playable characters, but even one-off background performers impacted me in meaningful ways thanks to the time travel mechanic that showed me how one life affects so many others. When you meet someone in one era and then visit their grave in another, it forces you to recognize mortality—theirs and your own. It's a simple trick from a storytelling standpoint but Chrono Trigger uses it to great effect.

Our predilection for time travel tends to be self-serving; we either seek to fix something we perceive as broken or enrich ourselves with exotic knowledge. It's a flavor of power fantasy where we get to play the role of hero or wise sage. Chrono Trigger takes a different approach, putting players in the driver's seat of a time machine only to reinforce the timeless virtues of compassion, community, and survival. I can't think of a better lesson for a video game to convey—then, now, or in the years to come.

Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but xer work and opinions exist across the internet.