Video games - Chrono Trigger

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	Video games - Chrono Trigger

Chrono Trigger (クロノ・トリガー) is a role-playing game that was released in Japan on March 11, 1995 for the Super Famicom and in North America on August 22, 1995 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). The game was re-released in 1999 for the Sony PlayStation (PS) in Japan and in 2001 as a part of the Final Fantasy Chronicles
package in North America, alongside Final Fantasy IV
. The game has never been released in PAL territories.

Chrono Trigger was supervised by a group referred to as "The Dream Team", consisting of Hironobu Sakaguchi (producer of the Final Fantasy series), Yuji Horii (director of the Dragon Quest games), character designer Akira Toriyama (of Dragon Ball and Dragon Quest fame), venerable producer Kazuhiko Aoki, and Nobuo Uematsu (of Final Fantasy fame). Other noteworthy people involved in the game development were the music composer Yasunori Mitsuda, who composed over 80% of the score, and scenarist Masato Kato, both unknown at that time but later famous for Xenogears
and Xenosaga.

At the time of its release the ideas behind the game were seen as revolutionary, involving multiple endings, a dramatic story with multiple character-enhancing side-stories, a novel battle system, and detailed and beautiful graphics. It also makes many references to names and events in mythology, legends and history.

It is still hailed by fans as one of the greatest games of all time, despite the "primitive" graphics by today's standards. Chrono Trigger placed highly in all three versions of IGN's top 100 games of all time. The first version in 2002 listed it as the fourth greatest, the second in early 2005 as the sixth, and the third in late 2005 as the thirteenth.

Plot

Chrono Trigger is about a group of adventurers who travel across time to save the planet's future. Along the way they recruit allies from other time periods in to defeat the alien parasite Lavos that is slowly destroying their world. The player eventually may recruit up to seven playable characters: Crono, the main hero, Marle, the rebellious princess, Lucca, the genius inventor, Robo, the robot outcast, Frog, the amphibian knight, Ayla, the wild cave-woman, and, optionally, the dark wizard Magus. The group travels via time gates and the flying time machine Epoch to seven different time periods: the Prehistoric era (65,000,000 B.C.), the Dark Ages (12,000 B.C.), the Middle Ages (A.D. 600), the Present time (A.D. 1000), the Apocalypse (A.D. 1999), the post-apocalyptic Future (A.D. 2300), and the very End of Time itself.

The Chrono Trigger

The titular Chrono Trigger (also known as the Time Egg) is a small device that manipulates the flow of causality. As Gaspar explains, the Chrono Trigger will have an effect equal to the effort one puts into its use; no more, no less. Crono, who perishes at the hands of Lavos in 12,000 B.C., is critical to the space-time continuum and his friends spare no expense in their efforts to revive him (or more correctly, prevent him from ever dying). The Chrono Trigger, receiving both these sentiments, hatches and thus revives Crono to life. It should be noted, however, that this event is entirely optional and prompts different endings depending on the player's choice. Chrono Trigger's sequel, Chrono Cross
, later explained that the phrase "Chrono Trigger" is a reference to anything that has the power to affect its will and change history.

Gameplay characteristics

While all of the other characters have many lines of dialogue, Crono (the main character) is a silent protagonist, who is never given voiced dialogue (except briefly in the "A Slide Show" ending), although characters do react to him when the player makes a plot-point decision. Although this quirk was very common in RPGs of the time, such as Breath of Fire or Suikoden, Crono and Chrono Trigger have become almost universally identified as originating the archetypal silent protagonist.

Chrono Trigger uses an Active Time Battle (ATB) system. Each character in the player's three-member party can take action after a certain period of time has passed, which is dependent on the character's Speed stat. Characters can attack with an equipped weapon, use items, or invoke "Techs". The game also features no battles on the overworld map that were commonplace in many other RPGs of its time. Instead, monsters only appear in the game's dungeons, where they can be seen wandering about onscreen and possibly avoided, if the player so desires. Should the encounter happen, however, the enemies will jump into combat directly on the map, instead of the game moving to a removed and generic battle screen, which was unique and is still one of the most identifiable aspects of this game, because it is seldom seen, if at all.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Chrono Trigger ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Chrono Trigger; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Video games - Chrono Trigger

Plot

The Chrono Trigger

Gameplay characteristics

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