From Mass Effect to Skyrim, modern RPGs go to great lengths to merge linear, carefully crafted narrative with dynamic, emergent gameplay. Hundreds of thousands of man-hours are poured into these incredibly complex works, all in the effort to create a believable, cohesive story while giving players a sense of freedom in the way they play their game. The results of these efforts have been best-loved play experiences video games have offered.
But the goal of marrying linear narrative to dynamic gameplay is not out of reach for developers that don't have the resources to create such complex systems. No game shows this better than the classic RPG Chrono Trigger. Crafted by Square's "Dream Team" of RPG developers, Chrono Trigger balances developer control with player freedom using carefully-designed mechanics and a modular approach to narrative.
It's long been thought that a Chrono Trigger remake is impossible, but the Super Mario RPG remake could pave the way.
It's already been said that they weren't motivated to do anything with the series unless the gang was back together, not really for any legal reasons.
A third Chrono series game called Chrono Break was planned, but Square prioritized an MMORPG, and Chrono Break’s concepts were used in mobile games.
It’s true.
Squaresoft used to be like the equivalent of Naughty Dog back in the day. When you heard Squaresoft was making a game you knew it’d be a banger.
god I miss those days.
Yeah they used to be the best in the industry. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is the worst decision they ever made. While they had previously talked about merging with Enix, that film flopping so hard left them with no other option.
@porkChop
My understanding is that merger was happening before the film and the flop of the film freaked them out because they thought Enix would call it off.
I personally wish Square Pictures was a success. I thought the Matrix shirt they did was cool and they were pushing computer animation into a more mature realm.
Unfortunately, Spirits Within noted many and wasn’t the FF movie a lot of fans wanted. I thought it was decent, but something like Advent Children should’ve been the direction they went.
To me, Naughty Dog is now Naughtycucks.p after that god awful story in LoU 2.
It was people like Yasumi Matsuno that held it for me, at Squaresoft. The company thought them too radical and ran them out. And now they yearn for people like that. They’re short sighted and pathetic.
Kinda misleading title, even from reading the article itself.
The staff and management couldn’t come to an agreement and the team moved on. Part of the team went to creat ff11 and the rest to Monolith software. Ideas for this game were implemented in some form to mobile games-later on. Which make sense as early 2000s mobile phones were not as powerful.
In the 16-bit era, game devs and composers could finally change the type of tones used in the music, simulating a wider array of instruments and creating a whole lot of great soundtracks in the process.
It wasn’t easy picking out the best of the best because there were so many great ones. Even middle-of-the-road soundtracks seemed to deserve a bump if the game was just that damn good, and so many from that era are that damn good!
Here's the Ghetto Gamer list of top 20 soundtracks from the 16-bit era.
Nice read.
Always love reading about CT. It makes me happy getting reminded of all the wonderful things you could do in CT.
Really enjoyed my CT experience. Heck, I'mma go play that again before summer ends.
Man I cannot wait until CT comes on the PSN vita store. I am ashamed to admit that I've never played it, but no more excuses once it's released, and if it doesn't make it onto the vita (which I seriously doubt) then I'll get it for the ps3.
Do they ever listen????