Baumann Ken - Chrono Trigger

An hourglass measures the seconds on the screen of a newly purchased big-screen television. The music crescendos. An adventure is about to begin.

My sister and mother are downstairs just beginning a hot summer afternoons episode of Days of Our Lives . Me, Ive decided to forsake the people of Salem for a different kind of saga. No, today will not be full of surprise brain tumors, satanic possessions, and the insatiable desires of the flesh. Today is not a day for small-time drama. Today is an epic day.

A pendulum measures the seconds on the screen of an old rabbit-eared TV upstairs in my bedroom. The music swells. I press start.

I began Chrono Trigger the same way I began almost every role-playing game I eventually fell in love withby reading about it. North American players had to endure agonizing months of anticipation, lapping up whatever blurbs Nintendo Power or Game Informer dished out until that long-awaited Tuesday, August 22, 1995.

By the time I finally got my hands on Chrono Trigger in late 1995, it had already been a year since my last Square fix with the operatic Final Fantasy III (really a disguised FF6 ). Dont get me wrong, I devoured EarthBound , which had arrived stateside on June 5th that same summer. It was my thirteenth birthday present, in fact. I reveled in its fractured Americana. I laughed out loud at its zany humor. I scratched and sniffed the vile-smelling cards that came in the guidebook.

But to me, Square was the undisputed king of RPGs. Square opened the nexus of worldsdrama, fantasy, cinema, game. Square summoned the power of totemssword, crystal, airship, chocobo! These hieroglyphs became the language of my inner fantasy stories, the legends of me I told myself in dreams.

Everything I had read about Chrono Trigger hyped it up to be the pinnacle of all my RPG desires. The sprawling world design of Secret of Mana , the raw emotional storytelling of Final Fantasy , the inescapably appealing art design of Dragon Warrior (really just the repackaged Dragon Quest ). Chrono Trigger promised to be the epitome of everything I loved about RPGs.

I cant remember if I bought Chrono Trigger with my own money or if my mom went out and bought me the game for Christmas. Probably the latter. But when I finally broke the seal on that box, popped the cart into my SNES, and slid that purple power switch on, I knew that Chrono Trigger had to be among the most beautiful games that had ever been produced. Armed with my official strategy guide, I was an eager Chrono -naut for weeks, pausing only to use the bathroom or to grab a snack. Or to finally figure out just what the hell my mom had been yelling to me from downstairs.

Good morning, Crono!

A cheerful, banal greeting from a bland, nameless mom. Teenager Crono lives a life of relative peace, if not boredom, with his anonymous mother. But the day into which he awakens, the day we meet him, is the special day hes been waiting for. In fact, hes so excited that he slept in his clothes! Today is the first day of the Millennial Fair. Cronos got money in his pocket and hes ready to make things happen.

Well designed role-playing games are replete with missions to be ignored or embraced. Before his date with destiny and a mysterious girl at the fairconveniently located right by his homeCrono can see the world around him. He can explore the nearby forest and tussle with low-level monsters. He can actually leave his country , traveling from his hometown of Truce to Porre, a town on the southern continent, to go carousing in a caf. There is no sense of story urging him onward, no clear path to the next objective.

Even when this foray into tourism is done, theres ample time to play. The fair itself is loaded with mini-games. The most casual of players could dedicate hours to grinding with Gato, the karaoke fightbot, earning cash to spend at the creepy sideshow tent, where a wager of 80 coins can get Cronos probably already struggling little family another cat. And then cat food. Then more cat food. Which makes more cats, of course. In fact, you could doom Cronos mother to be a pet hoarder by proxy long before you ever discover that Chrono Trigger involves time travel. Before you finally step through that time gate and leave Cronos mom alone with the seven cats you just had to have.

After completing Chrono Trigger in 1995, I wanted to keep adventuring through new worlds like it. But Chrono Trigger ended up becoming Squares last hurrah of high fantasy in North America in the 16-bit era. Secret of Evermore , released a few months after Chrono Trigger , was not the kind of turn-based RPG I was waiting for. It even failed as a follow-up to 1993s action RPG Secret of Mana , to which it was a spiritual sequel. And March 1996s Super Mario RPG , while cute and innovative, was far from the fantasy that I craved. Squares Super Nintendo golden age was at its end.