0:00

weekend, Retronauts, I ask you

0:02

to use your imagination. Welcome.

0:28

This was supposed to be a visual

0:30

presentation, but for some reason it's not

0:32

working. So I'm going to ask you

0:34

to visualize the things that we're talking

0:36

about. It's a really great slideshow. We're

0:38

going to have an awesome time up

0:40

here. I hope the same can

0:42

be said for you out there. Let's

0:44

quickly introduce ourselves. Oh, look, it's

0:46

such. I wish you could all

0:48

see this. Maybe we should turn

0:50

our backs to the audience and

0:52

you guys can squint at the

0:54

screen. Like Michelangelo's David. Yeah, exactly. Wait,

0:59

what? There's

1:01

no nudity here. So

1:05

this is Chrono Trigger, 30 years

1:07

of the greatest RPG of all

1:09

time. There's an asterisk after greatest

1:11

because we refuse to commit. So

1:13

we are, I'm Jeremy

1:15

Parrish. I'm Kevin Bunch.

1:19

And usually there is a

1:22

pretty different retronauts mix at

1:24

this show, but everyone's scared

1:26

to travel internationally right now

1:28

for some reason. So it's

1:30

us. You're stuck with the

1:32

American folks. So

1:34

let me present to

1:36

you the question, what is

1:38

Chrono Trigger? You've

1:40

heard of it, right? Well,

1:44

I'm going to give you a rundown anyway. Otherwise, we're not

1:46

going to fill an hour. It's

1:49

a super NES role -playing

1:51

game, debuted in 1996, published

1:53

by Squaresoft at the end

1:55

of the system's life, near

1:57

the end of the system's

1:59

life. It dragged on for a little

2:01

while longer, but after this, that was kind

2:04

of it. That was the last of

2:06

the big shows, other than Yoshi's Island, Street

2:08

Fighter Alpha 2. Originally,

2:10

this game cost about $90, $80,

2:13

$90. There's a

2:15

lot of talk this week. about the

2:17

cost of next generation games for Nintendo

2:19

Switch. But I got to say, Chrono

2:21

Trigger was a time traveler, appropriate to

2:23

the theme of the game, and looked

2:25

forward. I had 30 years and said,

2:27

we are going to price ourselves like

2:29

a 2025 game. And

2:31

that was in 1990 dollars, which were

2:33

very strong and powerful. And

2:36

yet, I would

2:38

argue that that game was worth every penny.

2:40

I certainly paid that much, and I

2:42

rung $90 of entertainment out of it, and

2:44

then some. You

2:48

know, this didn't actually have any

2:50

special, you know, extremely unusual chips

2:52

in it. There was no Super

2:55

FX. There was no,

2:57

what's that? I mean, it was a

2:59

big rom, but it didn't

3:01

have the chip that they used

3:03

in Street Fighter Alpha 2 or anything

3:05

like that. There was no, like,

3:07

encoded data. There were no, you know,

3:09

songs that had to be compressed,

3:11

like in Star Ocean and so forth.

3:13

So it was just a big

3:15

honking game. And that's why it

3:17

cost a lot. Just the Toriyama tax then.

3:20

Right. And it was $90, $90

3:22

for a game that was

3:24

like 15 hours long. And

3:26

yet, nevertheless, it is the

3:28

greatest asterisk RPG of all

3:30

time. I have

3:33

a little clip here which was going to be

3:35

very funny and appeal to those of you who

3:37

like Madmen. Let's see if you can hear the

3:39

audio at least. Yeah,

3:47

there we go. Thanks, Don Draper. Thanks for

3:49

leading in. All right. So

3:51

it's now talking time. And there's a funny

3:53

graphic here of the guy from Clash of

3:55

Demonet going, ah, because it's a talking time

3:58

in the game. But you can't see that.

4:00

Guys, when did you first play Chrono Trigger? I'll

4:03

let you go first. That

4:09

was probably all your

4:11

parents could afford to get

4:13

you for Christmas. It

4:23

might be the greatest Christmas of all

4:25

time. The greatest Christmas asterisk

4:27

of all time. As

4:31

for myself, I remember

4:33

reading about it in Nintendo Power and thinking, wow,

4:35

this game looks really cool. I don't know that I

4:37

can afford it. And flash forward a few years

4:39

to when I had a job in high school. And

4:41

I was at the Gibraltar Trade Center in

4:43

Michigan. See, someone

4:45

else knows what it is. We were

4:47

discussing this earlier. And one

4:50

of the booths there, someone was

4:52

selling a box copy for

4:54

$70, a whole $20 price cut.

4:57

And I picked that up and I played the

4:59

absolute crap out of it for a couple

5:01

of years straight. That's a lot of Chrono Trigger.

5:04

But it does lend itself to that kind

5:06

of place. So myself, I bought it I

5:09

think launch day, I pre -ordered

5:11

it, and it was very, very

5:13

expensive, so I traded in my

5:15

copy of Final Fantasy 3 slash

5:18

6. I wasn't fortunate like Brian.

5:20

I had to pay for it

5:22

myself, so... That's true. I

5:24

rung the content out of that one, too.

5:26

I played it like three times through Inside.

5:28

That's probably enough. I need to move on.

5:30

So then Chrono Trigger, I bought and quit

5:33

my summer job so that I could just

5:35

sit around playing it, and then I didn't

5:37

have any more money again. It's really great

5:39

how it just kind of feeds itself. So

5:43

here we go into the time warp,

5:45

which if you could see, you'd be

5:47

like, oh, chronotrographics, but you can't. So

5:49

the question is, why is it the

5:51

greatest asterisk RPG of all time? You

5:54

may well ask. And

5:56

we're going to answer that. But

5:58

generally speaking, the TLDR is the

6:00

stars simply lined up, and it's

6:02

just one of those things. It

6:04

just was one of those games

6:06

where everything fell into place and

6:09

made it amazing. So

6:11

point one, I've got a ten

6:13

point list here because everything, we

6:15

think in terms of tens,

6:18

decimals, it was

6:20

created by the Dream Team. And

6:22

that's not the Dream Team that

6:24

Nintendo would tout a year later

6:26

for Ultra 64. This

6:29

was not about Crystal Dynamics or

6:31

no, no, Robotech Crystal Dreams made by

6:33

Game Tech. That's it. No

6:35

Game Tech here. No.

6:37

Midway. Nope, nope. The

6:40

dream team in this case

6:42

were Yuji Hori. There's

6:44

a from Dragon Quest Rocket Slime, the

6:46

Chrono Twigger Super Tank with a

6:48

King Slime sitting on top. If you

6:50

could see this, you would be

6:52

like, that Jeremy Perry, she put together

6:54

a great presentation. Yuji

6:58

Hori, of course, is the creative

7:00

lead behind Dragon Quest since its

7:02

beginning and continues to be. Someday

7:05

we will see Dragon Quest XII or

7:07

even hints of what Dragon Quest XII is

7:09

and you'll be like that. Yuji Hori

7:11

is back at it again. The

7:14

rest of the Dream Team

7:16

comprised Hiro Nobu Sakaguchi and Yoshinori

7:18

Kitase who I have represented

7:20

here with Mog and Umaru as

7:22

their most recent project had

7:24

been Final Fantasy VI. Sakaguchi

7:27

would kind of drift away from

7:29

the games at this point and go

7:31

on to make a movie which

7:33

was certainly a personal choice and Yoshinori

7:36

Kitase would make some of the

7:38

most successful RPGs of all time with

7:40

Final Fantasy 7, 8, 10, etc. But

7:43

you have Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy

7:45

combined here. Amazing. And finally there is

7:47

Akira Toriyama who in this case is

7:49

a frog looking guy because we don't

7:52

know what he actually looked like. He

7:54

never Never showed his face, so we

7:56

just assume he looked like the king

7:58

of the frogs that lived in Chrono

8:00

Trigger. Yeah,

8:04

he always wore a gas

8:06

mask. We don't know. Could

8:09

be anyone. I mean,

8:11

the frog is probably

8:13

a disguise too. But you

8:15

have four highly respected

8:17

industry veterans getting together, bringing

8:20

two very different sensibilities

8:22

to this game. really

8:24

feels like this is where this was

8:26

them at the height of their their

8:28

power so to speak too because they

8:31

had usually Hori coming off of dragon

8:33

quest five and i think six was

8:35

coming out around the same time following

8:37

up final fantasy six with this is

8:39

absolutely wild and Toriyama finally got to

8:41

take a break from drawing dragon ball

8:43

for you know 10 years so he

8:45

got he got to sleep and rest

8:48

and work on chrono trigger Yeah,

9:05

if you check my YouTube channel, I've

9:08

got a video rip of a VHS

9:10

tape that V Jump Magazine distributed just

9:12

to promote Chrono Trigger before the game

9:14

came out in Japan. You

9:17

know, I paid a lot of money for that

9:19

tape and it was worth it. Just like Chrono Trigger

9:21

itself. It's like, ah, here's some kind of music,

9:23

music that's a little off from the final version. That's

9:25

such a great relic. How

9:27

would you guys describe the difference

9:29

between Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest?

9:31

Because they do have very different

9:34

creative ethos. Ethosies?

9:36

Ethoses? Ethes? I

9:39

feel like for my

9:41

money, Dragon Quest is willing

9:43

to be a lot

9:45

more... in terms of like mechanics

9:47

and what you're actually doing, and

9:49

the story lines as well,

9:51

but they're also willing to be

9:53

a lot sillier with character

9:55

designs and enemy designs and the

9:58

jokes, so to speak. And

10:00

the final fantasy is almost by

10:02

definition something different every time,

10:04

right? Yeah. Because they never, I

10:06

might not want to say never, but

10:08

rarely would they ever take a set

10:10

of leaves with a Dragon Quest game. Like

10:13

one that's inherently more experimental. When

10:15

When they tried to make

10:17

Dragon Quest IX a sort of

10:19

action RPG, the outcry

10:21

from fans was so powerful

10:23

and profound that they actually

10:25

went back and changed how

10:27

the game worked. They the

10:30

fundamental gameplay of Dragon Quest

10:32

IX because they realized... is

10:34

not going to go well.

10:36

So yeah, people expect certain things from

10:38

Dragon Quest, whereas Fantasy, people want

10:40

things, but I think also they've learned

10:43

at this point like, like, who

10:45

knows what Final Fantasy 17 is going

10:47

to be like? It's anyone's guess. This

11:23

has been a preview of a

11:25

patron -exclusive Retronauts episode. you enjoy what

11:27

you've heard so far, the great news

11:30

is that you can hear the

11:32

rest of this episode by going to

11:34

patreon.com. slash Retronauts and to the

11:36

show at the $5 a month or higher

11:38

levels. Not only will you

11:40

be able to hear this full

11:42

episode, but you'll have instant access

11:44

to hundreds of other podcasts, mini

11:46

-columns, and more. It's the

11:48

best deal in internet entertainment, Patreon.com.

11:50

slash Retronauts. Thanks for

11:53

your support.