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147 - Chrono Trigger (feat. Anime Sickos) (Patreon)

Published:
2024-07-17 06:00:05
Edited:
2025-04-22 13:27:15
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

Tom and Joe (Anime Sickos) throw the lads in the Epoch and hop through time as they cover Square’s landmark 1995 RPG: Chrono Trigger. Topics include the thrill of flame tornados, the anxieties of action time battle, and the importance of camaraderie in the face of an apocalyptic DJ from space.

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Anime Sickos: A podcast for geniuses about the four pillars of modern misery: anime, gaming, posting, & jobs. Starring Tom & Joe. New episodes every Wednesday.

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Media Referenced in this Episode:

Chrono Trigger. Square, 1995.

Chrono Trigger – 1995 Developer Interviews - shmuplations.com

Commercial: “A Message from the Nu”

O-Zone - Dragostea Din Tei (Remix in style of Sega Genesis 16 bit)

Files

Comments

Trojan Zebra

The silence after "see you next week everybody" always has some weight to it, you guys do a mean outro

Noah

Saying Fire emblem is the only good 100 party member game is Suikoden erasure.

Camoose

Final Fantasy 9 has a special place in my childhood. It had an amazing story, fun characters with depth and a beautiful soundtrack that is still used by a lot of content creators today. And it was huge, taking up 4 ps1 disks. I never beat it as a kid because my sisters scratched the last one beyond progression. Also, you play a member of a roaming theater troop.

Nate Netzley

I messaged AJ the longest, loudest “yes” when this was announced. But I would also add of all the character themes in a game full of bops, Magus is king.

Josephine

One game of recent years that does the whole "tutorialising things your going to be doing while grounding it in the story of the game" in my opinion pretty damn well is kingdom come: deliverance. Phenomenal opener tbh

Dergon

Chrono Trigger and New Vegas are both my favorite games of all time. And there's a definite line from CT blowing my mind with its world that reacts to what you do to falling in love with FNV's world years later.

Breathplay

I love that apparently the carcinization endpoint for the pod's topical diversity is video games which feature campfires. It was there all the way back to Dark Souls and now we're up to 4 in 2024 alone

Noah

FFIX is my favorite game of all time. I don’t know that it’s better than Chrono trigger or FFVI, but the story spoke to me personally in a way no other piece of media has.

Harley Fleming

I can't believe you guys repeated the final fantasy name myth without looking it up! Sakaguchi himself debunked that myth in interviews, the name fighting fantasy was already trademarked so they just wanted a name that had the same initials. Hell, even the idea that square soft was going bankrupt has really no evidence to back it up, originally the myth was that it was Sakaguchi's "final" fantasy, because if the game wasn't a hit he personally was going to quit, but that isn't true either. I'd be more disappointed by the misinformation if it wasn't clear that yalls strong bias for the clearly worse game (chrono trigger) was clouding yalls judgments (just kidding, kinda). Edit: link to a eurogamer interview busting the myth, https://www.eurogamer.net/final-fantasy-creator-debunks-myth-of-series-name#:~:text=%22So%20we%20reluctantly%20went%20with,We're%20using%20this!'

Camoose

"To be forgotten is worse than death."

Evan Hawkins

You would know how to spell it.

S-lappin

If you want another great RPG from the 90s that a lot of the DNA of chrono trigger came from, live a live is up there as one of the greats if none of you have tried it, the recent remake is also great

S-lappin

Id say by the middle end of the game

Steve Bunnell

Almost bailed on this episode because of the FF6 shit-talking. Absolutely shaking with fury!

Jimmy McMillan

I heard if you want to get Brian on your podcast, you have to go to a certain location in New York and find him under a bus

Elizabeth Power

I know you are not live streaming the live episode, but are you going to tell us about everything afterwards I’m dying of curiosity and would love to hear what it is all like because it sounds fascinating

Elaine Åhlfeldt

Oh shit, will I be the first commenter to name-drop Sea of Stars? Because if you want to play something that's blatantly a love letter to CT specifically, but not too mired in nostalgia to tell its' own story and improve on gameplay where the genre has evolved since 1995, that's the one. Josh may be glad to hear it drops ATB for a consistent and extremely legible style of turn-based combat that I think captures the game feel ATB tried to deliver without the frustrating parts. It also does the timed hit thing that all the Mario JRPG series are famous for codifying, but if that's not your thing it has Supergiant style adaptive difficulty modifiers that either add more visual feedback to train you into the rhythm or just bypass the need to deal with timed hits entirely. Or retune them to be more powerful but also necessary to not get murked immediately, if you're into masochistic challenge runs. I cannot stress enough what a good game that is for anyone who got anything out of CT. Unpaid advertisement aside, I was so happy to see this episode in my feed I literally gasped. This was a lovely discussion on one of my absolute all-time faves, and I'm glad it spoke to all of you as much as it seemed to. Lucca's trauma sidequest always gets me in a very particular mood and I should have seen it coming from a mile away that you'd save it for AJ's outro monologue, and it still crit me right in the heart. One thing I think it demonstrates is how playing fast and loose with your time travel mechanics can be the best option. A lesser writer would've cared too much about those mechanics and either wasted several minutes on overexplaining why the good outcome is possible without overwriting her character, or made the good outcome a cruel bait and switch where you have to return again and let the bad thing happen to get your science nerd back, and that'd still leave a lot of holes open in the causality logic they tried to handle. The CT team knew to only bother getting deep into that stuff when it was effective drama or comedy, and let that quest be *the* most memorable in a game full of very memorable moments by focusing on the important part, her and Robo's emotions. And to trust the player enough to let them either succeed or fail, while making either outcome heartwrenching.

Bryson Lambes

Favorite video game ending: The credits of the ace attorney games, where you get little 'where are they now' vignettes of every character you met in the whole games. Ends up both funny and emotional, and reminds you of all the good times in the narrative.

Noblese Oblahaj

While y'all are on this Japan kick, I'd love to see your takes on Berserk. The manga is long ( and dark, like Thief 2 ), but the 90s anime is pretty short. You also have the three hour long movies you could choose instead ( Golden Age Arc, starts with Egg of the King ), but the 90s anime is pretty tops. It's something that's easy to dismiss at the surface level, but it has some interesting stuff going on in there and goes much deeper than 'big man big sword hit things'.

Steve Bunnell

Good point. My fury-seizure is abated.

Förfäders spår

the mammon machine, my favourite kraftwerk album

Elaine Åhlfeldt

I disagree on the writing of SoS being weak, but if Chained Echoes is another noteworthy game in a similar vein I'm sure I'll enjoy that as well, so thanks for the tip!

J

I remember my brother trying to play this game on an emulator almost 20 years ago. On a tangent, when are we finally getting coverage of the Resident Evil series?

Luckie

CT should be required curriculum

Dan Moody

A weird thing that I discovered recently is that Masato Kato is currently writing for a single player JRPG called “Another Eden.” Yasunori Mitsuda wrote the main theme music for it as well. It’s free to play with a cast of “free” party members as well as a gatcha system for pulling bonus party members. They have the license for Chrono Cross but not Chrono Trigger, so while Lucca is there as a “free” party member, she’s based on her appearance from Chrono Cross (her character in game is called “Professor Ashtear”), and you get “Cyrus the legally distinct frog knight” instead of Frog. It’s worth checking out if you’re interested and can put up with gatcha stuff.

Dan Moody

I guess I said I thought there was a "weird thing" and then didn't describe what I thought was weird - it's that it feels like Masato Kato is still trying to tell the same story from Chrono Trigger, all these years later. Pulling the same characters and archetypes back in, different but still familiar story beats, even teaming back up with the same composer.

I wanna marry a lighthouse keeper and keep him company

I'm obviously late as hell to this discussion. And I'm only halfway through the episode right now (just got to the "Dragostea din tei" interlude), so maybe this will be addressed later. But I am shocked that the discussion of the early history of Square and Enix RPGs didn't mention that HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of copies of Dragon Warrior (I) were given away free to subscribers of Nintendo Power. That was an absolutely crucial moment in the history of console RPGs (and no doubt RPGs in general) in the US.