Wow. What a game. Finished the DS remake of the SNES classic Chrono Trigger. 92 on metacritic, I don’t know what the SNES original would get these days but it’d be up there.

I have started it many times and either lost the save or lost track of what was going on. Buying and starting the DS version was a good move. They cleaned up a lot of stuff and the DS has a dependable save game function built into the cart itself.

When I worked in Florida at a Sony call center (hey, that’s a good job down there). I worked a 4pm-2am shift. There was a guy there who loved Chrono Trigger. He played it on an emulator while waiting for calls (I’m sure he had beaten it many times). I remember asking him what it was. He was very nerdy and nice at the same time about it. I must have seemed like such an outsider. This was in 1999. 10 years later I finally get around to beating it.

I followed a walkthrough and that made it much easier to find all the secrets etc. But it really wasn’t needed. It was fun seeing “omg massive damage” at the end but it was really a cake walk. I grinded a little bit at the end to get infinite strength capsules while listening to TWiT for 2 hours but it was more radio listening than playing. In the end, I had about 26 hours logged. Not horrible at all.

The game is very symbolic, er maybe not symbolic. I guess I mean they have circular and emotional story elements that very much make the game seem bigger than it is. For a game that is very dated, it still does a lot with sprites and cheap 2D effects. I’m glad to have this one packed away. Maybe 10 years from now I’ll beat it again.

2019. It’s a date.