In an interview with Game Informer, Takashi Tokita, one of the directors of Chrono Trigger, spoke candidly about the game and its creation, bringing up potential fan concern that it was “untouchable” and should be left alone rather than redone.
“It’s probably considered sacred since the companies merged,” he says. “It was essentially a dream mix between Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest; creating or exceeding what it was in its original form is a very difficult feat.”
Chrono Trigger certainly was a dream team project, combining the character artwork of Akira Toriyama, known for his work on the Dragon Quest games and the Dragon Ball series, with the design work of Tetsuya Nomura, and musical compositions from Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda. Tokita goes on to talk a little about Nomura’s involvement in Chrono Trigger:
“Once everyone was done developing Final Fantasy VI, hordes of staff helped out on Chrono Trigger,” he says. “At the end, we had a couple hundred working on the game at the same time. It was kind of like a grand festival – it was really fun. [Tetsuya] Nomura was actually creating the environment background pieces in Chrono Trigger – like the courthouse scene, that was created by him. But everyone probably enjoyed how we were able to do things we’d never done with Chrono Trigger. That was the most exciting part.”
Mr. Tokita closes by expressing how he’d like to see a newly remade Chrono Trigger for today’s audience.
“Personally, if there is ever an opportunity, I would love to see a high-quality, high-end version of Chrono Trigger,” Tokita says. “Or a movie production, or something of the sort.”
While we can’t really say what the likelihood is of Square Enix revisiting Chrono Trigger, one can always hope. For now, the closest fix we’ll probably get to it is I Am Setsuna, which comes out in July.
