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Square Enix isn’t remaking Chrono Trigger right now, but the game’s original supervisor has been turned onto the idea by fans.
Last weekend, fans of retro Japanese role-playing games were whipped into a frenzy when word spread of Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii inadvertently confirming that a remake of 1995 classic Chrono Trigger was in development, during a panel at Napoli Comicon in Italy.
However, this was soon followed by claims that Horii’s comments were mistranslated and eventually it turned out that he never even mentioned Chrono Trigger at all.
In an unexpected plot twist though, Horii was so taken by fan interest in the concept that he’s now convinced it could be a thing that’s actually worth doing.
For context, Yuji Horii was part of the ‘dream team’ responsible for Chrono Trigger’s creation, alongside Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and the late Akira Toriyama, Dragon Quest’s character designer and creator of Dragon Ball.
Horii served as a supervisor on the project and with the game celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, the fan interest in a remake has convinced him to start looking into it.
‘It’s been a long time. Yeah, I want to do something,’ said Horii when asked about the anniversary in an interview with Spanish outlet Gamereactor, which spoke with him directly at the Napoli Comicon event.
‘I’m getting a lot of requests for a Chrono Trigger remake as well, so I’m starting to look into it,’ Horii added, while also mentioning how Dragon Quest 3 saw a remake last year, with similar remakes for the first two games coming later this year.
Although Gamereactor states that any Chrono Trigger remake would likely sport the HD-2D style visuals seen in those Dragon Quest remakes, this seems to be their own assumption and not necessarily something Horii himself said.
It’s a safe assumption to make though, considering how popular the HD-2D style is. Recreating the game in 3D would be hugely expensive and probably not something that would happen, which is presumably why Square Enix only remastered the considerably less well known PS1 sequel Chrono Cross.
Chrono Trigger remains one of the best Japanese role-players of all time and an HD-2D remake would strike a good balance between modernising it and retaining its old school charms, at least in terms of visuals.
There was some hope that a remake had already entered development when, back in March, Square Enix marked Chrono Trigger’s anniversary by saying it would be launching ‘various projects that go beyond the world of the game over the next year.’
If we take Horii’s words at face value, it sounds like work never began, so it’s still a mystery what these projects actually were.
At the very least, Chrono Trigger is overdue an updated re-release. While you can easily acquire the game on PC and mobile devices, it is unavailable on modern consoles.
Despite the reverence with which it is held today the original SNES game was never originally released in Europe. The first time it was available outside Japan and North America was a DS version, with a small amount of new content, in 2008.
It was re-released through the Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console and the PlayStation Network, but the former has long since been shut down and the game was delisted from the latter after a few years.
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