I cannot believe it’s practically a decade now since I was introduced to Chrono Trigger on the SNES. I feel so old! Regardless, I’ll never forget that day, where a bunch of my anime/video game friends were telling me about this game. I’ll never forget asking them this: why is Lavos dangerous when he’s tiny on the cover? Trust me when I say that I’ll never forget my reaction to the game when I finally played it. Never mind that I freaked out and turned the thing off when I went to 2300 A.D. (the atmosphere and music scared me senseless), but when I finally did play through it, I was hooked. On video games. On RPGs. Thus many sleepless nights came into my existence in my high school and college careers.

A lot of people say this is not only an SNES classic, but a classic for all-time. I agree with that sentiment. This game is classic. So classic that when the game was re-released for Final Fantasy Chronicles, I bought it, and I was thoroughly disappointed by it! The loading times drove me nuts! It ruined the whole experience for me, and I just threw the disc back in the case and never touched it, deciding to stick with the original SNES one. Despite my hatred for the PlayStation version, now a DS port has been released couple of weeks ago. I finally got my copy, and I have started playing it.

How is it? Well, let’s just say I gave up on using the touch screen to move my characters around. Aside from that, this game combines the SNES and the PlayStation version to create some sort of a hybrid game. Because of that, nothing important has changed. The graphics, music, gameplay, and etcetera remains the same as the SNES version. The animated cutscenes come from the PlayStation version. The new dungeon and ending specifically for the DS version cannot be commented as of right now. The only thing that did change is the script and the items’ names, which is a bit confusing for a veteran player like me. I mean, come on, Athenian Water for Revive? Luckily, the script doesn’t bother me since I don’t mind better translations that’s more faithful to the original Japanese script.

Despite the similarities and the differences, I am liking the DS version so far. No horrible loading times exist! A classic game has been made into a legal, portable copy. There are some flaws (like the whole touch screen issue), but they are minor, and I can let it slide. It’s forgiveable because it’s Chrono Trigger. I just wonder if the newer generations can appreciate such classic, though. If not, I’ll just reminiscence about this game with people who know of it and say that it’s their loss. Just kidding! Time for me to go play more of this!