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1
News Submissions / Extensive interview with Square devs about FF7 and Square history
« on: May 23, 2017, 10:07:18 pm »
https://www.polygon.com/a/final-fantasy-7
A bunch of Chrono devs are included in the interview, such as Sakaguchi, Kitase, Nomura and Naora.
Very interesting and revealing stuff.
Now it's very clear why the company is not the same anymore and never will be again.
I didn't know Sakaguchi influence was that big.
A bunch of Chrono devs are included in the interview, such as Sakaguchi, Kitase, Nomura and Naora.
Very interesting and revealing stuff.
Now it's very clear why the company is not the same anymore and never will be again.
I didn't know Sakaguchi influence was that big.
2
Chrono News / Masato Kato is working on another time-travel based game
« on: December 21, 2015, 10:07:43 am »
The japanese company Gree announced they're working on a game called Another Eden, planned for smartphones.
The scenario was written by Masato Kato and the opening theme was composed by Yasunori Mitsuda.
Another Eden will be focused around time-traveling. The player will be able to travel through 3 different eras: ancient, contemporary and future.
Source: http://www.inside-games.jp/article/2015/09/20/91435.html
The scenario was written by Masato Kato and the opening theme was composed by Yasunori Mitsuda.
Another Eden will be focused around time-traveling. The player will be able to travel through 3 different eras: ancient, contemporary and future.
Source: http://www.inside-games.jp/article/2015/09/20/91435.html
3
Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / Analysis of the chances of the Chrono Trigger main developers reuniting again
« on: December 11, 2015, 08:39:01 am »
I was working on my spreadsheet I posted here of the other games done by the Chrono Trigger developers along the way and I started analysing the real chance of the Chrono Trigger main developers coming together again to work on a new game.
A big factor we can't ignore is the estimate sales numbers of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. I'm not sure of its accurary, but the info from VGHChartz.com tells us the Chrono series didn't came close to sell as much as the bigger Final Fantasy titles. So, as for the company executives, the series probably isn't on their minds.
Now let's go through each of the CT main devs.
<> Kazuhiko Aoki's (CT Producer) whereabouts is unsure. The last known project he worked on Square Enix was on 2008. He may be retired or in another company.
<> Akihiko Matsui's (CT Director, mostly for the battle system)whereabouts is also unsure. The last known project he worked on Square Enix was on 2002. is still working in the Final Fantasy series as Battle Designer (FF11&14).
<> Masati Kato (CT Story Co-Writer) is a freelancer right now, so he probably couldn't pitch the idea of a sequel to the company. The ideia would have to come from inside Square Enix.
<> Yuji Horii (CT Story Supervisor/Co-Writer) once said in an interview a few years ago he didn't have much interest in the series since all that he wanted to do he could do in the Dragon Quest series.
<> Hironobu Sakaguchi (CT System Supervisor) is in another company now, busy with their own games. Little chance he would leave Mistwalker for a while to work for Square Enix, except if the new Chrono game would be a joint venture, like the original was.
<> Takashi Tokita and Yoshinori Kitase (CT Directors) continue working on the Final Fantasy series. If they had a lot of interest in doing another Chrono game maybe they could make a good case to the Square Enix executives.
<> Yasuhiko Kamata (CT Graphic Director) left Square around 2001.
<> Masanori Hoshino (CT Graphic Director) has become a freelancer.
<> Tetsuya Takahachi (CT Graphic Director) is in Monolith Soft still working in the Xeno series.
As for the CT artists that could be invited...
<> Akira Toriyama (Character Designer) is busy with the Dragon Quest series and the Dragon Ball series. But, if invited, he could be in.
<> Yasunori Mitsuda (Music Composer) is also a freelancer now. Once a interview he showed interest in working on the series again, but said that for him is very important that Kato is involved.
So… basically… The main developers are totally scattered — a few through Square Enix different projects, some through different companies.
A new game with at least part of the original main staff involvement could only happen if there was a lot of interest from Horii and/or Tokita and/or Kitase part, and if they could convince the company executives to let them stop working on Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest for a couple of years and to let them maybe summon some of the other guys that are freelancer or in other companies now, and if the executives ignored the relatively low sales numbers of the series… Boy, that's a long shot.
Oh man... Are you hearing that sound? It's my heart breaking.
Let's look at it from another angle... Let's forget about the bigger-name guys and talk about the Chrono Cross team (although it was only compromised of around a fifth of the original Chrono Trigger team). Even most of them is not there. But, sure, they could easily employ Kato and give him a small budget and a new team made almost totally of new developers to try to create a hugely complex story to follow the overly convoluted and somewhat non-sensical story he ended up writing alone. But frankly would we care much for that?
As for me, what I'd like much better — and I think is way more possible and doable — is if they did a Chrono Cross remake. I don't think Chrono Trigger could get much better from a remake, but Cross could. I don't think Cross was a bad game relatively to the other titles in the era, but, unlike Trigger, I think it got several things that could be a lot better. The 3D graphics for one didn't age well (as most, if not all, of the PlayStation 1 titles). And I think the story had a lot of potential but is very apparent that it got rushed and messed up, and need a very large review, but they probably weren't given more time to do it or just didn't could do at the time. A lot of things in the story are not very well explained or are just very non-sensical (like Project Kid and the whole El Nido terra-forming/Dragon God thing). They could also cut a lot of hallow and uninteresting content, like focusing only on a few characters and developing them better (expanding Harle and etc.) and maybe even giving us better mid-game villains to fight than the Dragons. Also the balance of the game — from the very empty and slow middle part to the very rushed and frenetic latter part definitely could be distributed a lot better. They could also put in a better battle system, removing that multiple-choice melee attack system that was very annoying if you factor the amount of clicking you have to do versus the minor effect they have, and instead put something in that requires you to me more mindful. And that battle theme... oh god... that gets very annoying very quickly.
I hope the Final Fantasy 7 remake sells well and is well received. It couldn't hurt our chances of getting a Chrono Cross remake.
Anyway... If you have any information I don't have, or if any of this info is incorrect, please do share.
A big factor we can't ignore is the estimate sales numbers of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. I'm not sure of its accurary, but the info from VGHChartz.com tells us the Chrono series didn't came close to sell as much as the bigger Final Fantasy titles. So, as for the company executives, the series probably isn't on their minds.
Now let's go through each of the CT main devs.
<> Kazuhiko Aoki's (CT Producer) whereabouts is unsure. The last known project he worked on Square Enix was on 2008. He may be retired or in another company.
<> Akihiko Matsui's (CT Director, mostly for the battle system)
<> Masati Kato (CT Story Co-Writer) is a freelancer right now, so he probably couldn't pitch the idea of a sequel to the company. The ideia would have to come from inside Square Enix.
<> Yuji Horii (CT Story Supervisor/Co-Writer) once said in an interview a few years ago he didn't have much interest in the series since all that he wanted to do he could do in the Dragon Quest series.
<> Hironobu Sakaguchi (CT System Supervisor) is in another company now, busy with their own games. Little chance he would leave Mistwalker for a while to work for Square Enix, except if the new Chrono game would be a joint venture, like the original was.
<> Takashi Tokita and Yoshinori Kitase (CT Directors) continue working on the Final Fantasy series. If they had a lot of interest in doing another Chrono game maybe they could make a good case to the Square Enix executives.
<> Yasuhiko Kamata (CT Graphic Director) left Square around 2001.
<> Masanori Hoshino (CT Graphic Director) has become a freelancer.
<> Tetsuya Takahachi (CT Graphic Director) is in Monolith Soft still working in the Xeno series.
As for the CT artists that could be invited...
<> Akira Toriyama (Character Designer) is busy with the Dragon Quest series and the Dragon Ball series. But, if invited, he could be in.
<> Yasunori Mitsuda (Music Composer) is also a freelancer now. Once a interview he showed interest in working on the series again, but said that for him is very important that Kato is involved.
So… basically… The main developers are totally scattered — a few through Square Enix different projects, some through different companies.
A new game with at least part of the original main staff involvement could only happen if there was a lot of interest from Horii and/or Tokita and/or Kitase part, and if they could convince the company executives to let them stop working on Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest for a couple of years and to let them maybe summon some of the other guys that are freelancer or in other companies now, and if the executives ignored the relatively low sales numbers of the series… Boy, that's a long shot.
Oh man... Are you hearing that sound? It's my heart breaking.
Let's look at it from another angle... Let's forget about the bigger-name guys and talk about the Chrono Cross team (although it was only compromised of around a fifth of the original Chrono Trigger team). Even most of them is not there. But, sure, they could easily employ Kato and give him a small budget and a new team made almost totally of new developers to try to create a hugely complex story to follow the overly convoluted and somewhat non-sensical story he ended up writing alone. But frankly would we care much for that?
As for me, what I'd like much better — and I think is way more possible and doable — is if they did a Chrono Cross remake. I don't think Chrono Trigger could get much better from a remake, but Cross could. I don't think Cross was a bad game relatively to the other titles in the era, but, unlike Trigger, I think it got several things that could be a lot better. The 3D graphics for one didn't age well (as most, if not all, of the PlayStation 1 titles). And I think the story had a lot of potential but is very apparent that it got rushed and messed up, and need a very large review, but they probably weren't given more time to do it or just didn't could do at the time. A lot of things in the story are not very well explained or are just very non-sensical (like Project Kid and the whole El Nido terra-forming/Dragon God thing). They could also cut a lot of hallow and uninteresting content, like focusing only on a few characters and developing them better (expanding Harle and etc.) and maybe even giving us better mid-game villains to fight than the Dragons. Also the balance of the game — from the very empty and slow middle part to the very rushed and frenetic latter part definitely could be distributed a lot better. They could also put in a better battle system, removing that multiple-choice melee attack system that was very annoying if you factor the amount of clicking you have to do versus the minor effect they have, and instead put something in that requires you to me more mindful. And that battle theme... oh god... that gets very annoying very quickly.
I hope the Final Fantasy 7 remake sells well and is well received. It couldn't hurt our chances of getting a Chrono Cross remake.
Anyway... If you have any information I don't have, or if any of this info is incorrect, please do share.
4
Site Updates / Spreadsheet w/ the other games made by the Chrono Trigger devs (UPDATED 2017/05)
« on: December 17, 2014, 04:27:12 pm »
I made a spreadsheet listing almost all of the games done by the main Chrono Trigger developers (including some rather obscure ones) that includes the actual credits that was used in the games for each developer and the release dates of each game.
There's some missing info, but most of it is there.
I started doing this out of curiosity, but I ended up spending too many hours on this thing. Hopefully it's useful to some of you guys.
UPDATED on 2015/Dec/12 with a few corrections, a few credits added, and the addition of lot of quotes and informations about the Chrono Trigger team dissolution and whereabouts.
UPDATED on 2015/Dec/14 with Akihiko Matsui last projects/whereabouts info.
UPDATED on 2017/Mar/15 with some bits of info I got from new interviews: about what Daishima and Nomura worked on CT (the end of time and the courthouse background art), and about Daishima passing
.
UPDATED on 2017/May/07 with a few additional credits and a few corrections.
There's some missing info, but most of it is there.
I started doing this out of curiosity, but I ended up spending too many hours on this thing. Hopefully it's useful to some of you guys.
UPDATED on 2015/Dec/12 with a few corrections, a few credits added, and the addition of lot of quotes and informations about the Chrono Trigger team dissolution and whereabouts.
UPDATED on 2015/Dec/14 with Akihiko Matsui last projects/whereabouts info.
UPDATED on 2017/Mar/15 with some bits of info I got from new interviews: about what Daishima and Nomura worked on CT (the end of time and the courthouse background art), and about Daishima passing
.UPDATED on 2017/May/07 with a few additional credits and a few corrections.
5
News Submissions / Games by CT developers with graphics similar to Chrono Trigger
« on: September 26, 2014, 03:05:09 pm »
So, I discovered this game called "Dynami Tracer" that has graphics very very similar to CT.
It turns out the similarity is no accident or plagiarism: 7 people that worked on CT also worked on this game, including the main graphic designer (Masanori Hoshino) and the "Field Graphic" designers Matsuzo Itakura and Shinichiro Hamasaka.
You can check a gameplay video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X940gvaM-6Q
And the sprites here:
http://www.spriters-resource.com/snes/dynamitracer/
I have a somewhat related question.
In CT and in a lot of games some designers are credited for doing the "Field Graphics" of the game.
Anyone know what that means? Is that the overworld graphics? The objects graphics? The backgrounds?
And what about "Map Design"? Is that the layout of the areas?
I'm interested in that because I was trying to find who's the responsible for the CT overworld graphics since I find them very beautiful and I wanted to find more games by whoever that is.
UPDATE (14th October):
So, I was messing around this other game by some Chrono Trigger developers called "Koi wa Balance" and I got a little nice surprise: Gaspar/Hasch, Johnny and a creature that resembles a little a Nu showed up.
So here's some screenshots I took with those guys and some other ones that shows the CT-style graphics:
It turns out the similarity is no accident or plagiarism: 7 people that worked on CT also worked on this game, including the main graphic designer (Masanori Hoshino) and the "Field Graphic" designers Matsuzo Itakura and Shinichiro Hamasaka.
You can check a gameplay video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X940gvaM-6Q
And the sprites here:
http://www.spriters-resource.com/snes/dynamitracer/
I have a somewhat related question.
In CT and in a lot of games some designers are credited for doing the "Field Graphics" of the game.
Anyone know what that means? Is that the overworld graphics? The objects graphics? The backgrounds?
And what about "Map Design"? Is that the layout of the areas?
I'm interested in that because I was trying to find who's the responsible for the CT overworld graphics since I find them very beautiful and I wanted to find more games by whoever that is.
UPDATE (14th October):
So, I was messing around this other game by some Chrono Trigger developers called "Koi wa Balance" and I got a little nice surprise: Gaspar/Hasch, Johnny and a creature that resembles a little a Nu showed up.
So here's some screenshots I took with those guys and some other ones that shows the CT-style graphics:
6
News Submissions / Hironobu Sakaguchi fought for a Chrono Trigger (direct) sequel
« on: September 26, 2014, 02:49:14 pm »
Hironobu Sakaguchi (Chrono Trigger general supervisor) was interviewed at PAX Prime 2014.
When asked about Chrono Trigger, he revealed:
"We wanted to continue it as a series, but — and I think the statute of limitations has passed and expired, so I think I'm okay saying this — but we just didn't see eye-to-eye with management, and so I went and fought for it, and I officially lost the battle."
You can watch the full interview here:
http://www.twitch.tv/pax/c/5027921
When asked about Chrono Trigger, he revealed:
"We wanted to continue it as a series, but — and I think the statute of limitations has passed and expired, so I think I'm okay saying this — but we just didn't see eye-to-eye with management, and so I went and fought for it, and I officially lost the battle."
You can watch the full interview here:
http://www.twitch.tv/pax/c/5027921
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