Bantam Imp Weirdness

[Razig]

I noticed an odd thing while playing Chrono Trigger today. I don't know whether it's a new bug introduced in the Steam version, or if it's been there all along and I've somehow never seen it happen in 23 years, or if I've seen it before but it just didn't register as strange until now.

Normally when fighting Bantam Imps on Mt. Woe, you have to kill the bird first, then the imp. Excess damage dealt to the bird doesn't carry over to the imp. (I think the bird's death spawns an entirely new imp, but graphically it looks like the original imp just falls to the ground.)

But while playing today, I noticed that whenever Ayla killed a bird with a counterattack, the imp would also die (or more accurately, fail to spawn). I didn't think to switch the Rage Band to another character, so I'm not sure if this behavior is unique to Ayla or if anyone can do it.

I'm curious to know whether this is a new thing, but I'm too lazy to play up to this point again on a SNES emulator to check. Does anyone know offhand?

Assuming it's not just some shenanigans introduced by the Steam/Mobile port, why would a counterattack cause the spawn trigger to be skipped? And is there anywhere else in the game that behavior could be abused?

[Mauron]

Player counter attacks don't trigger the enemy's counterattack, and Bantam Imps are generated as a final counterattack.

It's done to prevent a counter chain, and bosses with minions are setup to have another option to destroy the minions in case you defeat the main form with a counter attack.

[Razig]

That's interesting. I can see why counterattacks don't trigger further counterattacks, but I wonder why the imp's spawn is handled as one?

[Mauron]

It was the easiest way to handle actions on enemies that just died. Otherwise they'd have to setup a special section just for that.

Flea? (The imposter) has MP buster as a final attack MP Buster that could be dodged with counters.

[Razig]

Apparently Dalton Plus is set up that way too. I wasn't even trying to, but I happened to kill him with a counterattack. Instead of falling into his Golem portal, he simply died. Didn't even get the boss death animation, he just faded like a regular enemy.

I wonder if he can be killed in his other fights too, where he's supposed to burp at the end?

[Mauron]

Regular Dalton wouldn't burp on a counterattack death.

There's a lot of bosses that use a final attack special, but not all would be super visible when  it fails.