We begin with a video uploaded by Zeenbor on Youtube depicting one half of a playthrough through the abandoned demo for Chrono Trigger Resurrection. It's already at 50,000 views; watch it
here.
Its March 1, 2008, meaning the Chrono Compendium Spring's Gift Fan Art contest is underway. As part of our attempt to prevent the paucity of entrants we suffered last year, the theme is...
Scenes from Prehistory. Ayla, Kino, Crono, Azala...whomever you want to depict, it's fair game as long as the setting is 65,000,000 B.C. Chrono Cross characters are
more than welcome, and you can also use Gaea's Navel since it is a prehistoric setting too. Singing Mountain, the Hunting Range, the mighty Tyrano Lair, or even the dreaded Red Star and the fall of Lavos -- it's all open for visual chronicling. Good luck to those who enter. Check the regulations and submission instructions
here or by clicking the banner. You will be submitting to faustwolf (ät) yahoo.com, who will acknowledge receipt immediately.
The Gundanium Alchemist from the Chrono Crisis forums reports that in the February 2008 issue of Game Informer, the Chrono series placed 8th on the "Top Ten Sequels in Demand". The magazine gave a sequel a probability of 65%, and wrote:
"The Chrono time-traveling role-playing series remains one of the steadfast legacies in the Square Enix catalogue. Not only were Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross met with rave reviews, they sold a crazy amount of copies on the SNES and PSone respectively. So what's the damn holdup?! We wish we knew. Fans got their hopes up when Square trademarked the name Chrono Break in 2001, but the trademark expired in 2003 and Square Enix didn't bother to renew it. To make matters worse, Square Enix has spent entirely too much time cashing in on endless Final Fantasy remakes instead of bringing back another of its greatly adored works. The recipe for a successful Chrono resurrection seems painfully obvious - refresh the look with contemporary anime, offer a lot of recruitable party members, bring back the dual techs, and offer multiple timelines of realities to explore. But for now, Chrono fans have to be content with waiting."
Now, some disconcerting news. Check out the Google Trends comparison for "Chrono Trigger" and "Chrono Cross" by clicking
here. See what's happening? Independent interest seems to be cooling off, save for the spike attributable to the Retranslation. I have no doubt that the Chrono Cross Exploration Project will cause a slight resurgence, as well as the continued work on fan projects. And then comes March 11...as FaustWolf put it,
Chrono is ALIVE! Imagine how bad things would be without a meeting place; without Temporal Flux; without Crimson Echoes, Chrono Crisis, the Coliseum, CT+, Rebirth, and the other projects; without an encyclopedia; without discussion-stimulating plot analysis; without a hub...but that's not reality, eh? We're here, we're fans, and we're going to
rock and roll. Check out the latest progress of the CC project
here.
Time for ROM hacking stuff.
[1] Speaking of Chrono Trigger +, the latest demo is out courtesy of Zakyrus. He'd like all the help he can get debugging it, so strap in and get treated to an expanded version of Chrono Trigger under construction by
clicking here. Report bugs by visiting
this thread. If you need visual proof to try before you buy, click
here or
here.
[2] Chinese bootleggers and ROM hackers have famously "ported" certain games to 8-bit for use on Famicom cartridges, and it looks like someone's doing it with Chrono Trigger. There's no ROm available for download, but you can get the specifics by
clicking here and hitting "Chrono Trigger 8-bit" in the table of contents.
[3] A guy named Anacalius who played Prophet's Guile and the Retranslation has been inspired to take on the task of adding lines for Crono and fleshing out certain dialogue-sparse scenes in Chrono Trigger to add new fun, experience, and depth. He's also considering adding a new side quest for Ayla and Crono. More news and perhaps a fan project forum are forthcoming.
FaustWolf noticed that Masato Kato may have operated under the name "Runmal" while working on Ninja Gaiden. If you know anything about this, visit
this thread.
Two new doujins have popped up on the radar thanks to AkumuHau at the Gamingforce forums. First is
wasaG - mixed tape, featuring a Longing of the Wind remix, and
YAMAGEN DEVILELIET - Knights of Anonymity. Check out their listings on the
Albums and Doujins page as well.Time for the fan art round up. Let's get this part started with a bang! First is 5-15-9's Crono and Magus battle; it's a sight to behold. Find it
here. Next is ChronoWeapon's piece of a Crono-resembling original character named Ty for his Chrono fanfic; click
here to see it. Finally, Oatmeal1209 made a splash on the forum by posting his Crono Redesign sketch, which you can see
here. Jeez, what's with these mega updates? These days, something is always stirring in the Chrono fan community.
Hell yes.[hidden]Ugh, I didn't even begin to fix the VGmix 2 links this time around. What a thorn in my side that is.[/hidden]
