On my Wii Virtual console = happiness.

These are when video game RPGS hit their true potential. The SNES Squaresoft era...

/nerd insomnia

It's about fucking time it the VC, but I honestly stopped caring after the DS port was released. The new dungeon added is rubbish, but the rest of the game is perfect. The new translation is fantastic (though I wish they'd left the iconic opening lines the same), and using the touchscreen to navigate menus is a vast improvement over the original system.

I still mourn the loss of this.

Hear hear. I've been a huge Final Fantasy nerd for most of my life (Squaresoft being the connection there). I never played Chrono Trigger, but that's the same era that brought about Final Fantasy VI.

My favorite though was FFIV (II in the US), which I've always thought had the best story of any of them. There were other great ones as well, though I haven't played the latest because I don't have an Xbox or PS3 or the time for it, really. But VII and VIII were good and X was good. IX was crap, but so it goes.

But yeah, I never really lost my love of the SNES-era RPGs. If you've ever played FFIV, and you have a Wii, there's actually a sequel to the game with the same map world and a few new stories you can download. It's called Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. I downloaded an emulator to play it over the winter and it was pretty cool. Kind of a collection of shorter stories and quests.

Yeah, this is about where I stop for RPGs. The later stuff is too much with the cutscenes and the ridiculous spell animations and dumb storylines I don't care about. Chrono Trigger is RPG perfection.

Maybe the best RPG ever made. I have a working SNES and a copy of the game, one of these days I'm going to bust it out. Back when games were big on plot and fun, and less about flash and long cut scenes.

I went shopping yesterday..

The PS1 years are cool. FFVII being on top for me, followed by Chrono Cross. But FF starting going downhill after VIII.

I still like modern RPGs (Bioware, Bethesda and whathaveyou) but Square never got as good as the SNES games. My favorite stills FF3 (or 6). Epic as epic gets.

I'm going to go out on a limb (since Square Enix is hurting badly financially speaking) and say that the whole thing fell apart when they started giving the characters voices.

I wish Nintendo would get off it's ass and give me another Earthbound.

Wildly unpopular opinion by a guy who's not really an RPG fanboy, but things started going downhill when fans started caring more about androgynous, cardboard characters with comic-book weapons and armor and confusingly absurd science-fantasy pastiches than coherent, intelligent storytelling. Yes, I'm talking about the unassailably venerable FFVII. One of (if not THE) most overrated videogames ever. Give me 2-frame animation sprites and let my imagination fill in the gaps and supply the motivations, because that anime nonsense is embarrassing. I'm not critiquing the gameplay there--it's got it--but everything else about that game is a silly mess, and people were completely blindsided out of thinking critically by--I dunno, cutscenes? What gives? Reminds me of Avatar in that respect.

But, yeah, a new Earthbound would be wonderful, provided they didn't turn it into the above.

I played a lot of square's Secret of Mana (aka Seiken Densetsu 2) back in the day, and I played a fair amount of Chrono Trigger on emulators. I never finished a Square game though. I never totally liked random battle RPG's and would always tire of them eventually, though Square's worlds are rich.

Zelda: A Link To The Past is my ultimate snes RPG memory.

"Link To The Past" is the best Zelda. Although the Game Boy "Link's Awakening" and the N64 "Ocarina Of Time" are up there. As far as FF7, I may actually agree that it set off a time bomb of bad RPGs in a devolutionary sense, but on it's own I think it was part of the golden era. Can we hold "British Steel" or "Slaughter Of The Soul" responsible for the atrocities to follow? I may see it as a harbinger of doom, but I think FF7 holds up pretty good...just went back to it a couple years ago.

I like FF7 but it's definitely the beginning of the end for me. Rock bottom was FFX. That game was awful. Only Blitzball (?) or whatever made that game fun.

One of the things that the SNES games had over the PS1 is good villains. Sephiroth is kind of 'meh' compared to Kefka.

Link to the Past is still the best Zelda. It's antecedents are great and even exceptional but I've yet to play a Zelda game that is as memorable as a Link to the Past.

Agreed on A Link to the Past. One of the best games ever. FF6 is also epic.

Someone needs to add "Also Video Games" to the TV/Movies Discussion board. Where is this Taskmaster jerk when you need him???

Well, there's always FFX-2, which was worse than the original, but I agree with you about the voices, even if I think that's more a symptom than the cause of the decline in quality.

In any case, yeah, A Link to the Past is the way to go for Zeldas, even if it's not strictly a turn-based SNES RPG. Hookshot for the win.

Minnish Cap FTW!

I'm a huge SNES nerd....i'm playing Breath Of Fire 2 on the actual SNES console right now, and i've got the big RPG games on actual cartridge (Secret Of Mana, Secret Of Evermore, Breath of Fire 1, 2, Wizardry 5, Chrono Trigger, Tales Of Phantasia, etc). Most people think that Chrono Trigger is the best SNES game, but I think that Tales Of Phantasia may be it.....I held onto the porno magazine in the game for no other reason than it was a porno magazine (it has no real use apparently, other than making one laugh). There's alot of really adult specific things in there ("I bet Arche fucks like a tiger" is hilarious to see in a mainstream video game).

Definetely. I'd played it again and finished it off for the umpteenth time a couple of weeks back. It's always lots of fun. I've always found the cape and the canes pretty useless. I remember quite a few years back that Nintendo were still selling the classic games (A Link To The Past, MarioKart, etc...), so i'd bought it then--no EBay for this cowboy. I will go so far to say that if someone doesn't like MarioKart, they have no fucking use in the human race at all, heh heh. Like, seriously, give up. NOW.

I've had a strong desire to replay this since this thread was made, and started a replay of the DS version today. Thanks a lot, jerks.

I will disagree... RPG's like KOTOR, Deus Ex (yes, more of an RPG than shooter), Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, The Witcher 1/2 are far superior imo.

I feel like every game I see advertised these days is an FPS in disguise.

So is it worth going back and playing Chrono Trigger for the first time now, or do I have to have been there with it all along?

It's never too late to try out the classics. The best games (just like music) are playable long after their release.

Indeed. As long as the 16-bit sprite artwork looks appealing I don't think you'll have any trouble getting into it. And honestly, if you don't like the artwork in CT then probably no sprite artwork will appeal to you. It's among the best ever done, and the amount of imagination and detail packed into CT's art is amazing (especially when you consider the time period). I think the DS translation, except the gripe I mentioned before, is superior to the SNES version as well. The SNES translation is still really good considering the limitations of the hardware, though. If you want a "professional" opinion on the subject, scroll down to the "Another Take" section of IGN's Chrono Trigger DS review. Aside from his comment on the visuals (of course they're dated, that doesn't mean they look terrible), I think his take as a first timer to the game is pretty good.

Back in the early 90's me and friends used to literally run home from school to have epic Mario Kart and SFII tournaments. Would draw up tables and have finals and everything. those were probably the most fun gaming days of my life! Nothing else has come close. A couple of my friends became fucking pixel-perfect supernaturally good at Mario Kart, every trick and every short cut. They would race the hardest/fastest characters Bowser and Donkey Kong and just totally fuck you up. I never got so pissed off in my life with any other game. With the possible exception of the ganging-up situations that would occur in multiplayer PS1 Worms....

Chrono Trigger is still a great game--I still think that SNES is the king of RPG's, simply because I don't think that you can beat the combined total of Secret of Mana/ Secret Of Evermore/ Breath of Fire 1 and 2/ Chrono Trigger/ Tales Of Phantasia/ Link To The Past/ Super Mario RPG/ Final Fantasy 3/ Wizardry 5. To me, it's the pinnacle of the combination of playability and graphics.....as good as the graphics and visuals are on the newer RPG's, are they just outright as fun? I'm not so sure.



Yeah, some friends and I would have some competitions--the red shell always seemed to do the most damage! At one point, we were all so good against each other or the computer that we'd intentionally enter the rounds as the shrunken characters.

KOTOR I/II, Deus Ex, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines for older games, The Witcher 1/2 for new one.

All amazing games

^^ Mention of Super Mario RPG. Fuck yeah!