7 details that changed in the production of Chrono Trigger

Practically all games go through changes during their development process. This happens in both new and old games, and with Chrono Trigger things would not be different.

Did you know, for example, that the initial plan was that Chrono Trigger was an extremely short game by RPG standards? Or that Ayla underwent changes to have less large breasts?

If you want to check out a little more about things that changed in the development process of this great RPG, I present seven of them in the following lines. Check out!

7. Duration of the game

Chrono Trigger’s experience would change a lot if it were a very short game. (Source: Slashgear/Reproduction)Source: Slashgear/Reproduction

Chrono Trigger follows the pattern of many RPGs for the SNES, with a campaign that can last dozens of hours. However, at some point in the development process the idea was to follow a very different path.

It may sound strange to read something like this, but believe me: in the early stages of development, the production team considered delivering it very short. And when I say short, I’m not kidding, since the idea was leave it for 8 hours.

“We had a lot of trouble defining the difficulty of the game. According to [Yuji] Horii, we should make it accessible for new players. That was the direction we went. And actually, during the planning phase, we talked about reduce the number of battles and encounters so that it would be completed in about 8 hours“, explained Hironobu Sakaguchi, game supervisor, in a 1995 interview rescued by the Shmuplations website.

6. Ayla’s boobs

Ayla was much larger at the beginning of Chrono Trigger’s production. (Source: GameRant/Reproduction)Source: GameRant/Reproduction

It is not new that games tend to sexualize some female characters, and Chrono Trigger There’s a bit of that with Ayla. The prehistoric character doesn’t wear as many clothes as Marle and Lucca, and has very large breasts. However, the initial proposal was for them to be even bigger.

“During development, her breasts actually bounced a lot more. It was fantastic to see the “boing boing” that the team managed to achieve with such small sprites,” commented Yoshinori Kitase, director of the SNES-born RPG, in the same chat published on Shmuplations.

5. Marle would use Fire-type magic

Image shows Marle using fire magic, recreating the scene from the cover of Chrono Trigger. (Source: HG101/Reproduction)Source: HG101/Reproduction

Who looks at the cover art of Chrono Trigger To this day, he believes there is some kind of error. The reason? Marle appears using fire magic on Crono’s sword. What if I told you that this isn’t totally wrong?

Although it is not very common, a photo with some of the game’s initial concepts is circulating online. In one of them, we can see Crono, Marle and Frog fighting a Heckran on an ice mountain. The main detail here: the princess is casting fire magic on the protagonist’s sword.

Of course, we know that this changed later and Lucca took over as a user of Fire-type magic. However, it would be curious to see how much the gameplay would be affected if the original plans were maintained.

4. Initial concept of the characters

Akira Toriyama passed away in 2024, but his legacy will live on in several games, including Chrono Trigger. He was responsible for character design, which possibly saved the game a lot in that sense.

If you want to check it out for yourself, here we have the initial concept of the protagonists of Chrono Trigger. And, well… What we can say is that if the title followed the idea below for the characters, the success would certainly not be the same:

Initial concept of the characters in Chrono Trigger. (Source: Wikipedia/Reproduction)Source: Wikipedia/Reproduction

3. Cropped content

Another important point in the production of Chrono Trigger is that the creators had a lot of content planned. Although, Several things were cut throughout this project.

Among the main ones, we can highlight the dungeons Singing Mountain (which would be located in prehistory), Dungeons of Zeal (where Crono and the group would pass after being saved by Schala) and Sealed Pyramid (which can be seen on the map in 600 AD ).

Added to this, we also had two songs cut (Scattering Blossoms and Singing Mountain) and two excerpts that appear only in the cards offered as a pre-sale item for Chono Trigger in Japan. In one of them, we see that Ayla would participate in a prison segment, while the other has Crono and Marle possibly talking about their wedding.

Scenes cut from the final version of Chrono Trigger. (Source: Douglas Vieira/Voxel/Reproduction)Source: Douglas Vieira/Voxel/Reproduction

2. Theme of Theft

Chrono Trigger There was a demo available in Japan with content that ended up being changed in the final version. And, possibly, one of the most successful is the Robo theme present in the demo.

If the development team followed through with this plan, the inhabitant of the future would have Frog’s music. You can check this out in the video below, at around 01:03:00.

1. The entire game

It may seem crazy to imagine something like this, but perhaps this was the main change in Chrono Trigger. At a certain point in production, the team abandoned a project already in progress to start everything over from scratch.

Speaking during the Monaco Anime Game International Conferences 2023, Sakaguchi revealed that Chrono Trigger It was almost released as a mediocre game. To prevent this from happening, the only way the team found was to get rid of what was already ready and start over from scratch.

“Chrono Trigger it almost turned into a mediocre game, so we had to throw everything we had away and start over again from the beginning”, commented Sakaguchi in the material published on the IGN website.

And did you know that all these details had changed during the production of Chrono Trigger? Share your opinions with other readers of the Voxel using our social networks.