Game Players 75 - Chrono Trigger [S1E2] - FunFactor

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Ty, you ready to be humiliated by some medieval moves? Uh?

Speaker 2 (00:05):
I think is this like a safe word.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Thing it could be? Do you want it to be?

Speaker 2 (00:10):
I don't know, man, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Let's see how it goes.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
You've got fun Factor two old gamers reviewing old video
game magazine reviews. I'm Ty Shelter, He's a Moher, and
we're two professional writers who grew up loving the video
games and video game magazines of the nineteen eighties, nineteen nineties,
and two thousands. Every episode we take a critical look
back on the games media that, for better and for worse,
inspired us to do what we do. First, go to
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(00:44):
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Speaker 1 (01:04):
Today we're gonna be talking about a magazine that's special
to me. It's no exaggeration to say that, like, I
wouldn't have the career today certainly wouldn't be co hosting
this podcast about old video game magazines with you if
it weren't for having my childhood nos buried deep in
any gaming magazine I could get my hands on. But
whenever I dig through the banker's box of old issues

(01:26):
sitting behind me right now, most of them are a
blur of memories. They kind of merge into the singular,
homogenize experience of like gaming mags. They might bring back
an era Supernintendo PlayStation, or even sort of the glory
years of EGM and one up, But I don't remember
distinct issues that said every so often I pull one
out of the stack in that cover immediately sends me

(01:46):
on a journey to a specific time and place, and
today's issue is one of those for me. I'm wondering, though, Ty, like,
do you have any standout core memories of specific magazine
issues or like a feature or review that sort of
like lives inside you easily today?

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know that we'd be doing
this if I didn't have that at least a little bit.
But like you say that, and I think Next Gen
number four was the first issue, like the next Generation
magazine because it's big, had this weird spaceship on the cover.
It with silicon graphics generated. It's like Ultra sixty four
everything we know about it. And it was this super thick,

(02:24):
super wide, like square printed magazine with this super glossy
touch cover. It was like laminated right. Everything about it
was so cool and fancy and special in a way
that I hadn't seen in any video game magazine before.
And I just immediately wanted to grab it and devour it.
And it just made me feel so cool for reading

(02:45):
it and so smart for reading it, and like that
was just like that combination of the imagery and like
the tactle feel of like whoa and the like Next
Generation and like Nintendo, Like what if I'm holding uh
stupid controller and then controlling like that thing on my
TV in real time? I just couldn't even imagine it.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
I feel like this says like so much about you
and I because you have like the futuristic glossy Like
I feel like I'm an adult Exgen magazine and my issue,
like the issue I'm talking about today, like it resonates
with me and it lives inside me because Crono triggers
on the cover and then there's just a huge gratuitous
shot of Sonya Blade's boobs, Like that's it, and that

(03:27):
was like that was gaming megs unfortunately for me for
a long time. Uh, it's awesome.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Before you go on, well before you go on, yeah, no,
because I remember this Culver two. And the reason why
is that I wrote a letter to the editor in
response to this wo because there was a Mortal Kombat
Live show that they were like traveling, and so I
got this issue like within a day or two, and

(03:54):
then like we went on the local news and Carrie
what's her face? Sonia Blade? She showed up at my
local news, Lancing, Michigan to promote the Modal Kombat Live show,
and I was just sitting there being like what what
what that is? Sonya played in the costume in studio here.
Remember my mom worked My mom had worked at that

(04:16):
TV station in the ad department. I think she left
briefly before this, but anyway, I was just my mind
was absolutely blown. So I wrote in this goofy letter
to the editor being like I couldn't.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Believe it, Like there's on the cover of Sonia Blade
and then like there on the TV is also Sonia Blade.
I mean, you know what they say about Lancing, Michigan, right,
like that is where the Mortalist of Combat takes place.
So that seems out of place, but maybe not so
much does a loss experience today in like today's media landscape.
Are their kids out there who like remember the first

(04:48):
time they read my history of Chrono trigger on Medium
or that Polygon feature? You know, like is there sort
of that emotional connection to games writing.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
I think flash media, flash games. You know, my kids
are all in their upper teens or over twenties as
in twenty exactly, they have that connection to that early
flash games, flash media interactive stuff. You know, every website
had like clickable buttons and they were like a little
mini games sort of embedded in lots of things that

(05:19):
you know that you wouldn't see today. But like the
games media, games criticism is definitely it's a it's a
different thing, and I think it's I think it's a
lot of their own content, right, like short form video
and that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
In a lot of ways, like a lot of games
media nowadays feels like it's still written for the same
people who are buying game players in next gen. Yes, right,
but I've written for twelve year olds then and forty
year olds now, and like, of course, there's media, and
there's ways to consume video game culture that resonate with kids.
And it's video, it's TikTok, it's YouTube, it's you know,
playing Fortnite with their friends or five Night except Freddy's

(05:57):
with their friends over group chat. And they're just different
ways that these kids are obviously engaging with this stuff.
But for us, it was these video game magazines, right, yeah,
you know, and nothing says millennial like nostalgia for magazines.
So that's where we're at. We're gonna talk about one
of my very favorite video game issues.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
All right, let's open the cover and get in. If
you're not already a member getting your ad free episodes,
just hang tight. We'll get into Game Players number seventy
five and go deep reviewing. It's review of a game
they described as near perfessional. Welcome back to fun Factor,

(06:48):
where two old gamers review old video game magazine reviews.
Of course we want you to review us. Do we
get a full five point zero in fun Factor? Leave
us a review on Apple podcasts and we'll read the best, funniest, kindest,
and most entertaining ones on the air.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
So what's the deal with game Players. There's a million
magazines from this era. Game Players is one of the
big ones, and they all sort of had their own
little vibe. As much as I look back on, you know,
two thousand era Electronic Gaming Monthly as it was sort
of launching into what became one up as the Golden
Age of gaming magazines, my like, real true preteen love

(07:25):
was game Players. I talk a lot about growing up
on a small island and how that sort of like
informed my experience with video games, whether that's you know,
having to go buy video games and then wait hours
to get home to play them, or having to wait,
you know, weeks before we could get off the island
to get a new game. But video game magazines were
a huge part of that too. We would quote unquote

(07:47):
go to town to get groceries, and so I would
go with my parents, my mom, we'd go grocery shopping.
We might have a two hour chunk of time before
we get home from the grocery store because we're loading up,
we're driving you know, through town to the ferry waiting
for the ferry on the ferry driving home, and so,
you know, like any sane parent would do, my mom

(08:07):
would usually let me go over to the magazine section
the book section at the bookstore or at the grocery
store and pick up a magazine for the ferry ride home.
Gave her a little bit of peace and quiet and
also sort of fed the beast. For me, game players
is usually what came home with me, and I remember
it very viscerally. But when I'm looking through my collection
at gaming mags, that era of my life, you know,

(08:29):
twelve to fifteen is just like a ton of game
players with a little bit of game fan, a little
bit of game pro, little bit of EGM sprinkled in there,
but it was mostly game players. And I just feel
like it's really emblematic of that era of gaming magazine
because it's full of like bright, cluttered layouts with like
an enormous number of screenshots. It had writing that felt

(08:53):
grown up to me at twelve without feeling inaccessible. It
didn't feel high brow, it didn't feel like what you
were saying about next gen. It still felt like people
talking to me as a twelve year old, but also
felt like it took the medium seriously where some of
the other game magazines didn't always and even some of
the writers and game players didn't always seem to take
video games seriously as a medium. But game Players straddled

(09:15):
that line. They had big you know, Sonya blade boobs
on the cover, but then also sort of dug a
little deeper into some of the games than maybe Game
Pro did. But on the flip side, there was also
this one writer named Bill Donahue who seemed like he
was like literally grown in a lab to appeal to
twelve year old boys. I liked it at the time.

(09:37):
He makes me laugh. Now, what did you think of
game players back in the day? Ty?

Speaker 2 (09:41):
One hundred percent the same for me. I'm actually surprised
because you've talked, you know, in the past, when we've
talked about this, you've talked about EGM and you know
some of those others. Game players is always it for me.
I actually, my mom was a single mom from when
I was one and in first grade we had magazines
in the little elementary school library. I talked her into

(10:01):
subscribing to Sports Illustrated for me, which was like eighty
dollars in nineteen eighty seven or whatever a year, like
absolutely huge, huge expense. And then in third grade I
got Game Players Guide to Nintendo Games. So I was
reading Game Players Hardcore from you know, third fourth grade

(10:23):
on and that was absolutely my jam as well and I,
you know, both loved it and didn't because like for
the same thing. It was like, you know, they had
some of the most weird and juvenile things in there,
but they also had a really really good criticism, really
really good writing, and you know, put a lot of

(10:46):
effort into features. And I think they also some of
their some of their reviewers really kind of saw games
the way that I saw games, you know, when they
took an approach to like, oh, we're going to prioritize
like gay play right versus like just presentation, you know,
or it didn't spare any critique for licensed games or

(11:07):
anything like that. You know, there's there's a lot of
aspects and constantly constantly complaining about the fact that we
didn't get Japanese RPGs here in the or Japanese games.
You know, that so many great games were being released
in Japan but not here. That's something I was really
sensitive to, partially because they were giving me that info
and I think a lot of other magazines in you know,

(11:30):
ninety six, we're still just kind of looking at the
American market and going, well, this is what we get.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, not reaching outside, not doing you know, like doing
an invest like a journalism, right, they should be looking
at what else is out there and bringing these stories
that aren't just kind of pr like regurgitations. I don't think.
And we'll get a little bit more into this later,
but I don't think it's a surprise, like listening to
you talk about this, that the editor in chief, Chris Slate,

(11:57):
has like gone on to have like a very long
career in the media and now he's with Nintendo as
a senior manager of corporate communications. And I think that
that's the sign of somebody who understood why it's important
to talk about video games in a way that is,
you know, taken seriously and recognizes the worth that they
have culturally. We're looking at So, if it's not clear

(12:18):
game Players number seventy five from September nineteen ninety five,
it's volume eight, number nine, one hundred and seventeen pages,
which is like a decent number. But Game Players was
also not as like Chocolate Block full as some of
its competitors. Like you look at something like EGM from
around that time. It might have three hundred pages, but
like two hundred and sixty of them are ats. So

(12:40):
Game Players was a little more focused that way, you know,
like it wasn't quite that didn't have the catalog feel
that some of the other magazines had at the time.
We've got twenty one full game reviews in this issue,
which is pretty nice. There's seventy three capsule reviews, so
these are smaller reviews, single pair laid out in a

(13:01):
grid over three pages, looking back at older games. So like,
you know, they recognize that not everybody could get every issue,
but they still wanted somebody to know that they gave
earth Bound, you know, a good score or whatever. But
because they presented this way, it also goes to show
you that, like in September nineteen ninety five, like there
was such a huge spread of game consoles available. Ten

(13:23):
systems reviewed for in this issue, which is remarkable. I think,
how many systems do we have. We have the Nintendo Switch,
we have the PlayStation five, and I think Xbox, like
Microsoft put out an Xbox at some point in the
past five or ten years. I think there's an Xbox.
So like we're at two and a half consoles and

(13:46):
you know, back then ten now we've got the Super Nintendo,
we got the PlayStation, the Genesis, the game Boy, there's
the Game Gear thirty two X, Sega CD, we've got
the Atari Jaguar, which you know it it was a thing.
Sega Saturn, which is one of my all time favorite consoles,
but it's North American, you know, performance was not something

(14:10):
to be admired. And then the cream of the crop,
the three D O, which was, you know, always an adventure.
And so you have like, you know, a range of
games from systems like the Super As that are in
the height of their power, putting out some of the
best games of all time. And then you have the
first vestiges of that next generation when you're getting PlayStation,

(14:30):
you're getting Saturn, you're getting the Jaguar, the three D
trying to like figure out what's coming next. A lot
of reviews all over the place sometimes, but also looking back,
I think they usually get it right. They're usually highlighting
the games that like have kind of stuck through time.
They also had three reader reviews, which is kind of fun,
you know, within five years, internet forms would sort of replace,

(14:56):
you know, like reader reviews and stuff like that as
the way for people to kind of discuss and get involved.
But you know, they peppered in three little reader reviews,
which was pretty fun. And then of course this was
pre game Facts. So if you needed your your Nintendo cheats,
you went to Game Players, you went to Game pro.
This issue has twenty different cheat sheets for different games,

(15:18):
whether that's strategy, sometimes it's like code, sometimes it's proaction, replayer,
game genie codes all over the place. But Game Sheets
was always like it's kind of hard to like in
a post game facts world, it's kind of hard to
explain to people why cheats were such a vital part
of selling magazines back in the nineties. But Game Players
was like chalk full of them.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah. Well, it's funny because it kind of went away
and now has come back, right, Like guides, Like generating
guides and walkthroughs is a huge part of how a
lot of text operations that are still operating stay operating.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
You know. It's like the one thing that like AI
can't really like impede because a I can't play through Skyrim, yeah, right,
Like it can't play through a vowed, So you need
those humans who are doing that. Now. Once one person
writes a guy, then the AI can start doing it, sang,
But a human has to like create that content at first.

(16:16):
And that's why I think we're back to a place
where that's a major part of like quote unquote games journalism.
For a lot of people, it was a little easier
to just print the codes that you know, the publisher
sent you back in the day.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
Well, I didn't even was that even transparent to you,
because because to me, I always were like, wow, like
somebody's sitting there like figuring out all these codes or like,
you know, because it was still We're still young enough
that I think you'd be rumors on the playground mixed
with somebody saw sheets from one place, and because you'd
have these magazines would print a list of codes, and
some would have some and some would have others, and

(16:48):
then others you try and like this doesn't work, or
like the you know, we didn't know maybe that the
publisher was sending them in, but oh, it turns out
they only work in certain screens or only work in
certain modes, and one of that information was there. It
was just you know, triangle circle, triangle, start slash. Okay,
all right, cool put in that code.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yeah, And I mean like some of the cheats that
they would have in there would be like, you know,
the the button presses for like you know, as we
kind of cold opened and Killer Instinct, you had humilities
and you know, just like a fatality in Mortal Kombat,
you do your humility with a button. Yes, like that
would be in there, And that's not like a secret.
That's probably in the manual. But for kids who have

(17:27):
like rented Killer Instinct and don't have the manual, like
that's valuable you know content, I suppose valuable material. But yeah,
like I didn't know that. Like in hindsight, it's very
clearly a marketing thing, right, It's obviously something that's like
there to like sell games and to sell you know, magazines.
At the time, yeah, I probably had the same assumption

(17:48):
that somebody was just sitting there, like jam in every
key combo on the game pad trying to unlock shen
long right, right, Okay, game players had fairly small staff,
as most magazines at at the time we had we
mentioned earlier editor in chief Chris Slate, and then there
was a cast in never Duwell's, who are all not

(18:11):
surprisingly white dudes in the early twenties. Jeff Lundegren, who
was a particular favorite of mine too, probably because of
this issue, because of some of the things he says
in the review we're going to read later. Trent, who
does not have a last name. I could not find
his last name in the issue. He's just Trent, which
is the most mid nineties and Janet guy name of

(18:34):
all time. We've got Mike Salmon like the fish Mike Salmon,
Patrick Bagotto, and of course Bill Donahue, not listed on
the front of the magazine but found in the official
masthead at the back are and I think very crucially
art director of Mike Willmoth and graphic designers Anna Cobb

(18:55):
and Debbie Wells. We look back on these magazines and
we think about and we're going to talk a lot
about the writing, but a lot of credit needs to
go to the graphics team for their role in defining
the feel of magazines at the time and giving them
each a distinct feel. Uh, And we don't see a
lot from the designers and the graphic designers who are
putting in all that work. Also, notably Anacob and w

(19:20):
Wells were, you know, two of the prominent women on
the team, who didn't get billying, who didn't get recognized
outside of like tiny little like six point font on
the very back page of the magazine, right right. Sometimes
you look back on these old magazines and you see
a lot of a lot of familiar names people who
have gone on and you know, like like Chris Slate,
as we mentioned earlier, he's he went on to be

(19:43):
editor in chief of not just Game Players, but Nintendo
Power and PlayStation Magazine. The rest of the bass head
there's not a lot of those like you know, you
look at some of the EGM issues back in the day,
or you look at you know, something like Game Fan,
where you have people like Molly Patterson who are still

(20:05):
like very visible in gaming culture. I didn't recognize a
lot under the names from game players outside of Bill Donahue,
who again I think he was created in a lab
to write for twelve year old boys and then maybe
cease to exist.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Yeah, and I think he returned there too, did he?

Speaker 1 (20:20):
Okay, yeah, I can I can see that, but yeah,
so you know, it was a great They had a
great voice at the time, and that worked for them.
I don't know what happened to the rest of the crew.
The thing that like, really I was looking through this,
I was flipping through this, and you know, when I
was twelve at the time, this felt like a bunch
of adults who knew what they were talking about. Now
I look at this and, like Chris Slat's letter from

(20:41):
the editor profile picture, like he looks like he's eighteen
years old, like he is a he was a kid
running a magazine with a bunch of other kids to
write about video games for younger kids. And that really
stood out to me. Here he had his you know,
mid nineties go tee. You know that he had probably
very proudly grown out for the first time. Uh, and
he was, you know, doing God's work, bringing us Corona

(21:03):
Trigger reviews. I want to start flipping through this magazine,
all right, let's do it. The cover is beautiful, like
I said, like this lightning, like high key Sonia blade art,
big Mortal Kombat three for sure, for sure logo because

(21:25):
Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter basically had to be on
the cover of every magazine in some capacity at this time.
And then in the bottom right corner we have Marl
and Chrono from quote unquote squaresoft Unleisha's the biggest RPG
of all time. Three exclamation marks, and then Chrono trigger.
So we have a big Chrono trigger spread here, which was,

(21:47):
you know, a draw for me because at this time,
you know, I was already looking for as much Corona
Trigger content as I could get. We've got a few ads,
they're very like nineties esque. We've got the you know,
the meet the Team. We've got the Chris Late editorial letter.
I want to get into some of these letters from
the readers, which was a huge part of gaming at

(22:07):
the time, and I want you to kick things off
with me. Yeah, by reading this particular letter from Craig
it's called the Same Old Story, and he drops some
like serious truth bombs about Sonic series. And I think
this guy should have been a critic at the time,
because I've never heard somebody match my opinions of Sonic
quite so closely. So can you give that a read?
It's on Yeah, I see pop a page thirteen there

(22:30):
all right.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
When I opened my June issue of Game Players and
saw that Knuckles Chaotics only got a forty one percent,
I was amazed. It's about time somebody woke up and
realized that all the Sonic games are exactly the same.
Every game is the same old crap as the one
before it. True, Mario games don't come out as often,
but each one brings out new ideas and concepts. Even
the MK series changed drastically each game, so we gamers

(22:55):
wouldn't get bored or upset. Sonic was cool the first
time or two, but now it's just pathetic. It seems
as if the people at Sega aren't even putting in
an effort anymore. Same goes for the Street Fighter two series.
It's the same game with the same characters and the
same moves every time. Capcom should either move on to
SF three or just forget about the whole damn thing.

(23:16):
Craig Patick Toledo, Ohio.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
I love how this reads like Doctor Robotnik and Ambison
got together and like furiously wrote you a letter to
a video game magazine. Chris Late Chris Chris Slate responds saying, Hey,
we just like to call it like we see it.
There is a plague in the video game community, a
pestilence called unoriginality. Thankfully, new PlayStation and Saturn games seem

(23:44):
to be reaching beyond the stale sixteen bit titles of
late But will we be damning yet another three D
polygonal environment game a year from now? Hopefully game developers
can use the new technology to keep video game the
Hopefully game developers can use new technology to keep the
video game scene fresh and exciting. Hey, I'm optimis hold on.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
I'm gonna break in. I'm gonna give you a little
bit of credit here Aiden. For those who are watching
on the audio only version, this response is formatted. It
is justified around five six Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons, all
like the same one, just like copy and pasted at
different sides, so it's like following the contours of his

(24:27):
like hair and stuff, two or three words at a time.
On originality doesn't even fit on one line. The word
new is given its own lines, so Aidan is.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
Reading like it was not easy.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
Thirty forty words spread out over like twenty seven lines
of shifting, curving text justified around these drawings of Sonic.
Incredibly tricky, but.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
Worth it because Craig, like I said, just nailed my
opinion of the Sonic truth. But what I think is
interesting is, you know, I think we look back on games,
you know, like the late sixteen bit era that they're
calling un original or stale. And I think Chris is
right in saying Chris Slate was right in saying the
PlayStation's coming, it's gonna change things. Absolutely changed things, but

(25:13):
it was also like saying that change needed to happen,
while some of the very best games of all time
were like literally coming out also feels in hindsight a
little yeah, a little funny to me. We're gonna move on.
Not the next page. I think it's page sixteen. It's
a section called connections. So this is all like we're
five pages deep into the like the reader letter section

(25:36):
right at the end. Here we have connections. I'm gonna
get guys, I'm gonna get tie in trouble here this
high this is horrible. Can you please read Liz Hunger's
submission in full? All right, here we go as in
as in full as you feel comfortable. Yeah, okay again,

(25:58):
do seeing children.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
I'm in need of a pen pal. I'm turning ten.
I have a Genesis and a game boy. Liz Hunger
two nine to one, Grammercy Heights, Clifton Heights, Pennsylvania, one
nine oh one eight.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
That's a child a child home address in a magazine,
in every grocery store in the country, in you know,
on the continent.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Everybody goes to jail and there's like a bunch of.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
Them like this. It's insane. Now, I want you to
go and read Cody Bearden's submission, which was, you know,
I feel like it's kind of coming back into like
yoh yeah, gonna be living his good life.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
Coming to you from up here, coming to you from
Cross Arkansas, Cody Bearden. I'd like a pen pal eight
to twelve who has any s or sega. I want
a boy, but a girl is fine.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
Guess a girl's fine.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
I'm sure Liz and Amanda and Jessica and Mindy and
Vivian and Crystal. I'm just reading apparently girls' names from
this big long list of Penn Pey like this looks
like basically a fifty to fifty gender split, and I'm
sure all of those girls.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
That's what I wanted to talk about. Next. We do
look back at this and it does feel like a
magazine written for boys. But you get to this connection
section and the people looking, you know, to connect with
other people. There's a about a fifty mix of boys
and girls looking for pen pals, And I thought that
was something that stood out as insane as it is

(27:42):
that they're literally printing home addresses for children. The idea
there that you have people wanting get to connect the
internet didn't exist, you know, is just sort of a
quaint look back on what it was like to be
a gaming fan if you didn't have that in your life.
I was lucky to have a lot of friends who
were into gaming, and so that was just part of
our social life, right, People like this, you know, like

(28:04):
they were reaching out, they wanted other people to share
that sort of interesting and there's this idea that like, oh,
like gaming is fifty to fifty for boys and girls,
men and women everybody now, But you know, it's always
been that way. There's always been a mix of you know,
young boys and girls and everyone else that wants to
play games. And I think that this was a little
snaps shot into that. Okay, what a world. Yeah, anyway,

(28:29):
A few pages later, there's a really great piece of
context about the PlayStation and the gaming world's perception of
the console landscape at the time. We talked a little
bit about this with the Sonic thing like you know,
being tired of sixteen big games even as some of
the best of all time are coming out. But let's
flip on over to page twenty two and I'd like
you to read the section called PlayStation prepares attack on Saturn.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
With the PlayStation slated for a national September ninth release date,
rumors continue to persist that Sony's dream Machine will sneak
out earlier. While the company stands by the September launch,
several other dates, including a July fourth release, are still
the talk of the video game community. The conflicting reports
are based loosely on rumors that, despite their statements to
the contrary, Sony execs are worried about Saturn's head start. Still,

(29:16):
it's very unlikely that Sony will quote unquote pull a
Sega because the bad feelings many smaller distributors and retailers
have towards Sega being left out of their surprise May launch.
Sony will supportedly reportedly sell the PlayStation to retailers for
three hundred and twenty nine dollars and give them Ridge
Racer to help offset the hardware losses. Retailers are encouraged
to sell the PlayStation for two ninety nine toys r

(29:38):
Us included. There will be no pack in for the PlayStation.
The machine will instead come packaged with a demo disc,
much like Sega's Choice Cuts disc that features playable samples
from a handful of titles. Word is Sony is currently
working on its quote Ultimate Game Machine unquote that will
incorporate DVD technology parenthesis, a new stand under compression technology

(30:01):
that allows you to put movies onto a CD close paresthesis.
Other needs to come out of the Sunny camp includes
the Seattle based virtual Io company, who may produce exclusive
virtual Esque peripherals for the PlayStation. Will let you know
as soon as we get anymore hot information.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
I don't know what the last bit's all about, but
I love how virtual like has just always been a buzzword, right.
It's always just like about something out of reach. This
is fascinating to me for a few reasons. First of all,
they're already like leaking about the PlayStation two right. Implementing
DVDs and DVD integration into the PlayStation two was like

(30:41):
a monumental reason why it became the most successful game
console of all time. It was the best cheapest way
to get a DVD player when the PlayStation two came out,
and I don't know, like if you weren't around at
the time, it's hard to understand that like DVD players
are like value village and they're like six dollars by
the dozen. At the time, if you wanted a DVD player,

(31:03):
PlayStation two was the way to go. And the fact
that like PlayStation is not even out yet this Game
magazine is already sort of leaking like what Sony's doing
with its next console was interesting. We're looking at the
PlayStation and they're looking at what Sega did with the Saturn,
which in hindsight is considered to be like a disaster.

(31:24):
Saturn launched early by surprise, just out of nowhere. It
was just available in stores, and that's largely considered one
of the reasons that the Sega Saturn just crashed and
burned in the West. Nobody knows what's happening for the PlayStation, right.
We see in hindsight that the PlayStation just like came
out of nowhere, not came out of nowhere, but like

(31:45):
you know, lapped everybody during that generation, and it seems
like a surefire hit at the time, though there was
this idea that Sega was the powerhouse. They just released
their console. They released it early, like, how is Sony
going to respond? Sony responded by sticking firm to its
release date, and the PlayStation came out September nineteenth. It's
actually a little later than what they listened here on
September ninth, But at the time it was like, oh, hey, Sony,

(32:09):
you know, needs to step up because Sega's doing all
of this, and I think some of that, like ability
to like calm themselves and make rational, good business decisions,
It's part of why Sony was able to do what
they did in the PlayStation era. You know, they came
in cheap, They stuck to their guns on their release date.
They didn't you know, like panic or try to respond

(32:33):
to what Sega was doing as they were flailing. Sega
was clearly afraid of the PlayStation. Hindsight's just you know,
really interesting to look at perception of what was happening.
PlayStation prepares attack on Saturn, Like, PlayStation didn't need to
pack Saturn right, PlayStation just needed to come out and
do its thing, sort of ignore the flailing Sega console

(32:54):
in the corner. You know, that's had too much to
drink and just like do your thing, put on your presentation,
yet all the fans are going to come to your
next show. But you know, well there was that Console
Wars sort of thing that I think the magazines were
also trying to to to fuel up a little bit.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
Oh for sure. And I was actually, you know, this season,
I thought we should get at least one example of
like like not this one of the ones from the
like like June or July issues because what Sega did,
and in a way it kind of fits into Sega's
like ahead of its time for better and for worse
thing because what they basically did is the Steve Jobs

(33:35):
thing where it was I don't know if it was
cees or E three whatever, whichever one in May and
they're presenting and all the journals are there and everybody's
writing this down. They're getting ready for their big Saturn
is Coming stories and they did the like and it's
out now, Like what what do you mean it's out now?

(33:56):
And like yeah, they'd stealth dropped it at like Toys
r US's and like you know, put a street date
on it and they're all, it's gonna be incredible. Okay, Well,
then all those journos went home and wrote their stories.
But like the magazines were already like in the pipeline, right,
So like maybe they got a little Who Saturn release
on the cover or snuck in somewhere, but those magazines

(34:18):
were already written. So it's like two three months later
that magazines start hitting the shelves like, hey, the Saturn
is out, now go you know, go buy it. Review
here's reviews for launch titles. So, like the Saturn had
hit the street, and like most people either didn't know
or saw saw commercials and and what oh huh, this
wasn't supposed to come out till fall, and like.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
Kids needed time to save up money for that stuff, right,
So you had a bunch of kids who were probably
excited about the Saturn and they needed their three hundred
bucks and they had eighty so far, and so you
know they were sitting there like, well, I guess it's out,
but I can't get it, Like it's just an insane
business decision in hindsight. Before we get onto the meat
of the this episode and the review, I want to

(35:03):
flip the page just one page over. We've got the
hit lists, and this is where game players would walk
through top ten lists, Readers top ten their own, topped
him from the UK, and then topped him from Japan.
There's a few things I want to read through here.
I want to look at the readers top ten with
the you know, just with the caveat. Remember that they

(35:23):
were complaining about the sixteen bit era being like done
and boring their top ten. This was pre PlayStation Saturn
had just come out, so to be fair, it's going
to be full of a lot of sixteen big games.
But like look at these games. Number one game Final
Fantasy three on the Super Anias from Squaresoft. That that

(35:44):
game was like by September nineteen ninety five, That game
was a year and a half in the United States,
like it had come out in April of nineteen ninety four,
and so like you know, it goes to like now games,
it's like such flash in the pan experiences like you
gotta get it, well, it's super hot, and then the
next game comes out and that's where the online discourse moves,

(36:06):
right unless they're like the forever games like Fortnite, But
like Final Fancy III succeeded because it just lasted and
existed for eighteen months but until the play station came out.
It's number one, like a year and a half after
its release, which is like, that's pretty wild to me.
But you know what, I need to check the US

(36:26):
release date. I might be thinking of the Okay, So
the April nineteen ninety four was the Japanese filty state.
October nineteen ninety four is the North American release date.
So I was off by a few months. Yeah, you're
still looking at a year. It's a year old, right like,
And it's the number one video game on the reader charts,
which is which is pretty cool. Number two Killer Instinct.

(36:47):
Then you've got Donkey Kong Country, NBA Jam Secret to Mona,
which was a nineteen ninety three game, right like. That
game is that game's old Mortal Kombat two Doom, which
was on another Night two three game, this is a
thirty two X version. And you got Earthworm Gym Virtual
Fighter in the Arcade Sonic and Knuckles. Like pretty good

(37:08):
list and also goes to show that the sixteen bit
era was like not done. You know, it wasn't There
was still so much there to offer. It's interesting though,
because you know, you go on and look at the
game players staff's list, and they've got the Greatest nine
on Saturn. Sounds like I don't know a golf game.
I've made no idea what I believe.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Based like nine players on a baseball team. I bet
that's what it is.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
Nine Indians. Y oh, yeah, that makes sense. You have
to score nine runs to win a baseball game? Is
that how it works? You got Warhawk on the PlayStation,
which me and my friends played a ton of when
the PlayStation came out, Toshinden, Mortal Kombat three, Jumping Flash,
you got Killer Instinct. You have Yoshi's Island, which is

(37:53):
really interesting given context later in the magazine. This is
number seven on their top ten list. Notably, another game
from this issue, Crona Trigger, not on their top ten list.
Interesting Destruction Derby Super bomber Man two, Maria Mario Clash
on the Virtual Boy. A lot of bragging in that list.
I feel like they're going through and they're like, hey,
look at all these games. Yeah, then you get in

(38:16):
top ten from the UK. You have Theme Park Okay,
you have Brian Lara Cricket on the Genesis Rug. I'm
skipping a few here, but Brian Lara Cricket at number two,
number four, you have Rugby World Cup ninety five, number five,
FIFA Soccer ninety five. Then you have Super International Cricket,

(38:37):
you have Superstar Soccer, and then you have World Cup
USA ninety four. Half the list is cricket and soccer games,
which I like, maybe that was the thing in the
UK at the time. I don't know. Yeah, but now
the top ten from Japan, this one's good. It's got
Krona Trigger at number two, excellent. It has what else

(38:57):
is on there that I really like? Jumping Flash which
on the you know, the editor list, Donkey Kong Country
at number nine, number ten for the PC Engine from
NEC in parentheses Women's wrestling just called women's wrestling in parentheses.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
Mmmmm is that?

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah? Is that?

Speaker 2 (39:19):
I don't I have questions about why that's all.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
I've got questions too, And where's this data from? Yeah,
like there's no there's nothing here that tells us where
this data is from. It seems a little sus so anyway.
Top ten games at the time, we've got Final Fantasy three,
we've got Killer Instinct, Chrono Trigger Greatest nine, we've got
Super International Cricket, Doom and women's wrestling. What a time

(39:45):
to be a lot. Oh my gosh, we're gonna flip
our way through to the actual review, which we'll get
to in a second. But there's you know, like this
is one of the first times. On one of the
pages they have a section called anime surfing, there is
a screenshot of a website, oh, anime Picture Archives, which,
uh yeah, which I'm sure we can all kind of

(40:06):
imagine what that was being used for, but it is
a photograph of a website with a web browser, Netscape.
He's got some yours, the.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
Escape that's not even three oh yeah Escape two.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
No, that's like, yeah, it's early Netscape. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
I was gonna point out earlier aiden the only email
address they had in the letter writing section they had
an email address. It was Jeff Lundergan's personal email address,
So if you want to email, it's like JF. F.
Fluky at netcom dot com. Yeah, okay, all right, sure
that's the official game player's email address.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
There you go. Jeff was ahead of his email in
nineteen ninety five. Is pretty pretty Oh yes, uh, then
we've got a bunch of uh previews for Mortal Kombat
three Warhawk. Let's see some other we've got some other
pretty heavy hitters, crazy Ivan Strall for the three d
Oho you remember st Yeah, no you don't. No. Lunar

(41:05):
Eternal Blue a Sega CD game. So this is like,
this is on the eve of the PlayStation coming out.
I played Lunar Eternal Blue via the remake on PlayStation
about five years later. But we have a preview for
Lunar Eternal Blue on Sega CD, which is relevant. It's
getting a remake remaster this year as well, So you know,
like that was the bread and butter of like, oh

(41:26):
what's coming out? Like what should I keep my eye
on as we go forward?

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Well, hey, we're going to go forward and back and
forward and back and forward back in time with game
Players Number seventy five's review of Krono Trigger. Stick around
and we get back right here on fun Back then.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
This is where the magic happens. Today's review is going
to be the gameplayer review of Prono Trigger ever heard
of it?

Speaker 2 (42:10):
I want to give like a jokey like what no,
but like I can't. It's I've been making my entire
personality out of Crona Triggers since that was released. Basically
I saved up my lawnmower. That's why we were friends,
right exactly. I saved up my lawnmower money. I paid
eighty five US dollars for this game in nineteen ninety five,

(42:36):
partially because of this review. It was the only copy
my local Babbage's even had, so that's that's how badly
I wanted it. And you know the ads. There's actually
been multiple ads for it in this issue. They Square
really spent a lot of money to promote it, which
was not typical for them, and it got a ton

(42:57):
of what we would now call earned media and covered
because every single bit as good as advertised.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
A lot of people don't know this, but Tie actually
has a tattoo of Chrono trigger but with his own
like adult face around his belly button and his belly
it's weird. That's how we became friends. I saw it
in person somehow. Uh okay. On the cover, game Players
calls this the quote unquote biggest RPG ever. Krona Drig

(43:25):
is not a very big RPG, even by the standards
of the time. Uh. It feels big though, because of
the multiple timelines, multiple endings, and a lot of player expression.
It feels really big. But it's actually like, especially once
you compare it to like the PlayStation RPGs that were
coming over the next few years, Krona drig is actually

(43:45):
a fairly concise little experience and it only gets more
so as you you know, you get to new game
pluses megabytes, so they're calling it the biggest megabytes and
so that mattered, right, and there's great, you know, great
stories from the developers about how they can getting a
few more megabits and then they could like the courthouse
scene or Magus's castle, like those kind of extended pixel

(44:08):
art backdrop cinematics at the time, and so that was exciting.
It was exciting at the time, even though you know,
it didn't necessarily mean anything, and it's hilariously small. Now
game players called biggest RPG ever. I'm just gonna go
ahead and call it the best RPG ever. I like,
like you from the moment I kind of played it,

(44:29):
moment it came into my life, it became extremely important
to me. I'm very open about my love for Chrono Trigger.
I wrote a very extensive history which you can find
online called Timeless that digs into Chrono Trigger's development history,
the people who made it, the people who played it
and why it has had this like lasting impact on

(44:51):
the fan community. I didn't like RPG's a lot when
I first found them via the game Boy, but by
the time I discovered Foe HASI six Final Fantasy three
at the time, I became like just absolutely obsessed with
that game and wanted to find anything I could from
the creators of Final Fantasy three, and so I scoured magazines.

(45:12):
I discovered this game called Chrono Trigger, who was you know,
was coming from hi Inobi Zaka Gucci who had created
Final Fantasy. And that was yet it was like forever
after from that point forward, my personality was I want
Chrono Trigger, and then once I got Chrono Trigger, it
was I have Krona Trigger and I love Chrono Trigger.
And it's just never, you know, it's just silly. I'm

(45:33):
forty one, but that's still just a huge part of
my like personality. It just means a lot to me.
I found it at the right time. It's not an
exaggeration to say that, Like this review in particular, which
is really what took me from like, oh this next
game front of Final Fantasy. Guy looks really cool too.
This is the game that I need to have like

(45:54):
it was this review Jeff Lundergren's review of Chrono Trigger
in this issue of Game Players that became the review
I've read like most of my life. I used to
keep this magazine beside my side of the bed while
I waited for the game to come out, and I
would just read through this review every night and pour
over the pictures and take in every detail I could.
And then once the game came out, I'd go back

(46:15):
and I'd read it and I'd find the points where
I disagreed or the you know, the screenshots where I go, oh, hey,
like I just got to that part in the game.
You know, it just kind of kept coming back into
my experience of actually playing the game. It's the best
game ever. Yes, like you said, Krona Trigger is one
of those games that, like, in a lot of ways,
exceeded the mile high expectations that had. It had so

(46:37):
much great coverage, so much advertising, and yet it still
came out and was far above and beyond this, And
a lot of that's due to like it's dream team
of creators. Some of them were known, you know, like
here in Obusaka Gucci who gred Final Fantasy, so he
was known for having a gigantic ego and he'd being
difficult to work with. They called him the King at

(47:00):
the time, you know, when he was creating Final Fantasy.
And really, I think like in nine universes out of ten,
Krona Trigger ends up being a complete mess because you
have these huge creative personalities in a space trying to
come up with something that works and it just falls apart.
But we live in the one universe out of ten

(47:20):
where this game is not just came together and released,
but it's amazing and it's you know, a classic that's
beloved by so many people, And unfortunately that means we
get everything else that comes with this specific universe, which
I mean isn't great right now, but we've got Chrono Trigger,
you know, by combining the best aspects of Final Fantasy

(47:42):
from Sakagucci and Dragon Quest because that series creator Yugi
Hori was a big part of Chrono Trigger. It pushed
the superintendent of the limits and launched the careers of
like I think twelve staffers on Krono Trigger went on
to direct their own like RPGs for Square and other companies,
like twelve of them that were there as like battle

(48:05):
programmers or like write writers or like you know, just
all along the chain, all along the development pipeline, you
had these people who were just like top tier talent
who went on to create games like Xeno Gears, Xeno
Blade Chronicles from.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
Takashi, Mainline Final Fantasy Games.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
Mainline Final Fantasy Games exactly. You had like a launched
the career of Yasnui Mitsuda, who's like regarded as one
of the great great video game composers, and they were
all just working on a team together, like these incredible,
incredible talents.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
To get a sports reference in It's like the Mike
Holmgren Green Bay Packers. You had like Steve Meruci, John Gruden,
Ray Rhoades, you had like literally seven future head coaches
on that staff. It was just like an incredibly loaded
team that like everybody went on to make their mark
in someway or another in the industry.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
And like with Squares often at the time, it was
just so organic. They just attracted the best and they
pushed the best, and like you know to a point
where mitsudah Yahna or Mitsuda who did the music for
the game, like he ended up in the hospital with
an ulcer and Final Fantasy composer Nobu Uimatsu had to
step in and finish the soundtrack because they were pushing

(49:20):
these people so hard. But it also sort of inspired
so much of what made Square so interesting and successful,
especially through the PlayStation's run. You want to walk through
the review format here for me.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
So this is a big, splashy two page review, tons
of pull out graphics which they highlight a little head
to Lovely Lovely in the beginning, to arms and the captions.
They keep being like, just just look at this. You
find yourself wanting to get to the next stage of
the games. You can see what they're going to show
you next, all this kind of stuff. They even have
a second opinion from editor in chief Chris Slate. But

(49:56):
then they had a five aspect one through ten, and
then there was a weighted average graphics waited by two,
music and sound by one, innovation by one, gameplay by eight,
and replay value by six to get to a one
hundred out of one hundred possible rating CROWNA trigger here

(50:16):
gets ninety five percent tens in graphics tens and they
get two bullet points up and a down or up
and up or down in the down. They managed to
find three down points. Overall, this rubric, this format, I
think served really well and it helped me, you know,
when I was a kid like reading this really go

(50:38):
this is what you know?

Speaker 1 (50:39):
What do I like?

Speaker 2 (50:40):
What do I value? Do I value innovation? Do I
val gameplay? Replay value is really important for me because hey,
games were unbelievably expensive. Inflation from this very time to
now is about double US dollars, right, so I paid
eighty five dollars, yeah in this like in this.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Review, Chrono Triggers listened as seventy nine ninety nine US
dollars at the time, which is more than a game cost.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
Now, imagine paying one hundred and sixty dollars for Balder's
Gate three, because that's what you're looking at.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
I'm worth it, right, right, I think? Right? But yeah, yeah, So,
I mean they had this system that was fairly well
explained at the beginning of the review section. You have
weighted different sections replay value, gameplay. Then that breaks down
to the overall score and the way game players sets
out their overall score is one hundred percent is a

(51:32):
flawless game, ninety percent is excellent, seventy five percent is
very good, sixty is good fifty percent so so and
thirty percent is total crap with three exclamation marks, so
like really bad, like super CRAPU. So you know what
we're looking at here is just that classic three to
ten scale, right.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
I don't remember ever seeing a one hundred percent flawless
in game players, but maybe it exists. Chrono Trigger did
not quite get there at ninety five percent, but I
do like that they sort of have them more mathematical
format where they're breaking down like, you know, the different
ways people are approaching these games. But you know, at

(52:16):
the same time, some people might look at games that
don't necessarily rely on replay value, or you know, graphics
were and were becoming especially important to games as there
was more experimentation in the thirty two bit area, and
they're like underweighting of graphics might have been you know,
something of note at the time. One of the things

(52:41):
I like about game players too is they have different
styles of reviews. So like chrona Trigger, like you said,
gets a two page spread, then there's also capsule reviews
of a bunch of Virtual Boy games and backlog titles.
We have full page single critic reviews, and then we
also have like even a few reader reviews scat in
there before we get to Krona Trigger. One of the

(53:03):
other best games of all time is also reviewed in
this issue, and it's Yoshi's Island, which is like my
favorite platformer of all time, only got a seventy six percent,
which is bananas to me. But maybe maybe another another
episode we could discuss on how Yoshi's Island deserves a
seventy more than seventy six percent, especially because also in

(53:26):
this episode is classic unforgettable platformer Bug. Everybody Loves Bug.
It got a seventy four percent, So this, you know,
on a surface, Yeah, on a surface, it looks like
they're saying that Yoshi's Island and Bug are about the same, right,
seventy six for Yoshi's Island, seventy four for Bug. But

(53:48):
this is where their rubric, their scoring rubric comes in,
because seventy five percent is a cutoff very good. So
Yoshi's Island squeezes in with a very good Bug middling
good review. So I feel like all order is restored. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
Well, and I was actually gonna say seriously though, because
I believe it was ninety percent plus got their Game
Players Ultimate Award, which you can see here. It's got
just a big thumbs up around game players and the
ultimate so chronic trigger course has one. I feel like
no research top of my head right now. I feel

(54:25):
like I saw both eighty nine's and ninety or ninety
ones that felt manipulated to give it or not give
it the ultimate award, you know. Like again I say manipulated,
but like this is their thing, right, like they were, Hey,
we gave it this, this, this, this, this, and this
the way that average came out to ninety. We don't

(54:46):
want to give it that.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
Does the math? Does the math?

Speaker 2 (54:48):
We're going to take it down.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
That's how That's how I passed math in grade ten.
The averages did not add up. But that's all I'm saying.
To fifty one percent or whatever in the past and
I'll fail. Okay, let's get to the good stuff here.
Crona trigger uh with this beautiful two page spread, lots
of screenshots, mostly from the early game, but then as

(55:11):
you get up to the top of the screen you
actually see some some kind of deep cut stuff with
the Mammon Machine and Queen zeal. I love the fact
that they have these like bespoke three D like cluttered
letters instead of like the Krona trigger logo there. I
don't know rights issue, I guess, but they like used like.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
Three D text I remember this because I'm pretty sure
my buddy, one of my friends had a three D
text maker or generator and you could do like the
ray trace lighting, and I like, I think I remember, like, yo,
this is like the fult like it's I can't believe
they just womped this up out of there and then.

Speaker 1 (55:50):
Just slapped it there so good, and it looks like
it's like tumbling a little bit. It's funny. Jeff lunder
Grin was the lead viewer on this. Like I said,
this probably is part of the reason why he was
my favorite reviewer at the time. Chris Slaatee offers up
a second opinion. Jeff says, sigh, next to falling nose

(56:13):
deep into a pile of cheerleaders, there's nothing I like
better than a sprawling, complicated, gorgeous, funny, well made RPG.
And gosh darn it, if those folks at Square didn't
go ahead and send me one two or three times
a year, yeah, God, I love them.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
I had repressed. I gotta say I had blocked out
that this is the lead of this and like rereading,
I was like, oh, yeah, that's right, it does start there. Yeah,
And I also reading it now, I think we have
a does a dog wear pants like this or like
this issue with falling nose deep into a pile of
cheerleaders because I think as a kid, I pictured like

(56:49):
a lead pile and then like, okay, timber, and then
you only hit the surface and you only go nose deep.
But it could also.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
Be are you I picture jumping into a pool of and.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
Then it goes right, Yeah, preposterous on all level.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
Jeff's email. Jeff's email is in this issue. We could
ask him.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
I will email jffy. I will do it right now.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
And it's simply beautiful. I mean, geez. If you've thought
Final Fantasy II was a treat for the eyes, wait
until you look at Chrono trigger. It's jaw dropping squares signatures.
Soundtracks are still going strong too, and if you like
them big. The story is relatively nonlinear, with at least
fifteen different endings. You'll also find a few mild innovations.

(57:41):
Want to come back to that, rather than switching to
a separate combat screen, creatures attack you in the middle
of the regular background, while the combat menus pop up
around the action. You can see the monsters coming and
avoid them if you're good or lucky, and characters can
combine their skills for combination attacks. Plus, once you've beaten
the game, you can play through again using the built

(58:03):
up characters from the first game. Okay, Chrono Trigger isn't
the like first first game with New Game Plus, but
it is the game that introduced that phrase to video games,
and it's like ubiquitous now. The fact that like, I
don't know if this is sort of like they just
didn't really know what they were looking at at the time,
which could be, but calling like mild innovations like New

(58:25):
Game Plus was not a mild innovation. It changed the
way that we approached and what we expected from RPGs
and what replayability and RPGs was. And also, like he
talks about, rather than switching to a separate combat screen,
creatures attack you in the middle of the regular background.
There's a reason other games don't do this. You talk
to or you read about the Chrono Trigger development team

(58:46):
talking about this and how every battle in the game
had to be like hand scripted, hand blocked, hand animated.
There had to be a little story about it. You
had to understand where the creatures were, how you're navigating
through the environment, all in a way that wasn't built
with like combat arena and then navigational section. Combat arene
a navigational section. It was an astronomical undertaking that didn't

(59:08):
exist really before, hasn't really existed since, even in Chrono
Trigger SEQL because the amount and the volume of work
that goes into it and the fact that they were
willing to bite that off tells me that, like, it's
not a mild innovation so much as it as it
is something that was so far ahead of its time,
so ambitious that you know, nothing else since has really

(59:30):
attempted to do something similar and what they have, Like
there was a game called Black Sigil on the Nintendo
DS which tried the same thing. It didn't feel very
good because navigating around like the environments in combat was
really hard and it just it's a tough thing to
pull off. And I don't know if Jeff was just
sort of not realizing how monumental the task of building

(59:52):
those battles were or how much New Game Plus would
change video games and RPGs but you know, calling those
mild innovations was you know, big standout for me. But anyway,
rant over. The only downside this is Jeff again. The
only downside is that the story is a little light.
It's sketchy young character development, at least for a lot

(01:00:14):
of its running time, and since very little of what
goes on seems to matter much to the characters, I
found myself following along without being as evolved as I
was in say, Final Fantasy IREI. Of course, a thin
story for a square title would be plenty of story
for nearly anyone else. So maybe I'm just being a
little picky there. I don't think he is. I think
that's fairly fair. Like crona Sugar story is very archetypical.

(01:00:38):
It deals with archetypes, and like meta story, it doesn't
have a lot of like you know, there's stuff like
Luca and her mom. Marl I think has some really
interesting like parts of her personality that come through through
her agency obviously, like Magus and his sister. But you know,
for the most part, it doesn't go as deep as
some like Final Fantasy three. And so I think Jeff

(01:00:59):
was right the time, right, I don't think he was
being unfair. I think it has a very just different
type of story than Final Fantasy III.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
And I want to jump in and say I want
to jump in and say I agree. It is an archetypal.
Everything about this was meant to be best in class,
best of It's like it's every every step of the way,
it's it's one of these, but it's the best one
of these. And I think the achievement of crowno Trigger
maybe above and beyond everything else, is how tightly plotted
it is. Where, you know, in a lot of RPGs

(01:01:30):
at this time, and even throughout the thirty two bit generation,
you had this like great first five minutes, great first hour,
great first couple of hours, where it's beat beat beat,
you know, tightly plotted. Oh here's the boy, here's the girl,
here's the kingdom. You know, Oh here's the great evil.
Go get it, you know, and then you step out

(01:01:51):
into the overworld and it's like, uh what what directions
the next town? Uh what? Okay, I guess that's over Here.
Are the enemies getting harder? Because if they are, that
means I'm going the right way, you know. And this
is like the first eight to ten hours are like
boom boom boom, and you can still go, you can
still wander, you can still go, you know, as soon

(01:02:12):
as you leave Krono's house, you can go to poor
you can go all over the place and wander. But
like the game is always telling you here's where you
need to go next, and it's always very obvious where
that is. And then you go there and it's like boom, boom, boom,
boom boom. Story story story, story, story, beat beat beat,
and you want to keep your foot on the pedal
of the accelerator. And there's no other game that was

(01:02:34):
doing that narratively at the time, And it's still something
a lot of RPGs struggle with, to give you something
that grabs you and propels you and propels you and
doesn't stop propelling you.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
Yeah, and I think that RPGs went the opposite direction
starting with the PlayStation where they started, like, you know,
getting more systems focused, getting more you know, interested in
long run times, even if that meant you know, building
scaffolding around a story that didn't necessarily need it and
required more time, whether that was through you know, like

(01:03:07):
quests that don't necessarily feel like their diversions or their
like roadblocks to get back onto the main plot. Crona
Trigger's main plot all the way through, like every little beat,
even the side stories, end up feeding back into the
main plot. And that's just a different type of story
than what Final Fantasy Iree was trying to make at
the time. Right, Yes, Jeff concludes that the bottom line

(01:03:30):
is that this is a must have for RPG fanatics
and dabblers alike. Stop reading, go out and buy it.
And I think he's right, And I think Krona Trigger
is and remains one of the absolute best console RPGs
for newcomers if somebody wants to try something in that mold,
and it has obviously held up over time for like

(01:03:52):
hardcore dedicated fans as one of the sort of most
Like anytime you ask somebody their favorite RPG or video game, like,
there's a pretty good chance they're going to say Crona
Trigger as much as any other game. And so, you know,
I think overall Jeff was pretty spot on. I think
he was a little you know, he could have gone

(01:04:13):
a little harder on on the innovations the game had,
but otherwise I think he was he was right there.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
Yeah, you want to read uh oh, yeah, sure, I'll
go ahead the second opinion again editor in chief Chris
Slate and uh man, it's it's so tough that this
review we both talked about how influential it was and
how much it made us go by a game that
was then so influential to us as you know, gamers

(01:04:42):
and creators, storytellers, and then both of them basically lead
with exactly the kind of dumb sexism that he disliked
so much about gaming magazines in general, and that you I,
you know, forget a lot of times. But so Chris late,
can Squaresoft do anything wrong? I mean, look at the

(01:05:02):
track record the Secret of Mana, Breath of Fire, Final
Fantasy two and three. It's an RPG or's wet dream. Naturally,
it's no big surprise that Crona Trigger instantly shot to
the top of the Japanese.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
Charts earlier this year.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
I do agree with Jeff that the developers could have
put a bit more emphasis on the storyline, but it's
hard to criticize near confection DDA. But it's hard to
criticize near perfection. The graphics are beautiful, the interface is slick,
and the gameplay it's just plain fun. It's RPGs like
this that will eventually win over the mainstream. And that's
a point I wanted to touch on just a little
bit here. This game as big as it was, and

(01:05:39):
it's heavily marketed as it was, And again, these magazines
from this era are full of one and two page
Chrona Trigger ads. It was marketed. This is still considered
a niche genre. Fans of it were still weird, and
it's still not as big as this game was within
its little world. It took magazines like this and critics

(01:06:02):
like this pushing like this is the best stuff on
the play There's like six different points in these two
pages where goes this is as good as it gets
for sixteen bit sixteen bit two hundred and fifty six
color graft to do not get better than this. Go
buy it, Go buy it, Go buy it. And like
it still felt hipstery, It still felt like, you know,

(01:06:23):
other people still preferred Final Fantasy three six Yeah, you know,
other people preferred other games. I felt like a weirdo
for being like crownal Trigger still the best, still my
favorite for years, and it really felt like that, sort
of like Survivor not survivor bias, but there's something about,

(01:06:43):
you know, that experience of going. I felt like I
was one of a small handful of people that was
all out for this game in nineteen ninety five and
immediately declared it the best ever and maintained from then
until now this is the best ever, or at.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
Least I mean of its genre.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
And now right.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
Right should you shouldn't be used to justifying your fandom.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
Yeah, justifying my fandom. And then also, you know, sort
of not to say bandwagon, but like when I got
you know, when I had kids, I kind of dropped
out of active game especially game culture participation. I basically
couldn't play long narrative games. I missed. I had no
interest in Xbox so I missed like the Xbox three

(01:07:32):
sixty era, like the early live Xbox Live stuff, completely
missed that, completely missed all criticism and culture and stuff.
And so it was kind of weird to me when
I got back into it around twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen,
how many critics were like, oh, yeah, chronic Trigger best ever,
And I was like, oh, what like this? You know,
now to this day it's a little bit less so,
but still to this day, you'll find like fifteen twenty

(01:07:54):
percent of like games. People will point out, oh yeah,
chronic triggers at least top ten all time, top five
all time, and it's it's it's both. But then again,
looking at this, it's like, there's a reason why, there's
a reason why that this was bigger than we thought,
and there's a reason why that the critics at the time,

(01:08:15):
they were all giving it ninety fives and tens and
ultimates and game of the Year even at the time.

Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
Yeah, And I think there was like a sort of
a perception that games needed to be pushing technological boundaries
to be like worthwhile, and you saw that a lot
in the media, whereas Crona Trigger was just taking everything
that had been learned over the eight and the sixteen
bit generations and like polishing it into something that didn't
need rough edges, didn't need to push an expand into

(01:08:44):
unknown territory. It took everything that worked and made it
as good as possible. And like I do also like
Crona Trigger wasn't like the game. It didn't have nearly
for me and my friends, Like it did not have
nearly the impact that Final Fantasy seven where we were
all playing at the same time, trading tips, comparing progress,

(01:09:06):
talking about it endlessly, Like, you know, I I find
it strange. One of my friends recently has been bringing
up Chrono Trigger as like one of the best games ever.
It's exactly what you're describing. I'm like, I didn't even
know you played Chrono Trigger back in the day, and
not to be like, oh, you know, like I knew
about Chrono Trigger before everybody, but I was like, oh, like,
it's really interesting that there is almost sort of this

(01:09:26):
like hindsight for people who are who can sort of
recognize what it was trying to do instead of maybe
what they were thought they wanted from games at the time.
Like contextualizing through hindsight is always interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:09:37):
And I did my friend group did have that, but
partly because I was so like maniacally evangelizing for it.
And then when people got around to it, you know,
and I say, got around to it, you know, it
was like within weeks, within months, you know, everybody has it,
so but it was it was then we were doing
that and trading to and then comparing it because then
we were new game plusing, right, we were trying to

(01:09:59):
guess how many I could see all the endings. Yeah,
who could level up the characters the highest that kind
of stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
I have like strong memories of us trading Final Fantasy
six KRT around and each of us beating it one
at a time. Final Fantasy seven, like I've talked about,
like going to my friend's house bringing my Commodore monitor
and my PlayStation over playing Lunar together. I don't have any,
like any memories of playing Crono Trigger with friends, which
is really interesting because of the kind of ubiquitousness of it. Now.

(01:10:27):
I think what's also interesting, like Chris Slate in the
second opinion says, like, you know, it's RPGs like this
that will eventually win over the mainstream. Chrona Trigger I
think sold half a million copies, three hundred thousand copies
or something like that. I did, okay, Like you know,
that was about as well as RPG's consularpgs did in
the West. I think, like with the hindsight of where

(01:10:49):
Final Fantasy seven went, and it sold ten million copies,
and that's what actual mainstream success looks like. Like I
don't even know that Chris was necessarily thinking that big
when he's saying like Chrono Trigger could hit mainstream success.
You know, he wasn't thinking of Chrono Trigger is selling
ten million copies because that was never in the realm
of possibility for consularpgs all the time the way that

(01:11:10):
it is. I mean it's not. Yeah, I guess they
can still sort of sell that much now, but uh
but yeah, I don't know. I think, like, yeah, I
mean Elden Rings, that's the exception. But I think even
you know, fifteen PHONEZ fifteen ended up selling over ten
million units. I think they both liked it. I think

(01:11:31):
that some of their like criticisms are you know, not
that you can't criticize Chrono Trigger, but you know, like
I think that there's there are criticisms of the storyline
sort of like want it to be a little more
narrative heavy, a little more like info dumpy, a little
bit more, you know, like Final Fantasy six, and it's
not that, and that's fair. They gave Chrono Trigger a

(01:11:55):
ten on graphics, they said, so they like you said earlier,
they do a plus like two bullet points. It can
be a negative or a positive for graphics, two positive points.
They say, words can't describe this, go look at the pictures.
So you can go and look at the the magazine
pictures that are blurry CRT photographs that look they they

(01:12:19):
look beautiful, and it says as good as sixteen big hm.
And the second bullet point is as good as a
sixteen bit game can get, which is pretty true. I
think most people would put Chrono Trigger Trials and Manna,
like you know, Yoshi's Island up at the top of
the sixteen bit generation in terms of graphics, music, and
sound effects. The first bullet point is a positive one.

(01:12:41):
It says, mm, love the sound, love the tunes. The
next one is a negative. It says some of it
isn't terribly original and some themes sound alike. And I
can't even engage with that one because we do not
have enough time, and that seems like posters. I don't

(01:13:01):
know what to say about that, because I think that
Crona Trigger again, like it's well regarded for having like
a wide ranging and unique soundtrack on the Supernintendo. Like
the idea that it's not original and that it sounds
too samey is like you look at like the soundtrack,
the songs across the different eras you look at the

(01:13:22):
character themes, like you take Frog's theme. Put it up
against ROBO's theme. Put it up against like you know,
magaz has seemed like yeah, anyway, crazy innovation. A positive
point is there is a new combat system, I guess so.
Downside is it's the same old RPG walking around, which

(01:13:46):
is kind of true. But it's also like, structurally it's
so different than every other RPG on the market at
the time, like with the timelines bopping around like I
don't know anyway. Gameplay ten out of ten, you're going
to have a good time period. Get it time period.

(01:14:07):
Second bulletpoint, Trust me, it doesn't get much better than
this replay value nine out of ten for the game
that like popularized the concept of New Game plus fifteen endings. Damn,
there goes my vacation. Maybe Jeff's not like nose diving
into cheerleaders because he takes holidays to play through Chrono

(01:14:29):
Trigger fifteen times. Yea. The negative bullet point here is
characters are sort of light, so you might not care
to try. I could talk about Crona Trigger all day.
One of the things that I think is really interesting
about its New Game Plus is that the first time
around you're playing an RPG. The second time around it
becomes like a narrative adventure game because you don't worry

(01:14:50):
about combat, you're not worrying about gear, You're just going
through the story. And I don't think the characters are
the point. I think, as we talked about earlier, sort
of the like the archetypes and the themes and the
world as a character and a story is what you're
what you're there for. It's a good score. I could

(01:15:10):
quibble with their specific categories, but uh, but yeah, I
think they, you know, accurately put a cap on what
Chrono Trigger was at the time. And I think hindsight
changes the way that we perceive some of this stuff.
But you know, from Jeff's original review to Chris's kind
of follow up, besides the like you know, the the

(01:15:30):
weird nineties jokes, they're a pretty good read on on
where Chrono Trigger was strong and where you know, if
it does have weaknesses, where they are and whether those
are subjective or not is kind of up to the reader.

Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
I think, yeah, I concur largely. I think again, yeah, innovation,
there's because there is a lot of innovation. It's not
just like a new combat system. There's within that combat system.
Not only is it real time. Not only does it
pop up around have these really easy menus, you also

(01:16:04):
have stuff like dual techs, right, like the combinations, different
combinations of different characters, the fact that different characters, different
combinations of characters and different scenes gets you different dialogue.
You know. There's a ton of depth and replayability.

Speaker 1 (01:16:16):
Position and elements too, like right position in battle matters,
like all of those little things like.

Speaker 2 (01:16:22):
If enemies walk into a line and you have a
line spell or you can you know, hitting the first
character closest to you with a line spell is not
helpful targeting the farthest one and waiting for them to
get into fields. You know that kind of stuff. There
was a ton of innovation in that, and I don't
think it gets quite enough credit for that. But at

(01:16:43):
the same time, it's the sabled RPG walking around is like,
I mean, it's both risable. I mean one and there's
a Mode seven racing game minigame. Right, there's like an
F zero section.

Speaker 1 (01:16:55):
With like the worst rubber band physics I've ever played.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
I should say, yeah, yeah, But it's also like it's
it's if you don't like RPGs, right, if you're a
console gamer, at this time. If you're fourteen years old
and you've not played RPGs, or you've played an RPG
and didn't like it, it's gonna be hard to convince
you just from this text that it's it's something different.

(01:17:21):
So I can see that, But overall, I think I
think they pretty much nailed it. And again I think
for me, the story and the writing pulled so hard,
and it's so much more about the world and the
you know, just all the little twists and turns of like, oh,
if you leave something here in six hundred eighty a game, yo,
you go back in one thousand and eighty and it's

(01:17:42):
there and it's four hundred years older, right, stuff like that.
There's tons of little touches throughout that that like make
you think in a way that your brain has not
been trained to think by RPGs or video games in general.
So I think Crowded Trigger was cooking on every different
possible level. And then I think the other thing is

(01:18:04):
that we have a bias they're fighting up, not just
a bias towards newness, but also a bias towards grown uppiness, right,
and seriousness and grittiness and edgyiness. That we see throughout
all of these magazines at this time, right, and the
fact that this is such a youthful, hopeful, you know,

(01:18:25):
upper middle grade lower ya story, and I think that
really shows how well it's done that these guys that
are sitting here. I mean literally the next page is
like a weirdo Japanese like softcore you know, like fourteen

(01:18:46):
and up game. You know, it's like that that something
is like wholesome and pure as Corono Trigger gets a
ninety five, I think shows how much it was fighting
upstream and how good it was.

Speaker 1 (01:18:57):
And I think, like you only have to flip a
few pages late to like Chris Slate's review of Yoshi's
Island to see that in effect, because yeh dogs on
Yoshi's Island for being too cartoony, like it gives Yoshi's
Island a five out of ten out graphics and a
first bullet point is quote unquote, this game looks like

(01:19:18):
a first generation Super nes title and like, once again,
like Yoshi's Island. The anyway, the fact that like they
could kind of hold that against it, I think is
recognition of exactly what you're talking about, what gaming was
in such a transitional period at that time, and the

(01:19:40):
kids who grew up with the Super Nintendo were now
young adults, and they were looking for something different and
something more right. And I think that you can see
that in sort of the tension and the friction between
you know, games that are built in the style of
the sixteen bit and the eight bit before it, and
then enough that you know, was like pushing boundaries or

(01:20:03):
trying new things, or experimenting in spaces that hadn't been
you know, like explored before, and gaming that don't hold
up very well, but at the time they seemed exciting,
right Whereas I think everybody would rather go back and
play Street Fighter two Turbo than they would Battle Arena Toshinden,
right right, sure, you know, And so it's just a

(01:20:26):
fascinating time. And I think this is why I wanted
to look at this issue, because we're at a moment
in time where like there's that war for attention with
the newcomer coming in promising to do new things with
Sony PlayStation. And how does that impact the way that
games like Yoshi's Island or Krona Trigger are treated fairly
at the time, and how has that perception changed with

(01:20:50):
twenty five years of Hindsight, thirty years on Hindsight. Now
at this point, all.

Speaker 2 (01:20:55):
Right, so Aidan, you want to come up with the metric.
What is the your review of their.

Speaker 1 (01:21:02):
My review of the review is, oh, my gosh, okay,
just give me a sect. Shoot, I just keep give
me a sect to think about this and then get
my screen back. Okay, So my review, we're gonna use

(01:21:23):
Corona triggers favorite currency silver points. Oh yes, all right,
I'm gonna give this review seven silver points out of ten.
So I think that it's fairly well written. I think
that the way that they interlace a lot of like
screenshots and almost like break down the early plot of

(01:21:46):
the game into the review because that's something we didn't
talk about. They write about through captions of screenshots, like
showing you that the early parts of the game. I
think that's all really interesting. And I think Lendergrin and
Chris Late, you know, like outside of the jokes were
he gave some fairly well written criticism, especially for the time.
I think they just didn't have the context to understand

(01:22:07):
some of the things that Kroner Trigger was doing and
how that would have an impact on games to come.
And so I'm gonna knock them points a fair number
of points because I think they missed some pretty big things.
I'm gonna knock them down to a seven for missing
you know the stuff that Chrona Trigger was doing that
was gonna impact like a lot of games to come.

Speaker 2 (01:22:28):
That's fair. I'm I was gonna go nine out of
ten silver points, and I the tenth was really just
for all the sexist jokes. I think, you know it's
we could and did quibble with some of the stuff.
I think Lounderton maybe a little bit more because I
think he was more well versed. I don't know if
you read Japanese or spoke Japanese, but I think he

(01:22:50):
was a lot more in tune with the Japanese scene
at the time, and was a little bit older and
more experienced, certainly than Chris Slay. Just looking at these
two author photos, it's like, oh wow, okay, Yeah, you
got like guy his like mid to late twenties and
a dude who looks like he's still in high school.
But you know, overall, I think you come out swinging
ninety five out of one hundred and just you know,

(01:23:12):
start to finish by this game, by this game, by
this game, to an audience that wasn't necessarily primed to
buy RPGs, and then they knew they were stepping out
on a limb and saying, you know this, maybe this
is the one, Maybe this is the game that finally
puts RPGs up with all the other ones. And to
an extent, they were right. And so I want to
give him credit for that.

Speaker 1 (01:23:33):
That's fair. I think it's a good review. I'm trying
to use that full scale too, but yeah, for sure.
But I think I think when you take shots at
a game, he got a hit. You know, if you're
gonna take shots at a game's innovation, like innovation is
proven out when those innovations persist, and if you're going
to take shots at a game's innovation and then thirty

(01:23:55):
years later, the things that that game innovated on are
standard in the genre or they were so hard to
pull off that nobody else will do them. Like to me,
if you're calling your shot, you gotta you know you
got a hit. And I think they missed here. Oh,
I mean, obviously the overall rating was ninety five percent.

(01:24:17):
Like I think that they recognized it for being great
for what it was, and they've you know they've got
to find criticism somewhere, but I don't think going after
the game's innovation was the way to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:24:30):
And that is our review of game players review of
Chrono Trigger. Did we get it right? Leave a reviewer
review at Apple Podcasts, posted as a comment on YouTube,
and we'll read the best ones on air. And hey,
go ahead and pass this show around to all your
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(01:24:50):
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(01:25:12):
will have a maximum score in fun Factor. With the
PlayStation slated for a national September ninth release date, rumors
continue to persist the Sony's Dream Machine will sneak out
earlier while the company stands by Steptember launch. What about

(01:25:36):
one second? It's okay, sorry, my cat went absolutely nuts. Okay,
all right, Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:25:46):
That's okay, all right, pull the rug out from under everybody,
including your partners. Like you know, in the way that
it kind of upset people around Sega because they were
just scared of the PlayStation and they didn't want to compete.
They thought that they could get that competitive advantage by
being out late. Now you know Nintendo sixty four came
out late and it suffered against the PlayStation as well.

(01:26:09):
Was there you know, I just don't know that you
could compete against what Sony was doing. They were throwing
so much money at developers. Yes, the media was cheap.
You know. They just had a good idea of how
to disrupt gaming at the time, and they were further ahead.
Is It's like, I don't know, man, Like it's weird
because like they were like less conservative, small Sea conservative

(01:26:32):
than Nintendo. Right, Like Nintendo was grasping onto what it
had always worked. Sega was like throwing everything at the wall. Uh,
and Sony like just like kind of just threaded the
needle by going right down the middle of them. Now,
like the middle is not a place I advise a
lot of people to spend time. But when you have
two competitors who were like completely flailing the way that

(01:26:55):
they are, you know, you can see that you don't
necessarily have to take on risk necessarily that exists with
leaning far in one way or the other. So Sony
can go, hey, we'll just be cheap, will be accessible,
will be the one people can get their hands on.
And it worked for them. It's a bad, you know,
political platform, but it was a pretty good strategic business decision.

Speaker 2 (01:27:18):
Yeah, no, I think that's definitely right. And Sony of
course leverage that. Hey, we're a kajillion dollar consumer products company.
We know how to launch a new technology. We know
how to get people to come in and go, oh yeah,
like I want this thing. Oh hey, and it's cheaper
than I thought. I mean, CDs themselves, right, just a
few years earlier, had become the you know, supplanted everything

(01:27:39):
as the audio medium CBDs were coming, and they knew how.

Speaker 1 (01:27:43):
To get that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:43):
So it's like it it makes sense that Sony was
able to leverage this leadership, and you know Sega Nintendo,
who couldn't just afford to lose a boat load or
make retailers. You know, it's like Sony can make Best
Buy go, Hey, you're selling teen hundred Sony skews. You're
gonna take a twenty dollars hit on this one, and

(01:28:04):
you're you're gonna have people in your store at Christmas. Okay.
Nintendo can't do that same thing.

Speaker 1 (01:28:10):
Yeah, but it's funny because it's all cyclical too, right.
Like Sony, eventually their hubris caught up with them with
the PlayStation three, and they made a lot of the
same mistakes you know that Nintendo was making with the
Nintendo sixty four. And Nintendo sixty four came in with
the Wii, which was cheap and accessible and games were
easy to get, and it, you know, was a huge success.

(01:28:31):
It's almost like chasing technology over chasing sort of experience
is not a good bit for video game consoles. But anyway, possibly,
you know, another episode there

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Game Players 75 - Chrono Trigger [S1E2]

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Game Players 75 - Chrono Trigger [S1E2]