The team began preparing interviews for the release, but they were left unfinished after the cease & desist order.

Project Chronology

The rocky development history of Crimson Echoes is presented here down to the exact day of certain events.

Interview with Agent 12

Click here to read the interview.

Interview with Chrono'99

FROM THE PAST: Chrono'99's Feelings on the Project, 2006-10-16

How do you feel about Crimson Echoes so far? It's very promising. Plot and gameplay concepts are getting more and more polished as the project moves forward. I believe one of the best thing about this project is that's it's truly the work of a whole community. We can all participate, and I don't think anyone could decently claim a particular part of the project to be his and his alone. As a consequence, the results can only be serious and solid, since we don't have the risk of ending with something "biased" by a unique and too dominant point of view. Actually, Crimson Echoes might be a little like Wikipedia... but with no vandalism.

What do you hope to accomplish or see completed in the future? I think we're getting to the point where most of our ideas have successfully concretized in the game coding: all the objectives are feasible. Personally, I will continue being the project's official "janitor", cleaning up stuff everywhere I can. There's just one thing that we can't do: replace Ayla with Schala, because of the Tech animations... We have come to accept this fact though, as the plot is written with her as an NPC.

Interview with Vehek

FROM THE PAST: Vehek's Feelings on the Project, 2006-10-21

It's amazing! It shows off a lot of rom hacking tricks and capabilites. It's one of the few true total rom hacks of Chrono Trigger.

I remember seeing the original Crimson Echoes thread, back when it was first starting and was at only two forum pages. So much of the in-between storyline was changed since then, mostly because those parts were considered impossible to hack in. But even what they considered impossible, playable Glenn, is (at this time) becoming possible with information on sprite assembly.

I'm hoping to see many things accomplished in the future. Fully understood tech animations and tech mechanics hacking, more information on enemy AI, and others.

Interview with ZeaLitY

Hey, this is ZeaLitY. I had the bulk of writing and some directorial duties for Crimson Echoes; I also created the project and, as you'll find out, tried to kill it in 2007 since things were looking grim. I'm going to share some of my memories of the project (with brutal candor and intensity, of course), as well as some of my favorite parts of the game and its development. Let's get it started!

1. So, how'd all this get started?

The night of Temporal Flux's release in late 2004, I discussed the idea of a fan game ROM hack with Chickenlump, one of the first prolific Chrono Trigger ROM hackers. My idea was to adapt Chrono Cross for the Chrono Trigger ROM, but that would be extremely difficult, even today. We settled on a sequel to Chrono Trigger called Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes, featuring the original cast and world. We figured it'd be the natural choice for the first full ROM hack, since there'd be minimal editing of the game's characters and art assets. I posted a thread about it, and with Compendium forum members, wrote seventeen chapters of a rollicking but vapid plot. Things started getting crazy right away.

2. Getting crazy?

This happens to most people who create fan projects. That initial period of "Hey, we could do this! And then..." is purely rewarding, creative brainstorming that makes the parties involved feel like they can do anything. Immediately, we planned to have Frog become human Glenn, and to feature playable Schala. Schala would use a weapon borrowed from the Compendium collaborative fanfic, Project ZEAL; it'd be a dagger in which gems like the tech rocks from Chrono Trigger could be emplaced for different elemental effects. Here is the list of gems we devised for her:

Really original names, right? We also planned for Robo to having something like this called a "Servo Module", sort of like Mega Man's Buster. We wanted rudimentary vehicles to be in service in the world of 1002 A.D.; Crono and the group were going to ride to Guardia Castle in one at the beginning of the game. We also had ideas for new Mode 7 scenes, despite the fact that none of us knew how (nor currently know) how to edit Mode 7. The plot people (including myself) were not ROM hackers, and so we went insane with impossible ideas. The plot also sort of sucked, and the draft wasn't broken down into specific events that event coders and mappers could use to work on the game. In summary, Crimson Echoes started out like almost all other amateur fan games.

3. Before we move on, what became of playable Glenn and Schala?

Schala was axed early on thanks to the numerous impossibilities of adding her in back then. We would have had to change a bunch of techs, somehow code that gem-dagger system from scratch, and so on. Schala ultimately wasn't that bad of a loss; she would have replaced Ayla, who's a great all-around character and gets some fantastic scenes in the finished game. The loss is probably going to disappoint the "Schala is a transdimensional perfect goddess" fanboy club, though. As for human Glenn, a handful of separate ROM hackers were going to tackle that in 2006. One of them suddenly departed in the midst of working on sprite assembly, and then the others just sort of let it die. Human Glenn may show up as a patch that can be added to any Chrono Trigger ROM in the coming months.

4. "Let it die?" There weren't volunteers for this sort of thing?

If you want to visualize the development history of Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes, imagine a shack out in the middle of a dead desert. If you're a Bleach fan, make the desert Hueco Mundo. No one's been around there for years, but occasionally, a tinkerer or two will go to work beneath the lonely, desert moon, then disappear silently. This tinkerer was, at different times, me, Chrono'99, or Agent 12; Agent 12 ultimately took up residence in the metaphorical shack and completed the game's event coding. When we started out in 2005, we were almost completely dependent on Geiger, JLukas, and Chickenlump, as no one was experienced in event coding and worse, no one cared to learn. It's really not that hard; I'd even say it's sort of easy! But yes, throughout CE's history, the entire forum was usually a wasteland consisting of one person posting steady updates for a while before disappearing. It's almost a joke how confident we all were in 2005, considering nothing was getting done.

5. But you released the first demo in 2005.

The first demo is a joke in itself. When development began in late 2004, it felt like changing a bunch of NPC lines in "1002 A.D." was real progress. We did silly things without any regard to the plot, like adding the new cathedral and Vanguard to the overworld, because it felt productive and amazing to have these new locations and events around. This left the first demo a glorified fetch quest. Fans were still happy to see that work was being done, but my, the demo didn't even have a dungeon or any pretense of battles. Our troubles were just beginning.

6. Describe that early stage of development more.

I was already getting a sense mid-2005 of how gargantuan the demands of working on this project would become, and handed off directorial duties to t3h Schala and Exodus. We were still far from reality at this point; Claado Shou was even composing MP3 tracks that we would have no way of implementing (although these days, MIDIs can be converted and inserted). After they took the reins, I disappeared into the background as a few members finished up the plot. Chrono'99 experimented with changing the Blackbird tileset, while Chickenlump silently worked on two maps of his own—Chronopolis and Singing Mountain. His work was immediately impressive! And we all felt honored that one of the "big three" Chrono Trigger ROM hackers was directly involved with the project. As time wore on, the new directors faded away; t3h Schala left to make the Chrono Trigger remake petition, and other project members probably lost interest.

7. You've said that Singing Mountain is your favorite map in the entire game.

Oh, yes. Singing Mountain is magnificent. The colors of the blue water and clouds, red rocks, and prehistoric grass mesh so vibrantly well. The design was also impeccable, integrating caves, cliffs, and beautiful waterfalls. The entire aesthetic of the area does great justice to the Singing Mountain theme, evoking this feeling of exploring a sacred, verdant mountain of pure, flowing water on a day of gentle clouds and rain. When I first played it in 2005, I became misty-eyed. Chickenlump worked everything down to the last perfect detail, including those wonderful puddles that dot the landscape. When we had to make the summit, I tried to crown the area with a cliff overlooking more of that endless rain and water; it would be the new home of the Chrono Trigger Kilwala. We originally had the caves use the Prerelease's lava tileset, but the palette patch was lost during one of the ROM switches in development. We kept the blue, Heckran Cave aesthetic for the inside areas, as it works so well with the rainy mountain look. The summit became the residence of one of the reflective Xamoltan, and Agent 12 also made the summit the site of Ayla's ending scene. Truly, being in Singing Mountain is a magical experience, and I'll never stop heaping praise and thanks upon Chickenlump for his help.

8. Agent 12 arrived after the first demo, correct?

Yes; he would become the savior of the project. When I wrote about adding a coliseum to the game in the first Crimson Echoes planning thread, I guessed that it would never be coded because of the inevitable complexity of the events. Agent 12 stunned everyone when he pulled it off; though I wasn't director at this point, I still hoped that the other directors would realize just how much merit Agent 12 had brought to the table.

Now that Crimson Echoes is finished, you can thank him. Agent 12 is the true driving force behind that project, and the only member to never give up tirelessly seeing it through. Without him, Crimson Echoes would be like every other Chrono game project—abandoned and left to rot for want of passion and hard work. Although Chrono'99 and I contributed absolutely huge pieces of the game with polishing and dialogue, none of it would have happened or been needed had Agent 12 not spent months coding the game according to the fourth plot draft, often posting patch builds in a deserted forum without any encouragement or help. He was really in the springtime of youth, past the point of getting any recognition or glory, even. As he worked all those months, people would still post on the outside about other ROM hackers and fan project leaders, unaware that Agent 12 had become the ROM hacking specialist to rule them all.

9. But he wasn't the only specialist.

Right; I'd give that title to Chrono'99, too. He's Guru of Reason at the Chrono Compendium because it's fluent in every part of the community—analysis, discussion, and modification—and that extends to ROM hacking. When Agent 12 would complete a skeleton chapter, it'd play well and be robustly functional, with placeholder NPC and PC dialogue (some of which was pretty original and gladly kept). My dialogue would usually be inserted at this point. But the map, events, and feel of the game would all be very bare-bones and, to be totally accurate, ugly.

Enter Chrono'99. When he would finish with a chapter, the maps would be polished to the point of innovation. Chrono'99 is a genius of using existing Chrono Trigger location art in novel ways, like creating Cedric's ship from Zenan Bridge, or most strikingly, creating an outdoor Porre encampment with buildings by using the 600 A.D. house tileset in unforeseen ways. The talent is infectious; once you see his use of location art, you can look at the game's tilesets and think creatively. The Porre encampment inspired my creation of the Guardia Castle walls in 1005 A.D. with the same tileset, for example. Chrono'99 would also polish events on par with the Dream Team standard. Remember the scuffle between Magus and Melchior at Mt. Woe in Chrono Trigger: Prophet's Guile? That was Chrono'99, as were the Ocean Palace maps under construction in that game. The level of detail he can apply is staggering, right down to working in the Dragonian emblem from Chrono Cross into the floor of Dinopolis. He's got the magic touch.

10. But before they hit their stride, development was rocky. What was your attitude in 2006-2007?

If I had a nemesis, it was random corruption. For some inexplicable reason, after I'd edit the ROM a few times, something would have randomly corrupted, leaving a ruined map or blanked events. Worst of all, I could never reproduce the issue. In 2006 and 2007, I tried twice to import all the locations, maps, etc. to a fresh ROM, believing the random corruption to be a culprit of the CE ROM's troubled history. These efforts failed thanks to their complexity, and the fact that the first version of Temporal Flux to support importing and exporting was a little buggy (I think regarding the importing of text), which required us to wait for a new version. Ultimately, the future stewards of the project would steamroll over the issue with the original ROM and use the auto-backup feature to steam ahead, simply correcting any corruption that popped up (and it still does, time to time).

The real damage was to my morale. The sheer size of Crimson Echoes and the work it demanded were daunting; I knew that to try and keep the project going myself would be to sacrifice most of my free time to it. I might have done it, but each time something randomly corrupted, I would be heartbroken, fearing that the game might ultimately be never playable if every single edit (including corrective edits) might randomly corrupt something. I tried to distance myself from the project. It was a total efficacy killer...No matter how many projects or achievements I could wrap up at the Chrono Compendium, Crimson Echoes always sat unfinished, a failure I felt responsible for as the creator of the project. It got so bad that in late 2007, I just called the entire thing canceled and removed it from the site's priorities. Chrono'99 returned and got things moving again, and eventually Agent 12 would finish his hard semester and start his neverending push to completion. But I was seriously ready to kill the project back then.

11. Let's get into specifics. How was writing for each of the playable characters?

I don't claim to be a dialogue writer, nor do I have any sincere ambition to sharpen my writing skills for at least a year or two. But I do have, for better or worse, the most Chrono-packed brain of possibly anyone alive except Masato Kato, and that includes the nuances of the characters.

o Crono - I enjoyed writing for Crono. Once I played through the game's early finished skeleton, I realized just how much Crono had improved as a character thanks to his having dialogue. I feel that especially in this age, silent protagonists are titanically-wasted opportunities for characterization and drama. I tried to write Crono as most people think of him: adventurous; spirited; everyone's best, reliable friend. He's not boorish, but he does trust his gut and act with courage.

o Marle - Marle goes through a lot in this game, and it was particularly interesting to have her become the leader of the vocal opposition against Belthasar's methods. It was fun letting her experience more dramatic moments than were given to her in Chrono Trigger, and I feel like she's grown a lot.

o Lucca - Lucca and Robo are sort of the B-characters in the game, since Crono and Marle are at the forefront of the 1005 A.D. conflict, and Chronopolis is at the forefront of 2305 A.D. This doesn't leave much character-oriented drama for the two to endure. I tried to keep Lucca close to her depiction in Chrono Trigger.

o Robo - It felt nice to write Robo's lines. I kept them logical and contractionless, borrowing a page from the Japanese version of Chrono Trigger. A great moment for him comes when he confronts FATE about her purpose. It's an optional scene, but there are all sorts of optional scenes and goodies in the game like this.

o Frog - Most American fans who get exposed to the Japanese characterization of Frog fall in love with him. He's an all-around dependable guy with a sort of hardness about him, despite his sometimes humorous disposition. That's the Frog you see here, and he's suffered a little more thanks to the entire Kasmir timeline issue. It was nice having him taunt Magus.

o Magus - Magus was easy to emulate, but difficult to expand upon. Originally, I wanted Magus to slowly become Magil, the refined "beautiful person" of Radical Dreamers whose personality is also reflected in Guile of Chrono Cross. But Chrono Trigger DS dictated that it's the same old black-bleeding Magus at the end of Crimson Echoes, so this opportunity for growth was passed over. He does warm up a bit, though.

o Ayla - Ayla is fun. She's the voice of the springtime of youth. Her intellect is sharp as a piece of Dreamstone, and her life's vivaciousness cannot be contained. Take her with you when you enter the Darkness Beyond Time for a wonderful scene. She's the only character to confront the Frozen Flame and overcome its mental challenge in Chapter 18.

o Belthasar - Writing Belthasar is always interesting, because he embodies the spirit of Zeal with a dash of megalomania. Despite getting verbally reprimanded by Gaspar in Crimson Echoes, he has the last word with Chrono Cross.

I can identify two personal failures immediately:

o Magus reuniting with Schala was difficult. Honestly, who can guess what they'd say? There are mountains of bad fanfiction about this. We had to have something, so they currently share a few stilted words before the party is asked to leave.

o I may be good at emulating the original Chrono team, but that isn't necessarily all good. Characters should experience growth and development, even verbally, but this team is really straight out of "Chrono Trigger 2". I guess it won't make anyone angry about changes or bad characterization, at least.

12. Now tell us about the villain, King Zeal.

King Zeal was going to be the villain from the beginning, even in 2004. Just as Magus's time in Zeal was ripe, low-hanging fruit for Chrono Trigger: Prophet's Guile, King Zeal was too juicy and accessible to be passed up. To be honest, he didn't have much character or soul for most of the game's development and planning; he was merely a tool of Lavos. As I began writing dialogue in 2008, I became aware of an emerging theme that worked perfectly for him. I also got a better sense of him as a character, and if I succeeded, he'll seem by the end of the game a very ambitious, strong-minded, and dangerously intelligent monarch. It was especially fun writing the last few scenes involving his exchanges with the party. I have a real habit of sympathizing with villains and anti-villains, and I've hopefully made King Zeal's dream an ethical gray area that players just might identify with.

13. What would you say the themes of the game are?

The primary theme surrounds the origin and evolution of Lavos as it pertains to dreaming and desire, and the reconciliation of humanity with Lavos through the Arbiters of the Frozen Flame. Lavos was using evolution as a tool to search for the "end", and the disruption of this process with his defeat in Chrono Trigger led him to become the vengeful Dream Devourer. Chrono'99 can enunciate this better! It's pretty heavily represented in the final dungeon's Frozen Flame scenes. Dreaming is also heavily represented, as it is in every Chrono game. You're a "Chrono Trigger" if you unleash your dreams upon the world, et cetera.

One of the themes I wrote through the dialogue and events was the limits of temporal activism. Thanks to the Epoch and Chronopolis, the team of the game could potentially change the course of humanity at will. Gaspar chides Belthasar for creating Chronopolis, feeling that so much power shouldn't be in the hands of one person. The Chrono team have to confront their own temporal protectionism as they acknowledge the erasure of the survivors of the Day of Lavos in the ruined future's timeline, as well as the erasure of an entire timeline of Reptites. But above all else, what evokes this best is King Zeal's desire to recreate Zeal. The gut reaction to this idea is "of course he shouldn't be allowed to recreate Zeal! It's not right." But then you have to ask why. Why is it better to maintain the timeline as it is, with humanity living thousands of years in renewed darkness, disease, death, and war before achieving a meager existence like that of 605 A.D.? Why is it right to delay the apex of humanity's achievement another several thousand years, and lose forever the glory of the enlightened kingdom?

At this point, people usually say, "Zeal had too much hubris. They wanted immortality and power, and they paid for it." But why; why was it wrong? Zeal, for all its prejudices and shortcomings, was the highest dream of humanity, where the secrets of the universe were studied and the frontiers of dreams explored. The Kingdom of Zeal wasn't lost because they committed some kind of sin in daring to dream; it was lost simply because they didn't take enough precautions in activating the Mammon Machine. Erudition does not preclude foolishness; the people of Zeal merely made a mistake. If they had safeguarded Zeal a little more or perhaps spent more time studying Lavos, they may have found a way to avoid waking Lavos up, or even a way to tame the parasite. Even the future of 2305 A.D. is a far cry from the absolute glory and beauty of Zeal. Why resurrect Zeal? Why not? I tried to award this argumentative victory to King Zeal at the end of the game. Perhaps if he had been allowed to take control of the Dream Devourer as he wished, he could have avoided the need for Chrono Cross altogether and done something truly amazing with that power. We'll never know, because the team had to play it safe. Was it right to play it safe in that moment? What would a true Enlightened One have done?

14. How do you feel Crimson Echoes might have been different?

The central foundation of Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes is Chrono Trigger. It's Chrono Trigger 2, right down to the reuse of Trigger's locations, characters, and even magic techs. The approach is sort of, "Crono goes to sleep the night of Leene Square. Five years pass. Wake up, Crono! There's a new adventure!" The placement of Crimson Echoes as an interquel between Trigger and Cross is also responsible for this.

If we were making a different game with new characters and a timeframe following the events of Chrono Cross (or separate from expected canon completely), it definitely wouldn't start in Crono's house, or even the usual time periods. There'd be new overworlds to explore and dramatic triggers, and Lavos would definitely not be the main villain. Tilesets, monster, and character graphics would be changed, and it'd probably feel more like a usual new RPG (start out, take out the first dungeon, learn a bit more about the villain, and so on). In light of this, I was scared for a while in 2007 that Crimson Echoes would be received terribly since it almost completely rehashes Chrono Trigger's assets and conventions. That's just the nature of the beast, I guess, and it's ultimately not too bad. Some people have been craving for a new adventure with Crono and his friends, and now they've got one.

15. On the lighthearted side, what are your favorite funniest moments?

Definitely the cake-stealing when you first go to 605 A.D. to find Glenn. It was so random! There's also the joke in Fiona's Forest about Mystical Ninja: Starring Guards #3, #51, and so on, borrowed straight from Oedo Town in Mystical Ninja: Starring Goemon. And then, seeing King Guardia XXI in the San Dorino bar in 605 A.D. after the timeline's corrected...That was my idea, and it's wonderfully surreal; I can imagine players thinking "W, what the hell...? Is that King Guardia?"

16. Any words you'd like to share with the modification community?

I used to believe that projects like this, given an excellent system, could be finished with enough volunteers. Perhaps they still can, but Crimson Echoes has taught me the importance of a project champion. Agent 12 did much more than simply coding the game. He maintained custody of the ROM, restored backups, coordinated all the contributions, and generally took ownership of the project. In retrospect, that's how it was with the Compendium; I had to bite the bullet and finally write the encyclopedia and take metaphorical ownership of the entire site. I suppose we were a little aware of this early on, since I recall trying to avoid being the project leader because of duties and commitment involved. To get something this size done, you're going to need an absolutely perfect system of taking volunteer work according to a consummate plan, or a diehard leader in the springtime of youth.

Other than that, it's just sort of depressing how scattered the community still is. We've got fifty million endless personal projects all over the place, whereas if everyone worked on one hack at a time, fans would always have something new to check out. Crimson Echoes, for all its popularity, could barely even get a reliable mapper; a big chunk of final development was polishing maps (which could have been done at any time before). My experiences in running the Chrono Compendium have taught me before that most Chrono fans (or perhaps people in general) are terminally lazy and never make good on promises or volunteerism, but knowing Crimson Echoes might have been a tiny bit better makes it disappointing on a deeper level. We've at least made good progress in setting up the Compendium fan project page and Aegis system to ensure that projects with merit get more encouragement.

Too many fan project leaders fall into mindless attention grabs, feeling a need to update about every little thing they do just to get praise and time in the spotlight. Unsurprisingly, these projects are also the ones that usually fail the hardest because the people involved barely code any of the actual game or project (which can't be appreciated until release), instead preferring to throw sprites and custom graphics around. Time has shown again and again that where fan modification is concerned (for pretty much every game genre out there), the programmer / coder is the almighty. Beautiful sprites without a functioning game are useless, as are beautiful songs and beautiful plot ideas. But even something with uninspired design and a lack of polish will still be played if it's coded and finished. The habitual attention grabs also dilute the project's soft power. If you blow all your game's secrets and features from the get-go, what kind of mystique or hype can you generate? It then damages the entire community's reputation. After the 15th project that seemed to start strong with custom sprites but failed, fans stop caring. I'm relieved that Crimson Echoes was always a more secretive project.

We're always hearing about how ROM hacking is in decline. Well, of course! Like most modding communities, everyone's off doing their own project, most of which never get completed. The ROM hacking community needs more big-name, highly visible projects to attract interest. It is criminal how little Super Mario 64 hacking is going on right now. I was among the people who desperately wanted Super Mario 64 2 back in the days of the Nintendo 64, and I'd die to play an all new adventure. Given the ROM hacking community's talent and the number of personnel, it's possible, but not when everyone's doing what they will and constantly embroiling one another in drama over ridiculous spats.

17. But are you finished with modification?

Yeah, I'd say I'm done. I've given the Chrono series more than a pound of flesh. If I help fan projects out, it'll be in a limited role, and probably for something that only I can provide.

18. So let's end on a positive note. How do you feel now that it's done?

Exasperatedly happy. Towards the end, the most fun part of developing was speaking with Agent 12 over Gmail chat as we worked on the ROM or planned future events. And towards the end, we'd keep getting sidetracked with plans about the release, nostalgic and humorous memories about the project's history, and an unending sense of achievement and joy over the game's coming release. There have been many Chrono fan game projects, but this is truly the first one to make it. It may have taken four and a half years, but it's done, and it's a success. I almost can't believe it. Preparing was hell, since Chrono Trigger DS created so much work for the site. Still, we made it! It's sort of a crowning culmination of the Chrono Compendium and the Chrono community at large. So many people have come and gone, having given up on the project, and so many more have probably given up on the idea of a Chrono fan game completely. But we've done it.

...We've done it...

FROM THE PAST: ZeaLitY's Feelings on the Project, 2006-10-14

I'm anxiously hopeful for Crimson Echoes now. Having been there since the beginning, I've seen the countless let-downs and mistakes we've made over two years of development. Most of it would not have happened had we taken a more realistic approach to ROM hacking and a harder stance on development dedication. But that's all for the history file. At the moment, I'm bubbling with excitement. I'm about to commit serious hours to the project to basically finish the entire infrastructure. Afterwards, Agent 12 or Chrono'99 can waltz in and code things over the new locations with ease. Of course, I'll have to come in and do the dialogue, but that's really the fun part. Two years of development means we've refined and shaped a solid plot and serious character development. I hope we'll be taking the heroes on a ride that won't disappoint fans. At the very least, the multitude of ROM hacking innovations completed so far are sure to blow people away. The day this is released will mark the beginning of an exciting era in Chrono Series fandom.

I hope to get several maps done and write decent dialogue. Interestingly, doing Magus is easy; I've given much thought to his style and can write him without much difficulty. The other characters pose a challenge. I'm having fun with Glenn, but giving Marle and Lucca different personalities is hard—especially considering their behavior in the Japanese version. Ted Woolsey made them both a little more extravagant and exclamatory in speech, and it helped set them apart from the generic heroine persona. As for Ayla and Robo, those are fun—Ayla always has strong-will and a fresh approach to life, while Robo keeps cool with analytical, insightful observations on what's going on. As for King Zeal, he's just a blast. There's going to be some exciting dialogue between Magus and him; I can't wait to get cracking. It'll take some work, but the payoff will be huge.

That wraps it up for me. As you can see, the development wasn't "smooth sailing", to borrow one of Masato Kato's terms. I'm just absolutely thrilled that it's all come to fruition and has been released as a finished product. I'm extremely moved! And my sincerest thanks go out to Agent 12, Chrono'99, the others who helped, and everyone who plays. We've earned a serious vacation.

ZeaLitY: Chrono series fans are some of the most hardcore around, for better or worse. It takes that kind of alacrity to do something like this, and to keep a fan base and community going strong years after the last new entry in the series. Thanks to all the Chrono fans who continue ot indulge the high points of the series and carry the theme of courageous dreaming in their hearts. Thanks to Masato Kato, too, for giving us that theme in the first place. Go become your own "Chrono Trigger" now; dare to dream!

Unfinished Features

What follows is the table of contents for the original planned release feature. The links don't work; as you can see, almost all of the featurettes were left unfinished.

Table of Contents

Interviews

Anatomy of...

Extras

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			   MAGIL ~RADICAL DREAMERS~

     It was said to be a gem which soothes all scars,
     granting eternal life to its owner...
     ...Or so people believed.
     The Frozen Flame is more than just an object.
     It's not of this world.
     It descended from the heavens long ago, part of a huge meteorite.
     Once, there lived a people who sought to harness its power,
     hoping to tap into their yet unknown potential.
     And so, it became a treasure of great importance and dreams.

     However, whether a gift which bestows power is actually a blessing
     or a curse, is another question altogether.

     Since the birth of humanity, at least one entire race has fallen
     because of it.
     These people once built a great thriving metropolis with its power,
     but now, all knowledge of this era has been completely lost within
     the sands of time.
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