I first attempted Chrono Trigger about seven or so years ago. I wasn’t particularly skilled at emulation. Never even unzipped the Snes 9x folder. Played the first six hours without stopping. Because I didn’t unzip the folder, my save file didn’t last. Played that same stretch again, in about half the time. Lost the save again. It was only here where I realized my mistake, and then started Chrono Trigger for the third time. On this first real attempt at CT, I made it through most of the game before I got frustrated with some endgame enemies and threw in the towel. This added to the pile of about a dozen video games I stopped playing before the ending.

I learned several things from these playthroughs. 1. I did not like playing classic games on my laptop. 2. I needed to learn how to figure out emulation. And 3. I need to get better at actually finishing video games.

Over the past decade, I guess I got really good at fixing all those problems. Backloggd has certainly helped me track my progress and my goals with all the games I wanted to attempt. I take more time to understand game mechanics and intended playstyle. I try to engage with subsystems and if it gets to be too much, I know how to find a shortcut that works just enough for me without completely destroying the experience.

In the interest of figuring out a better emulation experience, I got really into hacking. I’ve hacked nearly all my consoles and handhelds at this point. Hacking became a sort of exercise in making sure I got what I paid for. If I spent $200-$300 on a gaming system, I wanted to make sure I had ample reasons to put several hundred hours into using them. This techie obsession gradually escalated to fixing up a broken PS3 and PS4 I got for less than $10. Last year, I took another step deeper and bought a third-party gaming handheld known as the Retroid Pocket 2. For all my deep dives into hacking, I never quite figured out how to get most emulation tools to work the way I wanted to. The Retroid pre-installs those features and makes it relatively easy to take huge gaming libraries on the go.

And I guess I sort of came full circle by reapproaching this game with the Retroid.

The thing about Chrono Trigger’s legacy and its prestige and all its fame is that you can really toss that aside for one basic fact: it’s just fun. I started the game so frustrated thinking about how much I would have to retread to get back to my seven years old attempt at completing CT. Dreading moving forward.

But it’s just obscenely fun. Those frustrations melt away so quickly because the game is fun. There’s a reason I was willing to play the opening six hours of the game three times in a row all those years ago: it's just so goddamn fun. It's dripping with charm and whimsy and joy, tightly paced. Everything is polished to a bright sheen. It all just… works.

I could talk about the story or the mechanics, its impressive choices for the era, its graphics and music. But that’s all been talked to death. There’s nothing interesting left to say about it.

If I had to talk about anything, it's just how emotional this game made me. I’ve changed so much in seven years and those characters were still themselves. For me, it had been seven years of massive self-introspection. Learning about myself and others. Adjusting my thinking and letting myself accept stuff like “maybe you’re more of a socialist than the democrat your parents raised” or “maybe it would be okay to be trans.” It's hard not to feel like a failure 90% of the time, but having this sort of time capsule reflection on myself kind of made me realize how much I have changed. Maybe I’ll revisit this game again in a few years and I’ll change a little more. I think for the better. I hope for the better.

In other ways, I guess I expected to have evolved past the story’s narrative. To be gently amused by this old touchstone and not think much else of it. But truth be told, it hit harder than it ever did back in 2014. A plucky band of strangers facing the inevitability of societal collapse and just going “nah. We won’t stand for that.” I try to avoid feeling too hopeless about the State of Things, but there’s part of me that’s just fully given up. Just protect who I can and accept the consequences as it arrives. When Crono and team first insisted to the people of 2300 that we all need to keep hope, I rolled my eyes in 2014. In 2022, I cried real tears.

If there's anything that even slightly failed for me, I suppose it would be the festival ending. It feels like too much of reward and recognition and that sort of flew in the face of what felt like the Point of the entire back half of the game. Defeating the big monster isn't how you save the future. Its making little changes over time. Rebuilding Fiona's forest for 400 years. Teach a family to treasure generosity a few generations down the line. So much of the game involves the heroes trying to change the future in huge ways and failing. Its in the little endgame sidequests where they start to make real, lasting change through these little actions. These unremarked upon moments of generosity. Its only then that they start to find success.

Sometimes, you just need a hopelessly sincere story. It's entirely possible this goes onto the pile with Paper Mario as one of the few games I replay every few years. Its fucking Chrono Trigger. Sue me.