Xbox 360
If there's one problem with the fact that console games as we know them have now been around for the best part of 30 years it's that the medium is now officially old enough to be suffering from a bad case of nostalgia. And if there's anything worse than vapid sequel-itis for stifling the creation of interesting new intellectual properties it's nostalgia.
Square-Enix have never exactly been known as the champions of new IPs, but at least back when they were churning out successive Final Fantasy titles they were publishing new games in name if not in spirit. Since they struck their new deal with Nintendo however, they seem to have entire divisions devotedly purely to dusting off titles from their extensive back catalogue and giving them the DS remake treatment. Chrono Trigger, originally released for the SNES way back in the 1800s (well okay, actually 1995) is the latest candidate.
Regularly featuring in "best ever" polls thanks to its (at the time) groundbreaking story line and its (for its era) tremendous score, the original Chrono Trigger was a Japanese Role-Playing Game (JRPG) which used an active time battle system for it's core battle dynamic. Unlike other games of its time rather than random encounters, enemies were either already present on the screen, or lay in wait for pre-determined ambushes. Another (again at the time) unique feature was the ability for characters to combine together in combo attacks to defeat tougher enemies.
The DS remake faithfully translates everything from the original, and adds a couple of new whistles and bells, including a handy mode that moves all of the GUI onto the lower screen leaving the upper screen clutter free, extra dungeons, and an unnecessary and poorly thought out two-player battle mode.
Many of the features that made the original such a classic still make for an enjoyable game this time around. The gameplay dynamics are just as polished as they have always been, proving sufficiently challenging without demanding hours or fruitless levelling. The time-travelling story line, whilst no longer the groundbreaking pioneer it was, remains engaging and never takes itself too seriously. The multiple endings, and New Game+ feature (whereby you can start again with the levels your characters reached at the end of the first play through) provide sufficient replay value to justify the purchase.
The difficulty is that we've been here before, and whilst for the 30-something gamer looking for a blast from the past this represents an easier, if more expensive, trip down memory lane than dusting off the old SNES, it clearly offers nothing new, or different, or interesting. And when the new hotness in the world of JRPGs comes in the form of titles such as Lost Odyssey and Last Remnant, Crono Trigger is left looking both old, and slightly busted.