Chrono Cross Interview: Koichiro Sakamoto On Radical Dreamers And Bringing Classic JRPGs Back To Life

thegamer.com:

Chrono Cross is a JRPG classic. While you likely won’t see it mentioned in the same breath as Final Fantasy, Persona, or Chrono Trigger, it remains a beloved example of what the genre is capable of, and a fond memory of many who grew up with the original PlayStation.

It passed me by as a child, but upon playing the recent remaster it became evident why people hold it to such a high standard. The Radical Dreamers Edition is a faithful revival of the revered adventure that simultaneously updates its visuals and mechanics while also ensuring it never veers too far away from its original vision.

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Ahead of its release I caught up with producer Koichiro Sakamoto to talk about bringing the game back to life for the first time in over two decades, the challenges of maintaining such a storied legacy, and a few fun fan theories about the development of other such remasters.

“By listening to the stories of people working on the development of [Chrono Cross] and all the hands-on work, you could really feel how they felt at the time and their emotions when making the original,“ Sakamoto tells me.“By working on the remaster we could see how things were back then. ‘Fun’ isn’t the right word but we could sense how difficult it must have been and how much they must have struggled to make the game, but it was a really meaningful expression to sort of share in their emotions.”

Working on a remaster like this is always a double-edged sword. You are altering a legacy that so many fans have already committed to memory, meaning any change no matter how minor will stand out in the grand scheme of things. This has gone terribly in the past, and it seems Sakamoto is keenly