Chrono Trigger Creator Reveals Development Struggles: “We Had to Tear the Project Down"

ign.com:

Chrono Trigger is widely considered one of the best RPGs of all time, but according to Hironobu Sakaguchi, it almost became a mediocre game.

At the Monaco Anime Game International Conferences 2023 (MAGIC 2023), Sakaguchi – best known as the father of the Final Fantasy series – looked back at Chrono Trigger, a game he worked on together with Yuji Horii (Dragon Quest) and Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball).

“I was already a big fan of Akira Toriyama’s manga before I entered the videogame industry, so working together with him was like a dream come true for me,” Sakaguchi recalled. “The same could be said for the entire staff, so his drawings became a huge motivation for us.”

That doesn’t mean that Chrono Trigger’s development was an easy one. Sakaguchi said it was the most difficult game to make amongst all of the titles he has worked on, which is why it is very dear to his heart.

“It almost became a mediocre game, so we had to tear the project down and start all over from scratch,” Sakaguchi said.

That was undoubtedly for the best, as the final version that was released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1995 was an instant classic that is still being talked about nearly 30 years later. Sakaguchi himself was satisfied about the end result, and he recalls that Toriyama was happy about how the game turned out too. This led them to work together again on Blue Dragon, which was released 11 years later on the Xbox 360.

During the conference, Sakaguchi showed a portrait of himself drawn by Toriyama. The two are known to be good friends.

Hironobu Sakaguchi as imagined by Akira Toriyama. Illustration credit: Akira Toriyama

At MAGIC 2023, Sakaguchi also talked about what he hopes for the future of his most recent title, Fantasian.