Chrono Cross to be Wikipedia's TFA, August 15
Hey, stop by Wikipedia on August 15! My nomination was successful for Chrono Cross to be Today's Featured Article, so stop by and see what kind of shape the article's in! Like the Chrono Trigger article, the development section is now ample and well-sourced thanks to translation efforts. There's still so, so much more to be translated though, including Missing Piece interviews and the rest of the Ultimania interviews. You're welcome to pitch in translation services if you've got the free time!
Edit: And it's up!
Forum errors fixed
A server-side reboot disabled memcache, so the forums were wonky for a bit, but Ramsus has got it locked down now. How's everyone's summer going in the northern hemisphere? Are you doing the impossible and seeing the invisible? Are you running through the springtime of youth with passion and intensity? And if you're in the southern hemisphere, then melt the cold with your unstoppable burning desire! The Dream Splash! is still in session, so drop by with art or fanfics or whatever for your vision of Chrono Break here. Should have an update soon! 'Till then...
CT Fanfest 2010 Previews Preorder Merchandise Exclusively at the Compendium!
In a sweet surprise, the fine people of the Chrono Trigger Fanfest 2010 have sent an exclusive preview of their preorder merchandise to the Compendium! Feast your eyes upon these:
"This is the first high-res image of the Gate Key we've shown to anyone outside the company. It's a hefty double-sided keychain which is, by far, the most complicated/awesome design we've had minted to date. We'll be offering it in a combo pack alongside the shirts, pins, and poster. In addition to these two items, we'll be offering reprints of our Chronometer shirts, a new pin set, a new poster, and "Avarus" figurines inspired by the Mammon Machine (designed by Camille Young). This will mark the first time we've ever taken preorders for Camille's figurines -- up until now they've been strictly limited-edition runs of 100 or fewer. We hope to begin taking preorders a little later this week, hopefully by Wednesday." Many thanks! Check out the main page here.
"Burly Brawl" - 028 in mysticalpha's comic now out!
Just popping in to link the newest comic from mysticalpha's take on Chrono Trigger! It's been a busy summer; do the impossible! Drop by this thread to give some feedback!
Fangamer.net Kicks off its Chrono Trigger Fanfest!
If you needed yet another excuse to geek out over Chrono this summer, Fangamer's got your fix! The cool peeps over at Fangamer.net have launched a site that will track their playthrough of Chrono Trigger - complete with daily video updates - over the next month, from June 25 through July 23.
They're inviting everyone to submit their own fanworks in every format imaginable during this celebration of Chrono fandom, and rumor has it Fangamer will even be selling Chrono-themed paraphernelia in an expansion of their previous work in Earthbound merchandising. Check out Fangamer's blog to learn more about the organization and its history. Stay tuned for further details as they roll in!
Chrono Cross - The Card Game now at your fingertips!
Thanks to an anonymous benefactor and my scanner, we have the full Chrono Cross Bandai card game scanned and ready for viewing. It includes a deck of 60 cards, and was distributed in Carddas machines in Japan. The deck is effectively useless right now because it's in Japanese, so I've added it to the Material Requiring Translation page, where it can languish with all the other countless gems and hidden insights of Chrono knowledge eternally beyond our grasp. To view the cards one by one, go here; to download the entire thing right now, click here (45.2 MB). It's May, so remember to do the impossible, see the invisible, touch the untouchable, and break the unbreakable. This is the springtime of youth! As Karsh would say, OHHH YEAAAAAAAAAH!!
Summer Kick-off Ultra-Update! Dream Splash III Begins!
Hey, let's get summer in gear with an Ultra-Update! We've got some important stuff first. [1] The 2010 Dream Splash is underway! This year, it's about Chrono Break, or how you would personally like to see the Chrono series continued. The sky's the limit on this one, as you can draw from any established Chrono character or setting, and create your own! Head to this page to learn more or this forum to start submitting! [2] Dayton is the Spring's Gift contest winner, thanks to a double fan art/poetry submission! As such, they are now the Artist of Termina. We don't know if they have an account on the Compendium forums, so the user rank hasn't been awarded yet. Anyhow, congratulations! You can view the submission here. On a sadder note, Dayton's was the only entry in the contest, which reflects poorly on the rest of the Compendium. [3] Wiz Khalifa, and up and coming underground hip-hop artist has released his new mixtape, and it features a sample of Schala's theme! Click here to listen. [4] Guinness has ranked Chrono as the 37th most popular franchise in the world. Now, moving on!
Yeah, we're kicking off the Dream Splash! on the anniversary of the cease & desist order. If the last year has taught us anything, it's that the Chrono community continues kicking like a quiet storm. We may have penetrated the mysteries of the series with analysis and wrapped up all the main work on the encyclopedia, but progress continues to flow in other areas. This...gigantic update is the result of just 2 months time. In two months, all the stuff you see here happened and was catalogued by the Chrono Compendium. What kind of dead franchise brings it in like that? We continue to see new fan art, fan fiction, remixes discoveries, translations, and phenomena of other colors all the time, including new dreams born off-site. Starting the Dream Splash early on this anniversary is our scream from the underground! So let's do the impossible, see the invisible, touch the untouchable, break the unbreakable, and smash through the dream in the springtime of youth! On to the news!
[JAPAN] Lorenz has translated Hiromichi Tanaka's interview in the Chrono Cross OST liner notes, leaving only Masato Kato's and Noriko Mitose's to be translated; find it here. Tanaka contrasts the push for better graphics and hardware in next-generation machines with the need for great talent. (Keep in mind, this was written in 1999.) [2] Carnivol, known for such rarities as the Chrono Trigger V-Jump videos, has uncovered the V-Jump '99 video promoting Chrono Cross! It features brief comments by Tanaka, Sakaguchi, and...Masato Kato, the man himself! There's also different music used for snooping around Viper Manor. Youtube the video here or download it here! [3] Material Requiring Translation has been updated with scans of the entire Chrono Trigger Ultimania Secrets section. We'd sure appreciate any help translating! [4] FaustWolf did some snooping (damn, I realized that I may have bee incorrectly using Faustwolf until now) and found this Masato Kato interview in which he identifies himself as Runmaru, the alias he used in Ninja Gaiden's credits. The real shocker here is that hardcoregaming101.net got an interview with him. We need to get some Japanese language help and make a serious attempt to get our own interview!
[COMPENDIUM] I've added 93 new avatars created with fan art submitted over the course of the Compendium's history. They're in a new folder called Fan Art. Springtime of youth! [2] CuteLucca's site seems to be permanently down, so I've gone through the Wayback Machine and salvaged any art I could for the fan art section. [3] The Community Map has been updated to reflect the Geocities massacre and any other sites that have gone down since the last review. [4] The full Q&As used to make my 1Up interview have been posted here, constituting a nice history of the Compendium until now. [5] I've unearthed a couple Compendium relics! First are three old dimensions/timeline graphs predating the current ones used in the Principles of Time article. I've added them to a gallery at the bottom of On the Axioms and Corollaries Governing Temporal Transforms (damn, fun to type that again!). The other relic is a mockup I created for Ramsus back when he was developing Chrono Compendium II, the replacement for our first site using PHPNuke; find it here. Speaking of which, I've standardized the versions of the Chrono Compendium's design on the about page at the bottom. There are a lot of great screenshots and alternate logos to be had; check it out! Like this one:
[PROJECTS] Koa has finished their Chrono Cross Triple Triad Deck, and it's awesome! You can view it here and download it here, complete with unnumbered cards! Great work! [2] Lance has released the demo for Chrono Echoes, his new RPGMaker project. Find and discuss it here. He's also looking for voice actors for Chrono Echoes, his new RPGmaker project. Head to this thread if you've got what it takes! [3] mysticalpha's Chrono Trigger comic is now going to be an official Chrono Compendium feature, linked in the sidebar and updated with each new comic instead of simply stashed in the fan art section! But we've got some catching up to do first. Here's the volume of Chrono goodness that's come out since March: [ 22 - Scissors and Hand Cream - Statue of Magus - 23 - The End - 24 - Grand Theft Princess - 25 - That Darn Cat (trigger warning) ] mysticalpha's also released several sketches and high-res individual shots used in Grand Theft Princess! [ Lucca Outline - Crono Outline - Marle Outline - King Outline - Lucca - Crono - Marle - Epoch ] [4] Guru of Reason utunnels has been hard at work developing a browser-based version of Radical Dreamers. Right now, the text is a little faster in browsers other than Internet Explorer, and the save feature only works in IE as well. It's very much a work-in-progress, so check out updates at this thread!
[DISCOVERY] Zephira noticed that in Magus's Lair, sculptures of two women hold up pillars for the curtain rods on the windows. See an image here. It's an oft-missed detail! [2] utunnels has been investigating the battle scripts for Radius and the Time Devourer. He's found that the Time Devourer has its HP locked at 30,000 HP for most of the battle, but it immediately decreases to a smaller value after a certain point. Without this script, it would normally have four phases demarcated by 5,000HP, 2,500HP, 1,250HP, and 1,250HP. Battle scripts are often used for this purpose, like making the Shaker Brothers invulnerable so they can speak their lines before being defeated. He's also found that Radius can be killed in the Japanese version because of a script loophole fixed in the US version, and not a number overflow. [3] utunnels has discovered that the Chrono Cross dummy-enemy FamilyTree uses the tech Downpour and is supposed to be paired with four Bulbs. [4] Game Mechanics has been updated with utunnels' recent findings on Chrono Cross battle mechanics. [5] utunnels has published a list of possible Chrono Cross enemy groupings in random battles; find it here.
[FANFICTION] GenesisOne kicked things off for this update with Chrono Trigger done in the style of Dr. Seuss, a work in progress. Find it here! Next is another masterpiece by preeminent Chrono-fanfic writer The Princess; it's called Tor'ed Back in Time 3: Chrono TRIGGER and you can find it here. alfadorredux is keeping Chrono Helix rolling with a few new entries in the saga; check them out here. Another work in progress has been updated -- Chrono: To the Sea of Dreams, by skylark! Find the new entries here. Last is a snippet from Chrono Genesis, a project by Princess Schala Zeal; find it here.
[FAN ART] Let's kick things off with an awesome Harle mask that vivify93 made for a class several years ago; see it here and here. We've added an amazing Zeal wallpaper with an unclear author; find it here. Next are pieces from The Princess and FaFniR depicting their favorite Chrono time; find them here and here. After that comes Princess Schala Zeal, with two sprites showing King and Queen Zeal in their younger years; see them here and here. F-546 has laso been busy spriting, and has released a title screen image showing the Radical Dreamers from his RPGMakerXP project; see it here. tushantin's made another great piece of fan art for Crimson Echoes; it's a wallpaper showing Crono and King Zeal. Grab it here. Last is a fantastic image F-546 found. On closer inspection, it's a part of a castle series by *jermilex, but it beautifully looks so much like futuristic Zeal that we're going to keep it. Find it here. But wait! We've archived some old Ramsus art as well: [ Rough Robo Sketch - Crono - Crono Avatar - Female Crono ]
( Read more... )
Multiple vendors offering CT "Formation Arts" figures for pre-order
UPDATE: Turns out Marle isn't missing after all! Thanks to TheDarknessBeyondTime for the tip.
UPDATE: SEGA MAN tells us that only the four figures shown below are available in the US normally, whereas all 5 are in collections sold in Japan.
Urban Collector and Bigbad Toy Store are also offering, so if you're interested in collecting some of these, you might want to check out multiple outlets and compare available prices and shipping terms. A user over at the Sideshow Collectors Forum nabbed some nice close-up shots of the figurines.
These are the ones shown off at the Square Enix Toy Fair booth a couple months back, and recapture scenes from Akira Toriyama's art for the game. Compendium forum members have noted that Marle is curiously absent. Hmm! Let's hope some more are in the works, and you'll get that Lavos action figure with spring-loaded spines you've always wanted since 1995!
ornc regurt gilaaedffyd
akatsuki not legal
banned bone!!
kill bond banned
member:
2 many toasters
I'M GOING TO RUB A POTATO ON YOUR CAR AND COVER IT IN BUTTER
bommander boond comiong to save you car
"fuk u shirt motherfuck" he say
y????
no it 4 ur own health trust me im the guy
so enjoy a fine selection 
YOUR WORKMANSHIP IS SHODDY AND YOUR BANANAS ARE STALE
roger Addams james BOND "007" licence to thrill
IT'S THE STATE OF MY HEART
WHEN I NEED YOU
*ow* ^^
u cant
can u my darling, can u picture this
1UP.com Interviews ZeaLitY About the Chrono Compendium
Check...it...OUT!
Uber gaming site 1UP.com recently conducted interviews with representatives of fan communities devoted to "dead franchises," focusing on how fans keep these intellectual properties alive. The link leads to ZeaLitY's interview on Page 2 of the article, but also check out the heroic activities of Earthbound fans on Page 1 and Deus Ex fans on Page 3.
If I may interject a personal attitude that is probably shared by many others here: while the Chrono franchise is often considered a "dead property," it is my hope Square Enix will decide to resurrect it in the near future in whatever form it chooses, provided Masato Kato and Yasunori Mitsuda are on board for the project. The Crimson Echoes Memorial has over 300,000 hits less than a year following the Cease and Desist order received from Square Enix, and the "Magus Unmasked" patch ad for Chrono Cross continues to garner over a hundred hits on Youtube every day, over two years after its own release. You just don't get viral results like this with something that isn't extremely, extremely viable. Chronotorious has successfully sold all printed copies too.
And let's take the gloves off a moment and look at full-blown IP holder commercial results: according to VGChartz.com, Chrono Trigger DS managed to sell approximately 1 million copies. One...Million. And that's the third time Chrono Trigger has been released! I think the fans have voted sufficiently with their dollars by now.
In other news, let's all devote a moment of silence to "The Silver Lining", the recently C&D'd but awesome non-commercial effort by King's Quest fans to inject some new life into that long-untreated franchise. Chrono fans can certainly commiserate with Phoenix Online Studios, although they have the distinction of earning two C&Ds with the same project -- they survived their first when the IP holder recanted under fan protest, but received their second after the franchise shifted from Vivendi's ownership to that of Activision. But! As they say, the Dream of Zeal is Still Alive!
Hey, it's International Beer Day, so why don't we get wild why we're at it!?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-vSNc5u0Pw
