We have just completed using DeepL (where possible) to translate certain interviews. Please note, this doesn't include the majority of Chrono Trigger's Prerelease coverage, or V-Jump coverage (including its Dream Team Player's Guide interview), as DeepL has a hard time with vertical Japanese text. Check out
Supporting Material Translation for what's been completed. A summary of juicy tidbits is below. If you've recently played Chrono Trigger DS, by the way, help us out with
this question. Now, on to the findings...
[CT MYSTERY INTERVIEW] The exterior of Magus's Lair and the Blackbird, as well as the Courtroom in Guardia Castle were all added after the expansion from 24 Mb to 32 Mb, as this enabled much more art and detail to be added to the game. Hironobu Sakaguchi possibly originated the sapling plot with Fiona's Forest.
[KEIZO KOKUBO 2008] He explained that the Dream Team used an intricate debugger when testing Chrono Trigger's events (part of the Active Time Event Language), which, when a softlock occurred, would pinpoint which event was the last executed, and how many actors were waiting on further input.
[TORISHIMA 2016] Where to begin? Torishima claims he arranged for Enix to lend Yuji Horii to Squaresoft for developing Chrono Trigger, and that he co-pioneered the basic concept of the game with Hironobu Sakaguchi as a fusion between Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. He also states that the first revision of the game did not see much involvement from Sakaguchi, who'd delegated it to staff; Sakaguchi later scrapped this revision and restarted development from scratch via his personal involvement after fearing Toriyama would be displeased. This story is extremely unlikely and farfetched, of course.
[MITSUDA XENOBLADE] Mitsuda had a job doing sound effects for plays; his mentor worked for Enix. While flipping through a video game magazine, Mitsuda saw an ad for help wanted at Squaresoft, and his mentor encouraged him to apply.
[2015 SHUESHIA] Square ran a "Chrono Trigger Training Camp" in an opulent hotel in Roppongi Hills, allegedly to impress Yuji Horii. During the camp, Sakaguchi and Horii determined that an interplanetary parasite, Lavos, would be the final boss.
[2016 SAKAGUCHI] FF6's development team was folded into Chrono Trigger's team after FF6's release, which caused rifts and disagreements between the groups. Sakaguchi's solution was to make the teams have an hour lunch together every day to build camaraderie.
[CT DEV TWEETS] The floating glass platform screenshot from 1994 was planned for a location in antiquity, but was scrapped as they just could not get it to work correctly. ~~ Toriyama drew Marle casting fire magic because someone forgot to tell him that her powers are water/ice-based. ~~ Takashi Tokita took a personal interest in writing the resolution of Frog and Magus's enmity. ~~ "Grand Dream" was rejected as the name of the game due to copyright fears over a separate company whose names translates to Landream in Japan. ~~ In the earliest drafts of the story, the heroes are children from 1999 A.D. who disperse into different eras during the apocalypse, where they grow older and train to eventually defeat Lavos. It was planned to require the team to defeat Lavos simultaneously in all time periods.
[MITSUDA 2083] While working on the music for Zeal, Mitsuda got into a massive argument with Kato in Kato's cubicle over the setup of a scene featuring Schala, which concluded with Mitsuda wadding up a piece of paper and throwing it at Kato. Kato claims he doesn't remember this encounter at all.
[1999 MITSUDA] Mitsuda apparently tried to warn Masato Kato that he should save the Radical Dreamers ROM somehow, to preserve it for posterity after Satellaview stopped broadcasting. The team discussed adding it as a bonus to Chrono Cross, but did not for whatever reason.
[2010 MIWA IKUTA] Miwa Ikuta wrote the Mirror of Whispers in Radical Dreamers, and mentioned that at least one magazine reviewer felt the mirror's story was beautifully sad.
[MITSUDA CC 20TH] Lots of details about Scars of Time, including a chart of the song's progression.
[MITSUDA 2015 TO FAR AWAY TIMES] For the arrange album, Mitsuda initially wanted to write a conclusion for Kid's story, which was left hanging at the end of Chrono Cross via the scenes showing her searching for Serge through time. (He's literally...RIGHT THERE, IN ARNI, IN 1020 A.D....AUGH). Unfortunately, the final lyrics shed virtually no light on either Kid or Serge's fate, except that they get together (which we already knew).
[MITSUDA AND KATO BRINK OF TIME] Kato was crushed by the negative feedback to Chrono Cross; particularly, he did not understand the backlash against featuring so many characters, especially from fans who complained that multiple playthroughs were required to recruit them all. It soured him on being a video game designer for some time. Secondly, Mitsuda revealed that he had a lot of arguments with Kalta Ohtsuki and the other jazz musicians while recording the Chrono Trigger Brink of Time Jazz arrange album.
[CCDEMO SCRIPT] NeoFio's prototype name was 改良ラブルー. The Quadffid dialogue portrait is a placeholder for Neo-Fio, and the Nu/Beach Bum portrait is a placeholder for Pip.
[MISSING PIECE] Missing Piece states that the Acacia Dragoons were allied with Porre and presumably played a role in the Fall of Guardia. The "first time around" (before the Time Crash occurs, but after ''Chrono Trigger''), the Acacia Dragoons presumably would've stayed on the Zenan mainland (as they did in the continuity of Radical Dreamers), and still would have been fighting for Porre. Shifting gears, Tanaka and Kato revealed that for half of Chrono Cross's development, the default party was always Serge, Leena, and Mojo. Hiromichi Tanaka intervened to stop Mojo from being recruited so early, fearing that players would think the game is too quirky. Kato later commented that his preferred party is Serge, Mojo, and Starky.
[CROSS DEV TWEETS] Not all of the character designs were done by Nobuteru Yuuki; Kato designed some characters, like Starky.
[2011 YOSHIYUKI MIYAGAWA] He recounted that the deadline for Chrono Cross's development was too short, requiring Final Fantasy 8's team to be brought in two months before the Japanese release date to hurriedly finish the game. While proud of the game's art style, he did worry that it would be compared to doujinshi (fan-made works). Chrono Cross's programming became the basis for Final Fantasy 11's engine.
[CC ULTIMANIA PLOT] You don't want to know. Apparently, any Arbiter can possibly merge with Lavos to become the Time Devourer; the Arbiter is supposed to heal conflict between lifeforms. How does this work with Lavos?! He's always going to destroy the planet and harvest humans' DNA after straight-up murdering them. What is there to mediate?! Ultimania also states that Home World's future reflects a future in which Serge merges with the Time Devourer, which makes zero sense (it hasn't happened yet, for one; for two, the Time Devourer threatens all time, not just Home World, and not just post-1999 A.D.). Sigh. I am done carrying water for Chrono Cross.
