February Mega-Update! PG in French, Mitsuda, and More!

[ZeaLitY]

Chrono Trigger: Prophet's Guile has been translated to French by the members of SNES-FR. You can check out a preview video here or grab the game here. Many thanks for spreading Prophet's Guile to a new audience!  [CRIMSON ECHOES] is still being beta tested. Everything's really coming together!

MITSUDA  >>>  [1]  Yasunori Mitsuda recently provided an interview to Originalsoundversion.com, in which he clarifies that he didn't write the PSX extra tracks and wasn't involved with that port at all; he gave Khalta Otsuki the idea to do an acid jazz arrangement with the Brink of Time; he has been too busy to work on the Chrono Cross arrange album and owns all the rights to Chrono Cross's music; and that Natsumi Kameoka arranged the two orchestral tracks released with Chrono Trigger DS. Find the entire interview here.  [2]  Find the small interview he did for Chrono Trigger DS's promotional materials here.

TRIGGER  >>>  [1]  Square's Japanese Members-Only CT Fan Club site recently awarded 3000 "members design" Chrono Trigger Orchestral Extra Track CDs (the music is the same) and two copies of the Chrono Trigger sheet music signed by Yasunori Mitsuda.  [2]  Yoko Endovale has found the Nuumamonja manga for sale on Amazon.co.jp here. If you pick one up, you can do the Compendium great justice by scanning it for future trans / scanlation.  [3]  T-rod has released the first two episodes of Chrono Apocalypse; find them here and here. [4] Translation of Chrono Trigger DS Ultimania continues! Check this thread for the latest translations! Huge thanks to Abel for producing high-quality scans, and to Lorenz, Magus22 & friends, and ShikiGami for translating!!

CROSS  >>>  [1]  Luminaire85 has released version 0.4.0 of his Blender model importer. The importer now handles just about anything you can throw at it, including large textures and models. Download it here.  [2]  yaz0r has released a savestate for the Chrono Cross demo that lets you see the debug room. Find a writeup about the room here or download the ePSXe savestate here.  [3]  yaz0r has written some quick and dirty code to export walkmesh .OUT files to .OBJ files, which can be handled by 3D editors. Grab it here.  [4]  A translation by utunnels has cleared up confusion regarding the Time Research Lab mentioned in Chrono Cross. Apparently, it's simply the predecessor to Chronopolis built after Belthasar came to 2300 A.D. Read the translation here.

SITE  >>>  [1]  HAHAHA SURREAL HUMOR CHRONO COMIX IS NOT UPDATED, FFFFUUU-  [2]  I've updated the bottom of the Game Index to show references to the Chrono series in other games. OVER 9000 REFERENCES.

FAN STUFF  >>>  [ART]  First is Zephira with Confronting the Mystic. Yoko Endovale's submitted several pieces - [ Space Explorers - Window Sitting - Sparkle! - Crittors - YOU HEARD THE MAN! - Dog - Crono 2 Da Meow Meow - Dog 2 - Cherubim - FEED THE CAT ALREADY - Marle ] Next is utunnels with Schala at the North Cape. Then it's Ozzie with his Nu. Sentou Ryoku contributes three pieces - [ Lucca and Robo - Lucca and Robo (Colored) - Lucca - Faces (Colored) ] Tushantin brings Serge and Kid. From Zaya, we have a bunch of chibis! [ Crono - Schala - Magus - Robo - Janus - Schala (Altered) - Ayla Chibi - Marle Chibi - Queen Zela Chibi - Flea Chibi - Magus Chibi - Lucca ] Finally, we have addie sin's Frog Mockup.  [FICTION]  First is Bigvinu's Rise of the Heckran Clan. Then comes FouCapitan's Chrono Breaker. From idioticidioms, we have Magus Rising.

[FaustWolf]

Well, damn. I totally, totally, should have caught the "Sea Swallow" reference in Ninja Gaiden. I shame myself as an old-school Ninja Gaiden fan. Kato may just have a thing for birds or something. Actually, I just found a fish by that name -- could the "Swallow" Serge uses actually refer to a type of fish?? Makes sense for the native of a fishing village.

Also, Kato's original sketch of Ayla looks fantastically like Irene Lew. In light of Kato's Ninja Gaiden work, I think he was actually more than cut out for doing both the art and story for CT; I wonder why they didn't go with him? Maybe because Toriyama's art brought extra attention to the game?

ZeaLitY, I shooped a point [4] into the Chrono Trigger section.

[Chrono'99]

Scubba diving is one of Kato's hobbies so maybe he really likes that fish or something.

There are other references in Ninja Gaiden I-II-III; I thought I had mentioned them somewhere on the forum but nope, I didn't yet.

• Ryu's father was not killed but was brainwashed and became evil (like Wazuki).
• The antagonist in Ninja Gaiden I is Guardia de Mieux, who becomes Jacquio (Jakio, "wicked king" in Japanese, while Jaki or "wicked" was Janus's Japanese name in CT).
• The antagonist in Ninja Gaiden II is called Ashtar and he carries the Sword of Chaos, which feeds on blood and hatred and which was "grown out of the bone of the Demon, the same way as your sword is supposed to come from the fang of the Dragon" (Ryu's sword is the Dragon Sword). It's like the Einlanzer vs. Masamune stuff.
• In Ninja Gaiden III, Ryu is framed for the murder of Irene, but it was in fact an artificial doppelganger of him that killed her (compare with Serge's murder of Kid).
• The NGIII antagonist Clancy wants to use some kind of transdimensional ruins/warship to "reshape" the world. This reminds me of Lynx's plan to reshape history in RD, though Clancy merges with the warship so the Time Devourer comes to mind too. Also, he manipulated Ryu into furthering his own agenda, like how all the villains manipulated Serge in CC.

This could be added to the Game Index page maybe, but I actually never played these 3 games (I read about their plots after I learnt Kato had worked on these games) so first, FaustWolf, is there anything inaccurate or totally wrong in what I posted?

[FaustWolf]

Sounds about right '99, and once again I'm flabbergasted that I never thought of these references before. The "Guardia de Mieux" reference should have been especially obvious to me in retrospect.

Jeez, it's like Ninja Gaiden was actually a testing ground for Chrono Trigger in a very weird way.

[Darkshadw]

My video tribute wasn't even mentioned. What a shame, I put so much time and effort into that. 

Other than that, it's nice to see the Chrono community is still thriving

[ZeaLitY]

The Compendium has no system or established procedure for archiving and presenting videos.

[Ramsus]

The Compendium has no system or established procedure for archiving and presenting videos.

Use the Compendium YouTube account, and maintain a Wiki page named Compendium Video Index.

[FouCapitan]

Oh snap, a front page mention!   

Now I really need to put my nose to the grindstone on part 5.

[ZeaLitY]

I was looking at the news and updates page, and just felt very satisfied at the system that's evolved, with:

NAME  >>>  [1]  BLAH, etc.

It's so orderly without sacrificing the in-your-face power and self-importance of news updates.

[swbpro]

This might not be the place for this, but am I the only one noticing the pitfalls of armature game development?

Most of this hack is pretty good, the minor collision issues that come up on occasion are expected, the occasional typo - no big deal but i'm finding the structure of the gameplay and direction of the narrative a big problem.  The next task or location is not always clear.

For instance, the opening missions were a hassle, and there was no place to "refresh your memory" as to what tasks you had to accomplish before you could head up to the castle.

Once AT the castle, you aren't sure where in the castle you are supposed to go. I went up both towers and to the basement on the LEFT side of the castle before finding Marle in the east wing.

In the Magas Story Dalton says something about the "Ruins behind the mountain," and as of now I am lost looking for these ruins, unable to find any new area that resemble the remark and unable to trigger the next event.

It takes way too long to "try everything," i think these directions need to be clearer, or the events modified so a player can't get lost so easily.  This is common in large scale rom hacks - it also happend in the Legend of Zelda Parallel Worlds hack - like this one it's a GREAT hack, but these "directionless" flaws make it quite frustrating.

[FaustWolf]

swb, that was an early demo build, right? Hopefully those issues won't crop up in the final build, to appear this May.

[HyperNerd]

Yeah, I noticed those flaws too, HOWEVER, I really enjoyed the demo. I can't wait for the game, seriously, you people are like gods to me now.

[swbpro]

swb, that was an early demo build, right? Hopefully those issues won't crop up in the final build, to appear this May.

No, this is in the 92% complete demo posted last month.  These aren't glitches so much as design issues.  Most of these problems can be easily fixed by changing a few lines of text, clarifying something - or adding a speech event, whereas Chronos Mother "reminds you" of your chores.  Mostly it's just dialogue that makes figuring out the next task difficult.

I STILL can't find the next place to go, and I have no reference to help me. It's a problem.

[Ramsus]

swb, that was an early demo build, right? Hopefully those issues won't crop up in the final build, to appear this May.

No, this is in the 92% complete demo posted last month.  These aren't glitches so much as design issues.  Most of these problems can be easily fixed by changing a few lines of text, clarifying something - or adding a speech event, whereas Chronos Mother "reminds you" of your chores.  Mostly it's just dialogue that makes figuring out the next task difficult.

I STILL can't find the next place to go, and I have no reference to help me. It's a problem.

I've only been watching others do the work (I've been working on something else for the project), but there's an amazing amount of work going into the beta testing, with bug and problem counts in the thousands, most of which have already been fixed over the last month.

Just out of curiosity though, where was this 92% complete demo posted?