The Super Famicom Vol.5 No.16 (Sep. 16, 1994) early screenshots

[Vehek]

Something I stumbled upon while doing some research on a completely different Chrono-related topic.

https://videogamesdensetsu.tumblr.com/post/172474134540/chrono-trigger-preview-showing-many-differences


[hidden]Until very recently, the last post on the blog was an announcement from the author that he was calling it quits in part due to frustration at having all his hard work on research stolen.
So I'm hesitant to dump full images here, and am just showing this one very different part.[/hidden]

Besides the image above, these are the scenes I don't recognize from either the ones collected on this site or the V-Jump scans I linked to last year.

• Cathedral-like room (page 2)
  
• A different early overworld - seems like the future, but could also be prehistoric based on placement next to a hut interior image (page 2)
• Early version of Crono's room (page 4)
• Another portion of the early overworld, with the party by a lone house (page 4)
• Factory (page 4)

[時間移動に関係あり？の不思議な部屋]
[Is this related to time travel? The Wonder Room]

ここで神秘的な雰囲気をもつ、３つの部屋を紹介しておこう。ないかが転送されているように見えるけど、現時点でなまぅたくの謎だ。ゲーム上，重要な場面かもしれないぞ。
Here are three rooms with a mysterious atmosphere. It looks as if it's a transporter, but that's a complete mystery at the moment. This could be an important scene in the game.

*床の形からすると、３つは別々の部屋にがんじ感じるけと、同じ部屋での連続した場面にも見える。
From the shape of the floor, it looks like there are three separate rooms, or a series of scenes in the same room.
*中央の物体には、目や口らしきものが見える。ちょっとグロテスク。
The central object appears to have eyes or what appears to be a mouth. It is a little grotesque.
*見れたのはモンスターらしい。少なくとも人間ではなさそうだ。敵か味方か？
What we can see appears to be a monster. At least it does not appear to be human. Friend or foe?
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[hidden]

There's an old tweet linking to all the scans he did for that magazine issue.
https://twitter.com/VGDensetsu/status/980349834447282176
I don't know if the quality would be better than downloading them from Tumblr[/hidden]

[ZeaLitY]

I'm going to reorganize the Alpha page to just make it indexed by source, at this point.

It's unfortunate that "Chrono Trigger Prerelease" was the vernacular for two decades now, because I'm totally onboard the proper way to refer to these things (it should be "Chrono Trigger Prototype", with Alpha Version Screenshots renamed "Prerelease Screenshots", but I feel like it'd be too confusing to rename everything this late in the game).

Also experimenting with the idea of small cash bounties for the Material Requiring Translation, at this point. Nowhere near what a professional translator would actually be paid on a time basis to translate, but...something is better than nothing. If I had to think of any unfinished legacy of the site, it would be getting that material translated.

[Acacia Sgt]

[/li][li]A different early overworld - from context of where it's placed, apparently prehistoric or assumed as such by the magazine (page 2)[/li][/list]

You mean second to the right? Looks more like the Future than Prehistory.

In fact, I got curious by what looks to be explosion effects used for Lavos's attack. I looked up what the last sentence of the text said:

外を歩いてるだけでダメージ受けてしまいそうだ.
Just walking outside is likely to damage you.

Admittedly, I Google Translate it, but I think it is correct.

In fact, wasn't the whole "Walking outside for long in the Future will damage you" thing an often-brought up rumor for years? Maybe this is where it originated from after all this time?

[Vehek]

That was my first thought too, that it was the future. It's just where they put the image that made me reconsider. I only put effort into transcribing the section of the scans I posted, so I don't know much about the rest of the content yet.

It's unfortunate that "Chrono Trigger Prerelease" was the vernacular for two decades now, because I'm totally onboard the proper way to refer to these things

Yeah, I've been to The Cutting Room Floor too. They use "prerelease" to refer to media coverage and source code leaks, and "prototype" for demos and other early versiobs with ROMs.

[Reld]

I've been meaning to get these scanned and uploaded for a while, but I kept procrastinating because I'm a good-for-nothing lazybones. Now seems as good a time as any. Posting them in this thread because they contain a lot of the same shots (like that future overworld), but from a different source. These are from the V Fes '94 special edition magazine.

Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Page 11
Page 12

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

I'm drooling right now. Wowza.

[ZeaLitY]

Thanks a metric ton, Reld. I've started getting things updated with the V-Jump scans from Frnak first (linking to the backend, here): https://www.chronocompendium.com/wiki/index.php/Alpha_Version_Screenshot Let me know if you have any ideas on how better to structure the page; no doubt, I'm starting to become aware of how dated everything feels, but...

Will begin parsing this next. It looks like TCRF's prerelease page is pretty damn sparse, so it looks like we'll be on the cutting edge again. I've left to-dos for myself to comb these for better scans of the official art (to think, we've come this far from those awful Tripod/Geocities jpegs), and to also get everything properly indexed on Material Requiring Translation. As you can see, haven't even begun to speculate on the changes/content of the individual screenshots. This is exciting!

Let me know if anything (like the Tumblr) shouldn't be added to the encyclopedia yet, to avoid stepping on toes. My usual practice has been to archive those offline.

[Reld]

Did you get my scans to load? It looks like you edited out the part about the links not working, but if I need to upload them somewhere else I can try. I use imgbox because it doesn't compress the hell out of large images like imgur does.

Speaking of material requiring translation, did you see these?

I tried translating Next Gate Part 8

Scanned in an old preview/ad from the 9/23/94 issue of Weekly Famitsu and tried translating that as well

I'll stop derailing this thread now.

The images posted as an embed at the top of this thread seem related to the room in the bottom right box in the Next Gate 8 scans.  The blurb for the image in Next Gate 8 says it's a location related to techs. Not sure what to make of that, but it seems ripe for speculation. I also kind of wonder if these were meant to be the interior counterpart to the floating "ice" tileset.

[ZeaLitY]

Yup, got them added to the encyclopedia as well; thanks a ton. I've saved down the VGD tumblr stuff in the meantime, to remain offline until someone else scans that particular magazine, I guess. I'll get these in next!

[ZeaLitY]

Btw, do you know what date the actual V Festival 94 took place? I don't have a date on the cover of the VHS tape, and Googling isn't giving me much luck at the moment. I've been putting it before all the October 1994 issues on the page's new chronological ordering.

[Reld]

The date on the special edition magazine cover is 9/15/94.

[justin3009]

Wow this is one hell of a haul that was found! It's amazing how different some of this looks. Great find!

[Sailor Phantom]

Oh wow, I love seeing the early stages, just how much it's changed and grown! And how it shows off the running and walking sprites, reminding me that it was a big deal then!!

[TheMage]

Ahhh this is so awesome, makes me want to do some digging of my own! It's so cool to see early versions of the game!

[ZeaLitY]

https://mobile.twitter.com/parkerrsimmons/status/964036969444491266

I can track down the Dr. Slump and Crono cover, but the other two ("Cover" and Marle, Ayla, and Lucca) are proving more difficult. Does anyone know what issue those correspond to, or if they're also from the same V-Jump issues and just missed by that original scanner?

Throwing them under an Unknown header for now on the page.