Ah, a French translation, that's a work for me. Tanaka doesn't speak about a remake but he does say (sadly) that there's no sequel planned:
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Today, Square Enix invited the video game press to an event concerning Final Fantasy III on Nintendo DS, organized in a luxurious hotel in the posh areas of Paris. We thus were able to meet Hiromichi Tanaka, who has worked with Square since its creation in the 80s. Designer for the first Final Fantasy installments, Seiken Densetsu, as well as Chrono Cross, he agreed to answer our questions together with other journalists during a video interview that you can now watch in its entirety. Hiromichi Tanaka of course talked about his game Final Fantasy III which he developed on Famicom and more recently on Nintendo DS; he mentioned as well more technical aspects such as 3D game engines. The Japanese producer also gave us his opinion on Square Enix's current news. After the numerous rumors, Hiromichi Tanaka stated that no sequel to the game Chrono Cross is in development at Square Enix, simply because such a project would be quite difficult to put together, since all the members who participated in the development of the original game are working on other projects and thus are not available. Besides, the Japanese publisher confirmed to us that the European release date of Final Fantasy III is to be officially announced in the next few days. Finally, here are the first screenshots of Final Fantasy III's French version on Nintendo DS.
Translation of the part concerning Chrono:
Q: I know you've worked on Chrono Cross. There are a lot of fans of this game even here in France where it wasn't released, so could we expect to see a sequel, one day?(Tanaka takes a huge breath when he hears the translation, then he laughes a little bit, as if he had been expecting the question or something...)
A: Well, the problem with Chrono Cross and Chrono Trigger is that, the Chrono series is what it is because we always had a very particular team to develop it. Chrono Trigger is kind of the "game of the miracle" because it was a period when great creators like Akira Toriyama and others were available at that moment, and that's how the game could be made. And for Chrono Cross it's the same thing. The producer for Chrono Cross who is now the scenario writer for Secret of Mana 4[see note 1], the producer for Chrono Cross who was Mr Kitase[see note 2] who is now very busy on the Final Fantasy games since the VII or VIII... And so this means that it's very difficult to be able to reunite the original team, to be able to make a sequel to the Chrono series... Simply because if we don't try to reunite these people but take other people instead, we will find ourselves at that point with a game which will feel different, since there would be different persons in charge and we would possibly lose the Chrono spirit, if we make a sequel that way.
Q: So for the moment it's a no?A: As of now, there is no sequel planned.
[Note 1] Unless Tanaka slipped and accidentally revealed the name of a new, still top-secret project or something, the interpreter is probably referring to Seiken Densetsu 4 alias Dawn of Mana, which has just been released in Japan. And of course, the scenario writer referred to is Masato Kato, who was not producer for Chrono Cross (that's Tanaka right here!) but director.
[Note 2] Yes, the interpreter says "producer for Chrono Cross" twice, he made a little mix-up. Kitase was co-producer for Chrono Trigger, not Cross. I think Tanaka also mentioned in Japanese the name of one of the other co-producers for Trigger, Tokita, but the translator just said Kitase. Don't criticize him, it's hard to translate Japanese to French orally with all those names and functions!
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That suuucks! Is this really the end for the Chrono series?
And what the hell is Kato doing with these crappy Mana games?? If I were him, I'd say to Square Enix "Give me a Chrono or I frigging quit this company", like what Mitsuda said to Square in 1995 when he wanted to have his first composer role in a game!
