Next up: Radical Dreamers

I don't know if I'll get around to finishing the Chrono Trigger notes posts I had planned, but what I do know is that I'm playing Radical Dreamers next.

Radical Dreamers is kind of a sequel to Chrono Trigger, but stars the two main characters from Chrono Cross.  It kind of bridges the gap between the two.  Radical Dreamers is a text adventure game with simple, sometimes animated pictures in the background.  Battles are fought with textual choices for what to do next (i.e. "Attack!", "Jump back!" or "Hit the deck!").  It's sort of a visual novel, but with more emphasis on the novel part than the visual part.

Yeah, I've already played some of it.  I'm avoiding using a walkthrough or other guide for it.  I made it pretty far before I died horribly in what I guess I could call a boss fight.  I hadn't been using save states, so I'll have to start over again.  Yeah, this one's only playable on an emulator.  It was one of a few games released for the Satellaview, a Japanese-only SNES cartridge that let you download games, which was basically Nintendo's answer to the Sega Channel.  It was never released outside of Japan and has faded into obscurity, save for ROM archiving sites and an English translation patch.  The game's save function crashes when I try to use it, so I really have no choice but to use save states.

I don't really know much about the game.  There isn't the same amount of stuff to do as in Chrono Trigger or Chrono Cross, so once I beat the main story and then the side stories, that'll be it.  No characters to max out or anything.

I already know this in regards to Chrono Cross: I'm not recruiting Kid.  Recruiting her prevents you from getting Glenn, who despite the name is unrelated to a certain amphibious hero in Chrono Trigger.  For one, his hair's yellow, not green.  Second, the era in which the amphibious hero originates is over 400 years before the beginning of Chrono Cross.  He wields a sword, and by using the game's dimensional travel mechanics, you can get him two of his best sword and he'll happily dual-wield for you.

Also, no way in fucking hell am I going to max everyone out in Chrono Cross.  There's like 40 recruitable characters.  Fuck that.  I'll probably just play through to the true ending.  It's not like there's an extras mode to unlock by getting endings or anything.