Role-Playing Games · 1990s

Chrono Trigger

A time-traveling role-playing game made by the era's leading designers — the 'Dream Team' behind Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Dragon Ball — with battles that flow out of exploration instead of random encounters. Its seven eras of history react to each other.

Why it matters

It packed a dozen endings into a 16-bit cartridge and made choices carry across millennia. Its no-transition battles and combo-based combat remain benchmarks for how to keep turn-based play brisk.

Play it today

Available on PC (Steam) and mobile platforms in its later expanded edition.

Start here

Play the current PC or mobile edition — it adds the extra dungeons from the Nintendo DS version. Avoid spoiling the ending list; replaying eras with new choices is the game's quiet masterstroke.

Sources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrono_Trigger — release date, development team, editions

Sources for this page were checked 2026-09-21.