But the third option – 'Tech' – is where it gets interesting. Every character has a basic Attack command, and can use Items too. What's more, the battle mechanics present an incredible variety of opportunities for teamwork. There's no visual cut-away to some separate battlefield screen like in so many other RPGs – here, you see a baddie and you attack it right there. You control a party of up to three heroes at a time, fighting foes right where you encounter them in the environment. The battle system is second, as it was, and still is, wonderfully unique. That alone would have made Chrono Trigger a hit – but time travel was just the first of its many special qualities. Other games of the SNES era began to explore the idea of alternate worlds or parallel dimensions, but here in Chrono Trigger you see the entire existence of a planet play out from the dawn of mankind all the way to beyond the apocalypse.

The time-traveling concept set Chrono Trigger apart from other RPGs, as its many different eras of time are expertly interwoven and your actions in the past accurately influence the future. He boldly jumps in after her, setting in motion a story that has you following his adventures back in time to the past, forward in time to the distant future and every other point in-between – as what begins as a rescue mission for one young girl escalates into a battle for the fate of the planet. A wide-eyed, wild-haired boy living in the year 1000 A.D., he becomes thrust into a quest to save the world when a mysterious portal in time opens up and swallows his friend Marle. Crono is the name of our silent protagonist in Chrono Trigger.

Download live a live chrono trigger