I’ve fallen for Chrono Trigger’s text adventure pseudo-sequel

I’ve been haunted by Radical Dreamers since I was a nerdy, RPG-loving teenager. In 1996, I heard internet whispers about a pseudo-sequel to the SNES masterpiece Chrono Trigger, which remains my favorite game to this day. But Radical Dreamers wasn’t your ordinary title: It was a text adventure released solely in Japan for Nintendo’s Sattelaview, a satellite peripheral that let you download games to the SNES.

Now with the Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition, I finally have an easy way to catch up on both of Chrono Trigger’s follow-ups. Radical Dreamers is relatively simple, where you play as Serge, a young thief working with his companion Kid and a mysterious mage named Magil.

Playing Radical Dreamers also made me excited to give Chrono Cross another chance. That’s a game I was eager to play when it was originally released in 2000, but I never quite clicked with it because it was so dramatically different from my beloved Chrono Trigger.