Radical Dreamers: Nusumenai Houseki
Encyclopedia
is a Japan
ese video game produced by Square
(now Square Enix
) in 1996 for the Satellaview
add-on for the Nintendo
Super Famicom
. It is a text-based visual novel
in which the player takes the role of Serge, a young adventurer accompanied by Kid, a teen-aged thief
, and Gil, a mysterious masked magician
.
The game belongs to the Chrono series and is a gaiden
, or side story
, to the 1995 game Chrono Trigger
. It was released to complement its predecessor's plot, and later served as inspiration for Chrono Cross
. It features text-based gameplay with minimal graphics and sound effects, and was scored by composer Yasunori Mitsuda
.
Radical Dreamers and other Satellaview titles were planned to be released at the Akihabara
electronics district of Tokyo
. Square also tried to integrate it into the Japanese PlayStation
port of Chrono Trigger as an Easter egg. Writer and director Masato Kato
halted both releases, unhappy with the quality of his work. Though the game was never officially released abroad, ROM hackers
completed an English fan translation
in 2003.
Unlike many Satellaview titles, Radical Dreamers was not designed to lock after a certain number of play-throughs, so players owning an 8M Memory Pack onto which the game was downloaded can still play today. Due to the rarity of such 8M Memory Packs, however, the game is one of the most expensive on the Japanese secondary market - listed as 13th most expensive game in Akihabara
by Wired Magazine
.
consists of text-based scenarios presented to the player through the narration of the main character, Serge. As the narrative progresses, the game presents a list of possible actions and the player must choose his or her course. Depending on the choices made, the player may enter a new area, be presented with a new situation or character, or have to choose again if the previous selection was incorrect. In combat with enemies, the player must select from options such as "Fight", "Magic", "Run", and often more complex situational commands like "Run my knife into the goblin
's chest!" or "Quickly slash at its hand!". Some decisions must be made before an invisible timer runs out; in combat, hesitation results in injury or death. Serge's health is tracked by an invisible point count, restored by various events (such as finding a potion). The game also tracks Kid's affection for Serge, influenced by battles and scripted events. Her feelings determine whether Serge survives the story's climactic fight.
Radical Dreamers features minimal graphics and animation; most areas are rendered with dim, static backgrounds. The game also uses atmospheric music and sounds. Like other Chrono games, Radical Dreamers contains a variant of New Game +
mode. Only one scenario is available on the first play-through; after finishing it and obtaining one of three possible endings, players can explore six others. These later stories often feature comical situations or allusions to Chrono Trigger.
. Magil is an enigmatic, handsome masked man skilled in magic who rarely speaks and can fade into shadow at will. Crowned by flowing, blue hair, Magil accompanied Kid well before Serge joined the group. They seek the Frozen Flame, a mythic artifact capable of granting any wish. It is hidden in Viper Manor—the home of a terrible and powerful aristocrat named Lynx, who gained control of the estate after usurping power from and killing the Acacia Dragoons, a familial unit of warriors.
Following Kid, the group infiltrates Viper Manor on the night of a full moon. While sneaking through the corridors, they battle goblins and other creatures of legend while unraveling the history of the manor and its occupants. Magil explains that the Frozen Flame is a fragment of the massive, extraterrestrial creature known as Lavos, splintered off when Lavos impacted the planet in prehistory and burrowed to its core. The thieves locate Lynx and the Frozen Flame deep within an underground ruin of the Kingdom of Zeal—an ancient, airborne civilization destroyed after it awakened Lavos in search of immortality. Serge discovers that Kid is an orphan, hoping to exact revenge upon Lynx for killing her caretaker, Lucca. Kid attempted to find Lynx in her childhood after Lucca's death, but was stopped and saved from certain defeat by Magil, who accompanied her thereafter.
The trio battle Lynx for the Frozen Flame, and Lynx gains the upper hand after trapping Magil with a powerful spell. He plans to acquire Kid's special gift from Lucca—a Time Egg, or Chrono Trigger. With a Time Egg and the Frozen Flame, Lynx boasts that he shall achieve control over time. Kid lunges at him, but Lynx easily parries her attack and wounds her. She desperately removes the Chrono Trigger from her back pocket. The Trigger shatters and causes a localized temporal distortion, leading Serge to see various scenes in history. Kid learns of her heritage as princess Schala of Zeal, a meek girl who was coerced to help awaken Lavos with her magical power. As Zeal collapsed, Schala was wracked with anguish and guilt for her role in the incident. Nearby in the Ocean Palace, the Frozen Flame felt her grief and changed her to a baby, sending her to the modern era where Lucca found her. It is also circumstantially revealed that Magil is in fact Magus, Schala's wayward brother who searched for her after battling Lavos in Chrono Trigger. Once the distortion subsides, an army from Porre—a large nation in search of the Frozen Flame—storms the mansion. Lynx withdraws as Kid, Serge, and Magil flee. Kid tells Serge that she is aware of her true origin, and knowing that is a treasure which cannot be stolen. She bids him goodbye before disappearing into the darkness with Magil.
Other scenarios are available after players complete the first. These include both humorous and serious variations of the main plot.
Yasunori Mitsuda
, the artist who scored Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross
. The soundtrack includes several ambient pieces, including the sound of water running in a fountain and wind accompanied by strings. Players can listen to the game's songs by accessing a hidden menu in the "Gil: Caught Between Love and Adventure" scenario. The tracks were never officially named by Square, though Demiforce provided names for the Radical Dreamers fan translation. They include:
Several themes and musical patterns were later adapted for Chrono Cross on the suggestion of director Masato Kato
; many appear unchanged except for new instrumentation. Appearing in Chrono Cross are "Gale", "Frozen Flame", "Viper Manor", "Far Promise ~ Dream Shore" (as part of "On the Beach of Dreams ~ Another World", "The Dream that Time Dreams"), "The Girl who Stole the Stars", and "Epilogue ~ Dream Shore" (as part of "Jellyfish Sea"). Mitsuda also titled the game's ending song "Radical Dreamers -Le Trésor Interdit-".
' s release, feeling that Trigger concluded with "unfinished business". He composed the main story and drafted the concepts for the sub-scenarios, leaving them to be completed by his peers. He allowed Makoto Shimamoto to write the entire "Kid and the Sunflower" segment, later joking that he "avoided having any part in that episode," while Miwa Shoda was in charge of the "Shadow Realm and the Goddess of Death" segment. Kato remarked that his "savage feelings" from Chrono Trigger' s hectic development manifested in Kid's "unusually nihilistic attitude". He explained his approach towards the project in 1999:
Kato's team completed Radical Dreamers in only three months under a rushed production schedule, prompting him to label the game "unfinished" in an interview for the Ultimania
Chrono Cross
guide. He regretted that the schedule hampered the quality of his work, and explained that the connections to Chrono Trigger were evoked towards the end of the project:
group Demiforce released a fan translation rendering Radical Dreamers in English. The patch works by modifying the ROM
image of Dreamers used for playing console-based video games on personal computers through emulation
. The ability to save games was not enabled with the first patch, and some minor typos were left in, later remedied by successive releases. On Christmas Day 2005, Demiforce and Radical R released the final version (1.4) of the translation, which fixed remaining minor bugs. The French team Terminus Traduction made a French translation patch soon after.
A reviewer for Home of the Underdogs
lauded the game's excellent writing and the "superb" English translation patch, noting that the "interesting plot" would appeal to fantasy fans if they could stomach the limited interactivity. Having never played a Chrono game prior, the reviewer stated, "I was still able to follow the story and be drawn into the world of colorful characters." While praising the replay value
afforded by the extra scenarios, the critic derided the random battles of Radical Dreamers, writing that "RPG-style random combat doesn't translate well to [a] text-only medium." The website awarded Dreamers "Top Dog" status, and the game maintains a voter score of 8.95 out of 10.
Radical Dreamers preceded Chrono Cross
, a full role-playing game sequel to Chrono Trigger
. Masato Kato cited the desire to "redo Radical Dreamers properly" as the genesis of Cross, attributing the latter's serious atmosphere to the influence of Dreamers. Chrono Cross borrowed certain thematic elements, story points, characters, music, and objects introduced in Radical Dreamers—including the infiltration of Viper Manor, the Frozen Flame, the name Radical Dreamers for Kid's thievery, and the characters of Kid, Lynx, and Serge (who became a non-speaking protagonist). Though these characters and items were not presented in the same context, their general traits survived the transition. Gil, confirmed by Kato to be Magus, was also going to be featured in Chrono Cross. This idea was scrapped due to difficulties in representing the story of Magus among the game's numerous other characters; the unrelated, enigmatic magician Guile was created instead. Since the release of Chrono Cross, Radical Dreamers is considered an alternate continuity of the Chrono series. Chrono Cross addressed this through an easter egg
hinting that Radical Dreamers took place in a different dimension
. In the English version of Chrono Cross, this easter egg refers to Gil as "Magil". A new Chrono series game has not been made due to the difficulty of reuniting the splintered Cross development team, some of which continue to work on Final Fantasy XI
and Final Fantasy XIV
, while others left Square Enix (then Square) after the completion of Chrono Cross to form Monolith Soft
. Composer Yasunori Mitsuda stressed that "there are a lot of politics involved" in the creation of a new game, and that Masato Kato should participate in development.
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese video game produced by Square
Square (company)
was a Japanese video game company founded in September 1983 by Masafumi Miyamoto. It merged with Enix in 2003 and became part of Square Enix...
(now Square Enix
Square Enix
is a Japanese video game and publishing company best known for its console role-playing game franchises, which include the Final Fantasy series, the Dragon Quest series, and the action-RPG Kingdom Hearts series...
) in 1996 for the Satellaview
Satellaview
The is a satellite modem add-on for Nintendo's Super Famicom system that was released in Japan in 1995. Available for pre-release orders as early as February 13, 1995, the Satellaview retailed for between ¥14,000 and 18,000 and came bundled with the BS-X Game Pak and an 8M Memory Pak.The...
add-on for the Nintendo
Nintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
Super Famicom
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia , and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, the system is called the , or SFC for short...
. It is a text-based visual novel
Visual novel
A is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
in which the player takes the role of Serge, a young adventurer accompanied by Kid, a teen-aged thief
Theft
In common usage, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent. The word is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting and fraud...
, and Gil, a mysterious masked magician
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
.
The game belongs to the Chrono series and is a gaiden
Gaiden
is a Japanese-language word meaning "side story" or "tale", used to refer to an anecdote or supplementary biography of a person. This use of gaiden is commonly used in popular Japanese fiction to refer to a spin-off of a previously published work that is neither officially considered a sequel nor...
, or side story
Side story
A side story is a story that occurs alongside established stories set within a fictional universe. As opposed to a prequel, sequel, or interquel, a side story takes place within the same time frame as an existing work....
, to the 1995 game Chrono Trigger
Chrono Trigger
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1995. Chrono Triggers development team included three designers that Square dubbed the "Dream Team": Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Square's Final Fantasy series; Yuji Horii, a...
. It was released to complement its predecessor's plot, and later served as inspiration for Chrono Cross
Chrono Cross
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the PlayStation video game console. It is the sequel to Chrono Trigger, which was released in 1995 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System...
. It features text-based gameplay with minimal graphics and sound effects, and was scored by composer Yasunori Mitsuda
Yasunori Mitsuda
is a Japanese video game composer, sound programmer, and musician. He has composed music for or worked on over 35 games, and has contributed to over 15 other albums...
.
Radical Dreamers and other Satellaview titles were planned to be released at the Akihabara
Akihabara
, also known as , is an area of Tokyo, Japan. It is located less than five minutes by rail from Tokyo Station. Its name is frequently shortened to in Japan...
electronics district of Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
. Square also tried to integrate it into the Japanese PlayStation
PlayStation
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...
port of Chrono Trigger as an Easter egg. Writer and director Masato Kato
Masato Kato
is a Japanese video game artist, scenario writer and director. In the early days of his career, he was credited under the pseudonyms of "Runmaru" and "Runmal".- Biography :...
halted both releases, unhappy with the quality of his work. Though the game was never officially released abroad, ROM hackers
ROM hacking
ROM hacking is the process of modifying a video game ROM image to alter the game's graphics, dialogue, levels, gameplay, or other elements. This is usually done by technically inclined video game fans to breathe new life into a cherished old game, as a creative outlet, or to make essentially new...
completed an English fan translation
Fan translation
A fan translation, in video gaming, refers to an unofficial translation of a computer game or video game.The fan translation practice grew with the rise of video game console emulation in the late 1990s. A community of people developed that were interested in replaying and modifying the games they...
in 2003.
Unlike many Satellaview titles, Radical Dreamers was not designed to lock after a certain number of play-throughs, so players owning an 8M Memory Pack onto which the game was downloaded can still play today. Due to the rarity of such 8M Memory Packs, however, the game is one of the most expensive on the Japanese secondary market - listed as 13th most expensive game in Akihabara
Akihabara
, also known as , is an area of Tokyo, Japan. It is located less than five minutes by rail from Tokyo Station. Its name is frequently shortened to in Japan...
by Wired Magazine
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
.
Gameplay
GameplayGameplay
Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game, and in particular with video games. Gameplay is the pattern defined through the game rules, connection between player and the game, challenges and overcoming them, plot and player's connection with it...
consists of text-based scenarios presented to the player through the narration of the main character, Serge. As the narrative progresses, the game presents a list of possible actions and the player must choose his or her course. Depending on the choices made, the player may enter a new area, be presented with a new situation or character, or have to choose again if the previous selection was incorrect. In combat with enemies, the player must select from options such as "Fight", "Magic", "Run", and often more complex situational commands like "Run my knife into the goblin
Goblin
A goblin is a legendary evil or mischievous illiterate creature, a grotesquely evil or evil-like phantom.They are attributed with various abilities, temperaments and appearances depending on the story and country of origin. In some cases, goblins have been classified as constantly annoying little...
's chest!" or "Quickly slash at its hand!". Some decisions must be made before an invisible timer runs out; in combat, hesitation results in injury or death. Serge's health is tracked by an invisible point count, restored by various events (such as finding a potion). The game also tracks Kid's affection for Serge, influenced by battles and scripted events. Her feelings determine whether Serge survives the story's climactic fight.
Radical Dreamers features minimal graphics and animation; most areas are rendered with dim, static backgrounds. The game also uses atmospheric music and sounds. Like other Chrono games, Radical Dreamers contains a variant of New Game +
New Game Plus
A New Game Plus is an unlockable video game mode that allows the player to start a new game after they finish the game at least once, where certain aspects of the finished game, such as experience or items, affect the newly started game...
mode. Only one scenario is available on the first play-through; after finishing it and obtaining one of three possible endings, players can explore six others. These later stories often feature comical situations or allusions to Chrono Trigger.
Characters and story
Radical Dreamers features three protagonists—Serge, Kid, and Magil—who seek out treasure as venturesome, reputable thieves. The young adult narrator, Serge, is a drifting musician who met Kid by chance three years ago in a remote town. Serge enjoys adventure with a carefree attitude. Kid, only sixteen years old, is a renowned professional thief with a reputation for boisterous behavior. Possessing a turbulent history, Kid dubiously fancies herself as a kind of Robin HoodRobin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....
. Magil is an enigmatic, handsome masked man skilled in magic who rarely speaks and can fade into shadow at will. Crowned by flowing, blue hair, Magil accompanied Kid well before Serge joined the group. They seek the Frozen Flame, a mythic artifact capable of granting any wish. It is hidden in Viper Manor—the home of a terrible and powerful aristocrat named Lynx, who gained control of the estate after usurping power from and killing the Acacia Dragoons, a familial unit of warriors.
The trio battle Lynx for the Frozen Flame, and Lynx gains the upper hand after trapping Magil with a powerful spell. He plans to acquire Kid's special gift from Lucca—a Time Egg, or Chrono Trigger. With a Time Egg and the Frozen Flame, Lynx boasts that he shall achieve control over time. Kid lunges at him, but Lynx easily parries her attack and wounds her. She desperately removes the Chrono Trigger from her back pocket. The Trigger shatters and causes a localized temporal distortion, leading Serge to see various scenes in history. Kid learns of her heritage as princess Schala of Zeal, a meek girl who was coerced to help awaken Lavos with her magical power. As Zeal collapsed, Schala was wracked with anguish and guilt for her role in the incident. Nearby in the Ocean Palace, the Frozen Flame felt her grief and changed her to a baby, sending her to the modern era where Lucca found her. It is also circumstantially revealed that Magil is in fact Magus, Schala's wayward brother who searched for her after battling Lavos in Chrono Trigger. Once the distortion subsides, an army from Porre—a large nation in search of the Frozen Flame—storms the mansion. Lynx withdraws as Kid, Serge, and Magil flee. Kid tells Serge that she is aware of her true origin, and knowing that is a treasure which cannot be stolen. She bids him goodbye before disappearing into the darkness with Magil.
Other scenarios are available after players complete the first. These include both humorous and serious variations of the main plot.
- "Magil: Caught Between Love and Adventure" – Magil is actually a lifelong friend of Riddel who courts her. When the manor is alerted to his presence, Magil throws Riddel over his shoulder and dashes off into the morning sun as her proud father Lynx tearily bids goodbye.
- "Kid and the Sunflower" – Kid insults a lecherous sunflower who transforms her into a malicious monster. Serge must kiss her to change her back, or use a special dagger to take her soul at risk of his own soul's capture. Three endings are available.
- "SuperXtreme Alphacosmos Police Case EX Ultra" – Magil is a space cop searching for Lynx, secretly a green Martian creature with tentacles. Magil's rockRock and rollRock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
guitar forces Lynx out of hiding, and Serge assaults him with a Martian Forest League Concealed Lesser Armament Bunny. - "Homecoming: Shea's Light" – Kid learns that Lynx and her caretaker Shea are trapped in a magical seal as part of Lynx's effort to escape a spirit prison. Shea selflessly instructs Magil to destroy the Frozen Flame, killing Lynx forever.
- "The Enigmatic Gigaweapon: Paradise X" – Serge finds an odd crystal inhabited by an entity named Gange, who tests his strength with gladiatorial combat. Using Gange's Paradise X mechaMechaA mech , is a science fiction term for a large walking bipedal tank or robot, including ones on treads and animal shapes.-Characteristics:...
, Serge and Gange challenge Mecha-Lynx for the Frozen Flame. - "The Shadow Realm and the Goddess of Death" – Kid accidentally summons Lilith, the Goddess of Death. She tries to take Kid's soul, but Magil intervenes. The outcome is slightly affected by Kid's affection for Serge.
Music
The music of Radical Dreamers was written by composerComposer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
Yasunori Mitsuda
Yasunori Mitsuda
is a Japanese video game composer, sound programmer, and musician. He has composed music for or worked on over 35 games, and has contributed to over 15 other albums...
, the artist who scored Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross
Chrono Cross
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the PlayStation video game console. It is the sequel to Chrono Trigger, which was released in 1995 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System...
. The soundtrack includes several ambient pieces, including the sound of water running in a fountain and wind accompanied by strings. Players can listen to the game's songs by accessing a hidden menu in the "Gil: Caught Between Love and Adventure" scenario. The tracks were never officially named by Square, though Demiforce provided names for the Radical Dreamers fan translation. They include:
Several themes and musical patterns were later adapted for Chrono Cross on the suggestion of director Masato Kato
Masato Kato
is a Japanese video game artist, scenario writer and director. In the early days of his career, he was credited under the pseudonyms of "Runmaru" and "Runmal".- Biography :...
; many appear unchanged except for new instrumentation. Appearing in Chrono Cross are "Gale", "Frozen Flame", "Viper Manor", "Far Promise ~ Dream Shore" (as part of "On the Beach of Dreams ~ Another World", "The Dream that Time Dreams"), "The Girl who Stole the Stars", and "Epilogue ~ Dream Shore" (as part of "Jellyfish Sea"). Mitsuda also titled the game's ending song "Radical Dreamers -Le Trésor Interdit-".
Development
Masato Kato wrote Radical Dreamers after Chrono TriggerKato's team completed Radical Dreamers in only three months under a rushed production schedule, prompting him to label the game "unfinished" in an interview for the Ultimania
Ultimania
This is a list of companion books relating to games developed and published by Square Enix. Starting with Final Fantasy III, Square began publishing guide books for its games which traditionally include additional content such as developer interviews and expanded plot and setting information...
Chrono Cross
Chrono Cross
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the PlayStation video game console. It is the sequel to Chrono Trigger, which was released in 1995 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System...
guide. He regretted that the schedule hampered the quality of his work, and explained that the connections to Chrono Trigger were evoked towards the end of the project:
Fan translation and notability
In April 2003, the ROM hackingROM hacking
ROM hacking is the process of modifying a video game ROM image to alter the game's graphics, dialogue, levels, gameplay, or other elements. This is usually done by technically inclined video game fans to breathe new life into a cherished old game, as a creative outlet, or to make essentially new...
group Demiforce released a fan translation rendering Radical Dreamers in English. The patch works by modifying the ROM
Read-only memory
Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
image of Dreamers used for playing console-based video games on personal computers through emulation
Video game console emulator
A video game console emulator is a program that allows a computer or modern console to emulate a different video game console's behavior. Emulators are most often used to play older video games on personal computers and modern video game consoles, but they are also used to play games translated...
. The ability to save games was not enabled with the first patch, and some minor typos were left in, later remedied by successive releases. On Christmas Day 2005, Demiforce and Radical R released the final version (1.4) of the translation, which fixed remaining minor bugs. The French team Terminus Traduction made a French translation patch soon after.
A reviewer for Home of the Underdogs
Home of the Underdogs
Home of the Underdogs was an abandonware archive founded by Thai Sarinee Achavanuntakul , aka: Underdogs or Fringer on her own blog, in September 1998, and grew to be one of the most significant abandonware websites on the Internet, despite losing its domains to cybersquatters and then briefly...
lauded the game's excellent writing and the "superb" English translation patch, noting that the "interesting plot" would appeal to fantasy fans if they could stomach the limited interactivity. Having never played a Chrono game prior, the reviewer stated, "I was still able to follow the story and be drawn into the world of colorful characters." While praising the replay value
Replay value
Replay value or replayability is a term found in combination with video games, but it may be also used to describe other kinds of games, movies, music, or theater plays. In video games, the term replay value is used to describe the entertainment value of playing a game more than once...
afforded by the extra scenarios, the critic derided the random battles of Radical Dreamers, writing that "RPG-style random combat doesn't translate well to [a] text-only medium." The website awarded Dreamers "Top Dog" status, and the game maintains a voter score of 8.95 out of 10.
Radical Dreamers preceded Chrono Cross
Chrono Cross
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the PlayStation video game console. It is the sequel to Chrono Trigger, which was released in 1995 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System...
, a full role-playing game sequel to Chrono Trigger
Chrono Trigger
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1995. Chrono Triggers development team included three designers that Square dubbed the "Dream Team": Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Square's Final Fantasy series; Yuji Horii, a...
. Masato Kato cited the desire to "redo Radical Dreamers properly" as the genesis of Cross, attributing the latter's serious atmosphere to the influence of Dreamers. Chrono Cross borrowed certain thematic elements, story points, characters, music, and objects introduced in Radical Dreamers—including the infiltration of Viper Manor, the Frozen Flame, the name Radical Dreamers for Kid's thievery, and the characters of Kid, Lynx, and Serge (who became a non-speaking protagonist). Though these characters and items were not presented in the same context, their general traits survived the transition. Gil, confirmed by Kato to be Magus, was also going to be featured in Chrono Cross. This idea was scrapped due to difficulties in representing the story of Magus among the game's numerous other characters; the unrelated, enigmatic magician Guile was created instead. Since the release of Chrono Cross, Radical Dreamers is considered an alternate continuity of the Chrono series. Chrono Cross addressed this through an easter egg
Easter egg (media)
Image:Carl Oswald Rostosky - Zwei Kaninchen und ein Igel 1861.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Example of Easter egg hidden within imagerect 467 383 539 434 desc none...
hinting that Radical Dreamers took place in a different dimension
Parallel universe (fiction)
A parallel universe or alternative reality is a hypothetical self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own. A specific group of parallel universes is called a "multiverse", although this term can also be used to describe the possible parallel universes that constitute reality...
. In the English version of Chrono Cross, this easter egg refers to Gil as "Magil". A new Chrono series game has not been made due to the difficulty of reuniting the splintered Cross development team, some of which continue to work on Final Fantasy XI
Final Fantasy XI
, also known as Final Fantasy XI Online, is a MMORPG developed and published by Square as part of the Final Fantasy series. It was released in Japan on Sony's PlayStation 2 on May 16, 2002, and was released for Microsoft's Windows-based personal computers in November 2002...
and Final Fantasy XIV
Final Fantasy XIV
, also known as Final Fantasy XIV Online, is the fourteenth installment in the Final Fantasy series. It was released in September 2010 for Microsoft Windows, with a PlayStation 3 port in development. The game is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game and is developed and published by...
, while others left Square Enix (then Square) after the completion of Chrono Cross to form Monolith Soft
Monolith Soft
is a Japanese entertainment company that has created video games for the PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Wii, Nintendo DS, and cell phones. The company was founded in 1999 by producer Hirohide Sugiura after he left Square Co. and accepted an investment from Namco...
. Composer Yasunori Mitsuda stressed that "there are a lot of politics involved" in the creation of a new game, and that Masato Kato should participate in development.