I want to believe a Chrono Trigger remake is in development

I want this to be true, so take everything that follows with the appropriate grain of salt. I almost didn't publish this article. I don't like getting into rumors. But here we go.

In a ResetEra thread about a recent Square Enix survey asking fans which classic titles they'd like to see remade, a user named John Harker casually dropped this: "the chrono stuff is already in dev tho. Let's ask for something else, like opening back up triangle strategy 2 or a legit sequel to final fantasy tactics!" When another poster pointed out that he'd "just said the quiet part out loud," Harker replied: "Wouldn't be the first time."

Should you believe this?

Probably not, at least not yet. Harker has been posting insider-ish information on ResetEra since 2017 (his profile title is literally "Knows things..."), and he's gotten some calls right over the years, including details about Assassin's Creed titles and the timing of PlayStation and Nintendo showcase events. But community-compiled leaker rankings put him at Tier 3 out of 5, a "50/50" rating, meaning his claims land about as often as they miss. For context, that's three tiers below journalists like Jason Schreier who verify with multiple sources before publishing.

There's also the matter of specificity. Harker didn't say what kind of remake this would be, who's developing it, or when it might be announced. "The chrono stuff" is vague enough to mean almost anything, from a full ground-up remake to an HD remaster to something that got greenlit and might never ship. One casual forum post from a mid-tier source is not a confirmation.

Why it's at least plausible

The thread where Harker dropped this comment exists because Square Enix's Team Asano, the studio behind Octopath Traveler, Triangle Strategy, and the HD-2D remakes of Live A Live and Dragon Quest III, put out a survey asking fans which Square Enix games they'd most like to see remade. The survey specifically asked respondents to choose a visual format: HD-2D, full 3D, the "doll look" style from Dragon Quest VII Reimagined, Pixel Remaster, or standard HD remaster.

When you run a survey like that, and the internet's top answer is overwhelmingly "Chrono Trigger" (as it is in every Square Enix survey, every time), it would be stranger if nobody at the company had at least started working on it. Chrono Trigger is the white whale of JRPG remakes. Fans have been requesting it for over a decade. At some point, somebody at Square Enix had to say yes.

The game that earned the hype

I'll be upfront: I only played Chrono Trigger for the first time two years ago. I went in skeptical. It takes a lot to get me hooked on a turn-based RPG, and a 30-year-old game with a rabid fanbase felt like a setup for disappointment. It wasn't. The pacing is perfect, the combat never drags, and the time-travel story has a scope that most modern RPGs with fifty times the budget can't touch. It had its claws in me within the first few hours, and I finally understood why people have been begging Square Enix for a remake since the PlayStation 3 era. While writing this, I feel like I can hear the music.

For those who haven't played it: Chrono Trigger was released in 1995 for the Super Famicom and SNES, built by what Square called the "Dream Team." That meant Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii, and Dragon Ball artist Akira Toriyama collaborating on a single project, with Yasunori Mitsuda composing the soundtrack (his first major gig, before Nobuo Uematsu stepped in to finish a few tracks when Mitsuda fell ill during production). The game follows Crono and a cast of characters from different eras as they try to prevent the end of the world, and it pioneered concepts like combo "Tech" attacks between party members, enemy encounters visible on the map instead of random, and New Game Plus. It had over a dozen endings depending on when and how you beat it.

How to play it right now

Chrono Trigger has been ported and re-released several times, with mixed results:

• SNES/Super Famicom (1995): The original. No additional content, but the purest version of the game. Requires original hardware or emulation.
• PlayStation 1 (1999): Added anime cutscenes animated by Toei, plus a cutscene viewer and music player. The trade-off was brutal load times between every screen transition. Playable on PS3/PSP/Vita via PSN.
• Nintendo DS (2008): Widely considered the definitive version. All the PS1 cutscenes, none of the load times, plus exclusive content (Dimensional Vortex, Lost Sanctum). Out of print and climbing in collector price.
• Mobile (2011/2012): iOS and Android port of the DS version. Has the extra content but the touch controls are clunky.
• Steam (2018): Launched as a sloppy mobile port and got demolished in reviews. Square Enix patched it heavily over the following years, including a 2022 update with ultrawide support and better controls. It holds a "Very Positive" rating now and is perfectly playable, but it's still visibly a mobile port under the hood.
• Which ones did I miss? Technically PSP?

If you want to play it today, Steam or mobile are your realistic options unless you're willing to hunt down a DS cart.

Don't get your hopes up (but maybe a little)

Here's where I land: a 50/50 leaker making a casual comment on a forum is not evidence. I wouldn't write this up as news. But the circumstantial pieces are there. Team Asano has been systematically remaking Square's SNES-era catalog. Chrono Trigger is the most requested game in every remake survey Square Enix has ever run. And Harker's comment was casual enough that it read less like someone fishing for attention and more like someone who forgot they weren't supposed to say that out loud.

I want it to be true. I just don't know yet. I'll die if this doesn't happen.