How Radical Dreamers And Chrono Cross Are Connected (Spoilers-Free)

Square Enix announced a Chrono Cross Remaster on the February 2022 Nintendo Direct, and besides Switch, the game is also coming to PS4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam, and will also include Radical Dreamers.

Radical Dreamers Nusumenai Houseki just celebrated its 26th anniversary on February 3, 2022. The game was first released on Satellaview, the Super Famicom (SNES) modem that allowed players to download media including games.

Radical Dreamers is a text adventure with choices, a type of game that’s also called sound novels or ADV(Adventure) games in japan. Radical Dreamers was never released out of Japan but was fan-translated several years ago. Now, the game has been officially localized for the first time ever with the Chrono Cross Remaster.

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Here’s how Radical Dreamers is connected to Chrono Cross

Radical Dreamers was written by Masato Katou, the main writer of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. He’s also the writer of Another Eden, which recently had a collab event with Chrono Cross.

Masato Katou’s initial plan was to make Radical Dreamers the sequel to Chrono Trigger. However, it had a very short development schedule and was released unfinished.

Radical Dreamers is like a prototype of Chrono Cross story-wise, both games have the same male protagonist: Serge, the same key female character: Kid, and the same main villain. However, each character is not the same individual as their Chrono Cross versions.

Chrono Cross deals with how protagonist Serge travels between two parallel dimensions. And how a single change, whether he lived or died in his childhood, had a butterfly effect completely changing the fates of the inhabitants of the other dimension. A good way to explain Radical Dreamers is to consider it as an unrelated, third parallel dimension in Chrono Cross, with a different version of Serge altogether.

I definitely suggest playing Chrono Cross and Radical Dreamers to get the full details, especially if you’re a Chrono Trigger fan. What makes Chrono Cross interesting is how at the beginning it’s seemingly unrelated to Chrono Trigger, but it’s definitely part of the same set.

Square Enix will launch Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition on April 7. Chrono Cross‘ character designer Nobuteru Yuki (Escaflowne, Lodoss, Seiken Densetsu 3) drew a special artwork for the occasion: